Van Belle
Race and Media Coverage of Disasters
19
The Reporting of Human Suffering
As the levels of coverage analysis suggests, the most significant aspect of US foreign
disaster coverage is the human impact of the disaster. The more human suffering, as
measured in the number of deaths, the greater the newsworthiness and the greater the level of
coverage. In studies that have included examinations of race in the reporting of crime in the
US (i.e. (Chermack 1995) blacks are disproportionately depicted as the victims of crime and
they are far more likely to be portrayed in situations of helplessness or victimization requiring
governmental or societal assistance (Entman and Rojecki 2000). These depictions can be
argued to create or further dominance relationships (Dijk 2000) by socially defining blacks as
recipients of assistance and placing white elites and politicians over them as providers. These
arguments create an obvious hypothesis for analysis of the coverage of foreign disasters
Hypothesis 4-Controlling for actual measures of human suffering, paragraphs covering
disasters in countries with proportionally larger black populations are more likely to
include mentions of deaths and human suffering short of death.
The Reporting of Self-assistance
A more direct application of the social definition of black as needy recipients to the
subject of foreign disaster coverage is to look at reporting of self-assistance. To what degree
are the foreign disaster victims depicted as self-reliant and able to respond independently of
foreign assistance. Since the local level of wealth is likely to have a tremendous impact on
immediately available post-disaster resources, it will be important to control for wealth and
the number of deaths in the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 5-Controlling for actual measures of human suffering and the wealth of the
stricken country, paragraphs covering disasters in countries with proportionally larger
Convention