Within an hour of last Friday’s catastrophic tsunami in Japan, I was tuned into a live press conference with Prime Minister Naoto Kan that was being aired on CCTV here in China. The tsunami struck our neighbor at 2:46 pm Tokyo time (1:46 pm in Beijing), right around the time I was preparing to head over to work.
Kan opened the conference by making general statements about the event, stressing that while not much information was known, Japan would do everything it could in its rescue efforts. Then he began fielding questions from the press. The very second question, from a journalist whose organization I’m unsure of, disturbed me: “Is there an estimated death toll?”
All I could do was shake my head and think, “Really? You’re asking what the death toll is when aftershocks are still being felt and tsunami waves are still rolling?”
Kan, of course, gave the expected answer — that there was no way of knowing how great the death toll would be at that time. And how could he — or any other government officials, really — know that number just an hour after the quake struck?
The question disappointed me. In our digital age where news spreads at breakneck speeds, the press — both in America and abroad — seems eager to get the “official” numbers out as quickly as possible. Competing news organizations all want to be the first to report the right information. Yes, the organizations have a responsibility to accurately report information and constantly search for updates, which includes death tolls in cases of natural disasters and other deadly events.
But in this case, the death toll question was premature and, given the timing, inappropriate. And it made me all the more worried about how sensationalistic — and perhaps inaccurate — the coverage would become in the ensuing days and weeks.
It reminded me of 9/11 and how, at the age of 14, I was constantly searching for online news updates that day in my high school’s computer labs. I remember how terrified I was to read the initial reports — that up to 50,000 people may have been working in buildings of the World Trade Center. That the National Mall was on fire. That one of the planes reportedly made it out as far west as Cleveland.
Some of these pieces of information would turn out to be true. Some were slightly accurate. Some were simply ridiculous rumors. And it would take months for the American public to finally learn the true death toll (which is still changing).
Obviously the events unfolding in Japan are on a much more disastrous scale than those of 9/11. But I worry that the media and their audience have an unhealthy obsession with getting the official numbers. This obsession often leads to sensationalism in news coverage.
Like the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, we may never know the true death toll from last Friday’s disaster. But just because we may never have an “official” death toll doesn’t mean we won’t be able to understand the extent of the damage.
Bridget O'Donnell, 24, is a designer for the
An unhealthy obsession with the death toll question
Within an hour of last Friday’s catastrophic tsunami in Japan, I was tuned into a live press conference with Prime Minister Naoto Kan that was being aired on CCTV here in China. The tsunami struck our neighbor at 2:46 pm Tokyo time (1:46 pm in Beijing), right around the time I was preparing to head over to work.
Kan opened the conference by making general statements about the event, stressing that while not much information was known, Japan would do everything it could in its rescue efforts. Then he began fielding questions from the press. The very second question, from a journalist whose organization I’m unsure of, disturbed me: “Is there an estimated death toll?”
All I could do was shake my head and think, “Really? You’re asking what the death toll is when aftershocks are still being felt and tsunami waves are still rolling?”
Kan, of course, gave the expected answer — that there was no way of knowing how great the death toll would be at that time. And how could he — or any other government officials, really — know that number just an hour after the quake struck?
The question disappointed me. In our digital age where news spreads at breakneck speeds, the press — both in America and abroad — seems eager to get the “official” numbers out as quickly as possible. Competing news organizations all want to be the first to report the right information. Yes, the organizations have a responsibility to accurately report information and constantly search for updates, which includes death tolls in cases of natural disasters and other deadly events.
But in this case, the death toll question was premature and, given the timing, inappropriate. And it made me all the more worried about how sensationalistic — and perhaps inaccurate — the coverage would become in the ensuing days and weeks.
It reminded me of 9/11 and how, at the age of 14, I was constantly searching for online news updates that day in my high school’s computer labs. I remember how terrified I was to read the initial reports — that up to 50,000 people may have been working in buildings of the World Trade Center. That the National Mall was on fire. That one of the planes reportedly made it out as far west as Cleveland.
Some of these pieces of information would turn out to be true. Some were slightly accurate. Some were simply ridiculous rumors. And it would take months for the American public to finally learn the true death toll (which is still changing).
Obviously the events unfolding in Japan are on a much more disastrous scale than those of 9/11. But I worry that the media and their audience have an unhealthy obsession with getting the official numbers. This obsession often leads to sensationalism in news coverage.
Like the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, we may never know the true death toll from last Friday’s disaster. But just because we may never have an “official” death toll doesn’t mean we won’t be able to understand the extent of the damage.