International Law

Steve Dickinson: Media Critic

By Stan

Steve Dickinson on quake coverage:

The Chinese media response to yesterday’s Sichuan Province earthquake has been unexpected. When these sorts of things happened in the 80s or the 90s or even two years ago, there was a virtual media blackout. Not true for this disaster. Local newspapers were full of stories with precise details. On my television, four stations were broadcasting live footage of the damage and the relief efforts. This is a striking change from the past. As I was watching the coverage, CCTV 4 (central government owned and controlled) ran a story about the response of foreign governments to the disaster.

He’s absolutely right, of course. And this story is not getting so much attention for some reason.

Stephen Lou concurs.

And then there’s the Twitter story. I think the stories about Twitter and the earthquake have been quite interesting, but as I believe Fons has pointed out, some of the rhetoric has been a little over the top. Here’s a great line from a bona fide IT guru:

Search Engine Land blogger Danny Sullivan called it "absurd" to suggest that Twitter users knew of the Sichuan earthquake before the US Geological Survey, which uses seismic equipment positioned around the world to record such events, and then after a scientist’s review sends out notices of the events.

"Reading some of the accounts, you’d get the impression Twitter seemed to alert the USGS to the news," Sullivan said.

Fair enough. All the attention was enough to get me to push me over the edge, though, and jump on the bandwagon — pardon the colorful mixed aphorisms.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on May 15, 2008 (boomark / email).