Natural Disasters and the Media

Hans Peter Peters

Research Centre Juelich
Program Group Humans, Environment, Technology
52425 Juelich
Germany

Relevance of mass media for disaster management

Communication is an important part of disaster prevention and management. Many channels are used before and during a disaster - e.g. visible or audible signals, leaflets, announcements by speaker cars and public events. An important channel are the mass media: Newspapers, television, radio and - increasingly important - the internet. Mass media have certain characteristics that make them advantageous for disaster communication: They provide easy access to large publics and some of them constitute a robust communication system which remains working even in cases of a partial breakdown of the infrastructure (battery-powered radio). On the other hand sources dealing with the media know that media can be difficult channels. There is no direct control over the content and form of information transmitted. Sources who want communicate with the public have to deal with journalists who do not form a passive "information channel" but act as gate keepers, interpreters and commentators. Media hence can support or obstruct the disaster management of government agencies and relief organizations.

To understand the importance of mass media for disaster control and mitigation it is useful to distinguish communication situations along three dimensions (see figure 1): Stage (disaster prevention, acute disaster situation, disaster coping), audience (directly affected vs. unaffected population) and level of effects (individual vs. collective).

Figure 1 Media effects relevant to disaster management

On the individual level and for the affected population information provided by mass media can be crucial in motivating and enabling them to prepare for the disaster, to act reasonable during the disaster and to recover after the disaster. Before and after the disaster mass media can stimulate a public debate in the affected communities on how to prepare for the disaster and which conclusions are to be drawn from the experiences during disasters.

From the disaster management point of view mobilization of help from outside the affected communities (even international help) is the main function of mass media reporting on disasters with respect to the non-affected audience. Furthermore the reporting on actual disasters may help to increase the ranking of the disaster management issue on the policy agenda.

Difficulties in working with the media

We may conclude that the media are important for disaster prevention and management. Yet, as already mentioned, it is often very hard to work with the media. There are a number of basic problems that sources "with a mission" have to deal with:

• Getting attention of media (what is important from the perspective of the sources may not be newsworthy from the perspective of the media),
• getting one's message across undistorted (in particular: alarming vs. reassuring tone, recommendations of how to act in emergencies),
• getting media to create an image of trustworthiness and credibility,
• getting media out of the way in stressful situations (what is stressful for disaster managers may be interesting for the media).

The mentioned aspects are not exclusively problems of the disaster management; everybody being dependent in some way or another on the media has to overcome these or similar difficulties.

As a result of these and other problems the expectations disaster managers have and their actual experiences with the media differ (see figure 2).

Figure 2 Discrepancies between what disaster managers expect from the media and what they get

Where do the problems come from?

The question now is: How can these discrepancies and problems be explained? There are a number of different explanations people have whenever the media don't act as they expect. Some of the hypotheses most often expressed in such situations are:

1. Journalists work awfully bad. They have no sense of responsibility, they lack of background knowledge, they prefer sensationalism over serious information.
2. Disaster management is bad-prepared to deal with the media. There is a lack of resources allocated to public communication, a lack of preparation and a lack of competence.
3. Professional rules of journalists and expectations of disaster managers differ according to different tasks, subcultures and constraints.

Although there are lots of examples of bad journalism - bad as measured by the journalists' own professional quality norms - there is no reason to suspect that there is a higher proportion of bad journalists than there are bad members of other professions. (Bad examples of journalists' work, however, are more open to public scrutiny.) One should, hence, also consider factors (2) and (3) to explain bad experiences.

When criticizing the media it is important to consider their different functions:

• Information: Media have to inform their audience. In doing so they have to adjust to the information needs of the audience. Their style of reporting has to reflect the audiences' preferences which often leads to an entertaining and sensational tone of the coverage.
• Public arena: Media in democracies are expected to establish an arena for public political debate. This calls for balanced reporting (covering both sides of a controversial issue) and the inclusion of sources with different opinions rather than just reliance on one "official" or "expert" source.
• Watchdog: According to their own self-image journalists want to keep a critical eye on those in power. Investigative reporting, uncovering of scandals and proving failures of decision-makers is what most journalists dream of. This "watchdog function" of the media often leads to a skeptical attitude as default.

The primary goal of disaster managers of informing an audience reliably and credibly about risks and adequate protection behavior will often be hindered by the information preferences of the audiences themselves as well as by the "public arena" and "watchdog" function of the media. That means that there are goal conflicts among the different functions of mass media and between them and the goals of disaster management.

How to work with the media

When interacting with journalists one should avoid the error to attribute difficulties and problems experienced too readily to personal deficits of the journalist. (The social psychologist L. Ross called the tendency of people to overestimate personal factors and to underestimate social constraints for the explanation of behavior the "fundamental attribution error".) Rather one should acknowledge the constraints imposed by professional norms and market forces on journalists. Both restrain their elbowroom more than outsiders would believe:

• Journalism is a system with an own internal set of norms and working rules. One of these rules is that journalists are expected to take an observer role. Letting oneself being utilized - even by credible sources for agreeable objectives - would be considered unprofessional behavior by most journalists under most circumstances.
• Journalists have to manufacture a product which has to be sold on highly competitive markets for readers/listeners/viewers as well as for advertisement. If in doubt, hence, they will not try to satisfy their sources but their audience. Furthermore, because of economic and time pressure, journalists often have to fulfil their tasks with very limited resources (time for investigation, equipment, travel budget, manpower, competence). Often they will tend to be quick rather than thorough.

While these assumptions seem to limit the possibility of a cooperative relationship between journalists and disaster managers, the situation is not as hopeless as may be thought. Against the general rule media may be prepared to cooperate closely with disaster management in communication situations characterized by the following features:

• A shared understanding of "immediate danger",
• the main part of the audience being directly affected by the disaster,
• the journalist being in contact with the affected population rather than in some office 200 kilometers away from the disaster region,
• the disaster management being efficient and fair to the media.

In general, sources have a lot of influence on coverage. Often it will be necessary to negotiate and to accept compromises. The following suggestions may be helpful in stimulating reflections on how to improve the relationship with journalists and increase the likelihood of a reasonable disaster coverage:

1. Communicate, be interesting and relevant - or journalists will find other topics or other angles and sources to report on "your" topic. Journalists usually can choose between different sources; they will tend to use those which are easily available and provide information they consider interesting.
2. Take into account the demands and operation rules of the media and use them to get your message across. Rather than fighting the professional rules of journalism sources should try to adopt their message to these rules. This of course requires specific know how. Even disaster managers need to professionalize their public relations.
3. Establish cooperation with (local) media to increase disaster knowledge and awareness among the threatened population. While in general media insist on their independence and prefer an observer role, there are still opportunities for cooperation with the media - particularly on the local level.
4. Prepare for communication and cooperation with the media during acute disasters. All manuals for crisis communication stress the importance of preparation. In acute cases of emergency there is hardly the time to organize efficient communication patterns. It should be clear in advance, for example, who is responsible for public communication in crisis situations.
5. Start a dialogue with the media and negotiate rules for reporting during acute disasters with them. Media should be prepared for reporting on disasters too. For them, however, anticipating disasters does not have the same importance as for disaster managers. Disaster management, hence, should seek contacts with the media before acute disaster occur in order to establish a working relationship.