The year 2017, has seen a multitude of natural disasters, from Hurricane Harvey in Houston, to Hurricane Irma in Puerto Rico, the result has been destroyed communities and lives. In response to a disaster, the media exploits many of the interviews and tragic stories in order to portray the message that they have done all they can. Identification of this exploitation is challenging and causes a disconnect between the media and the audience. The problem in today’s society is that the media makes assumptions that everyone has access to all the resources that the media provides information through. As a result, this prevents people who are in a low socioeconomic class, from accessing natural disaster information and procedures. The inadequate communication during natural disasters between the media and the people, along with the lack of empathy that the media has during post-disaster interviews, negatively affects audience interpretation of disaster victims. In this way, natural disasters may do more harm once they are over, due to the lack of accurate and empathetic communication that exists after the storm.
The natural disaster that made society notice the inadequate communication from the media, was Hurricane Katrina. Katrina itself left several thousand dead and/or displaced from their homes. Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 400,000 people from the New Orleans area and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, according to a Census Bureau report (Whoriskey, 2006). After Hurricane Katrina about half of the survivors reported that they had heard a clear plan on how to evacuate correctly. (Altman, Benson, Blendon, Brodie, & Weltzein, 2006) This statistic shows the media’s difficulty reaching the other half of such a large community because of the general idea that everyone owns TVs, computers, radios, etc. Different forms of media are abundant in today’s society, but the media assume that everyone can access these types of media, which is not the case. Post-hurricane, survivors were scarred and disgruntled towards the media and government, at how they did not receive fair warning.
There was a believed discrepancy between survivors rescued first and how much their social class had to do with it. The majority believed that if the victims were white and wealthy, the help would have arrived faster, instead of the way that they responded to the African-American victims, who lived in middle to lower class areas (Altman, Benson, Blendon, Brodie, & Weltzein, 2006). Another problem society has with the media is that people feel race and social class determines how much the media cares about informing someone of a resource. If these individuals feel that the media is not empathetic towards them then they will refuse to engage and evaluate any information produced, causing a further disconnection between media and society. A few days after Hurricane Katrina, there was a controversy over many of the survivors living in the poorer places, being referred to as “refugees” during reports from the media (Apfelbaum, Dukes, Sommers, Toosi, & Wang, 2005). The word “refugees” is commonly used to describe people ordered out of their homes, but usually does not refer to citizens of the U.S. This name-calling caused many to disengage from the media, as a result causing many to feel that they had to make a certain sum of money, in order to be recognized by the media.
Since there has been an increase in varied forms of “New Media”, the percentage of Americans with televisions has decreased. Traditional news is becoming unpopular in these times of need because a lot of people feel that this type of news is useless in these types of events (Palen, Shklovski, & Sutton, 2007). In relation, people who don’t own TVs tend to feel that they’re being left out to dry when it comes to government communication through media. For the media to make assumptions that everyone’s accessing and interpreting their messages correctly is a bit apathetic. Emergency media and communication techniques need to continue to develop so that these people in poverty-filled areas do not feel like the government is abandoning them in their time of need. The media must show the country that it is finished making assumptions, and is here to help all people in a time of need.
Coping with disastrous situations like Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters is often extremely difficult because a lot of the events have not completely registered in one’s brain yet. The media is not believed to be a resource and empathetic in this time of reflection and sorrow. Many feel that after experiencing a traumatic situation, coping is a lot easier with those who were also affected (Bradbury, Raphael, Singh, & Moos, 2013). This is true people who have experienced such a traumatic event, are more likely to understand and discuss information with other victims. These post-disaster interviews have caused issues with the media because of unethical questions that make the victim feel manipulated. In an interview, post-Hurricane Harvey, a reporter is in a rescue shelter and insists on interviewing a female victim and her family. To summarize this interview, the interviewer bombards the family with questions right after they experienced such a traumatic event and anyone watching the interview could tell that the woman did not want to be interviewed. After being asked several uncomfortable questions, the interviewee experiences a meltdown, where she lashed out at the reporter, saying how it infuriated her, that the reporter continued to shove the microphone in her face, asking her questions after potentially losing all her valuables and family members. Instead of exploiting this woman for a story, the media could have turned off the camera and helped comfort this family in their time of need (CNN, 2017).
As viewers watch the media fish for different types of stories, people are starting to understand that the media’s number one desire is to receive one’s attention. After natural disasters, many tend to pay attention to the media surrounding the disaster, in order to learn new information about the situation, not to watch their fellow Americans be taken advantage of. A study was done to confirm that victims of traumatic disasters would prefer to be given more time to cope with their losses, before being interviewed regarding the catastrophic event (Simpson, 1995). One of the main ideas of the study was that sometimes the reporter should be ethical and postpone the interview until the victim is emotionally stable. Results from one of the groups studied also showed that the victim would most likely decide to avoid any interviews post-disaster (Simpson, 1995). This study proves that there is usually never a time where a post-disaster interview is acceptable in the victim’s eyes. Fully coping with disasters is not always attainable, and could have negative effects on those who were affected for life. These interviews often fuel people’s unpopular opinions of the media.
Media outlets’ ratings skyrocket as a result of natural disasters. Because of added attention towards media during natural disasters, media officials identify this time as an opportunity to disperse messages to local residents, improve network ratings and also make a memorable product (Rogers, Sood, & Stockdale, 2006). The idea of spreading messages is very helpful but taking advantage of this disaster to improve ratings and “leave your mark” will agitate any media literate viewer. Viewers must identify these frowned upon ways of increasing one’s popularity and spread only the important messages to those unable of receiving the media’s messages.
Hurricane Katrina and Irma have caused an increase in mass media literacy. Many members of society believe that they’ve become more literate and aware of the media’s different exploitation tactics. Now, people are starting to watch media under a magnifying glass in order to analyze and identify issues more efficiently. Many would say that the media’s intention is to be under a hypothetical magnifying glass but they do not aim to be over-analyzed for negative reasons. These events have also caused some members of society to disengage from the media, because they’re unaware of the media’s motives and role in society. The public often relies on the media to provide meaningful information surrounding politics, disasters, current events, etc. By heavily relying on the media, it shows them that since they have one’s attention, they can produce news stories that they think viewers want to see. The media is definitely the biggest and has been the largest platform for providing the world with information, for a while now. Mass media often attempts to convey information and styles that they feel are trendy in today’s society. Once people identified mass media’s tendencies when covering disaster, they became more critical of the information the media releases.
In conclusion, the media and citizens of the U.S., need to become more unified, so that the media is a resource for all. The lack of communication needs to be fixed between both parties, so that people receive complete and clear steps of how to respond to a natural disaster and are able to pass on this information to less privileged people. “New Media” may be growing but the government needs to find a way to communicate with those who are less fortunate. One of the media’s goals needs to be, the ability to reach a more diverse audience. In order to communicate with people of lower socioeconomic classes, the media must get rid of all assumptions regarding mass communication during disasters, meaning that the media can’t assume people in low-income households can effectively receive and interpret disaster messages. Encouraging those who can access the disaster news, to spread the messages to people who are less fortunate, will provide better communication and empathy from the media to the people. It’s on each other to spread information from the media to humans that don’t have access to traditional news sources. Since social media is so popular nowadays, spreading an important message through social media can result in a positive outcome. By partially relying on each other to relay news, humans would stop relying on the traditional media in times of disaster. As a result, humans can provide empathy to each other in time of desperation, and better their understanding of disaster messages. The audience must work on analyzing information from the media and then interpreting it and recycling it to less educated and fortunate individuals. By doing this, the media and society’s relationship will slowly be repaired, and empathy will be evident on both sides. The people need to change and become more media literate in order for there to be change, society can’t count on the media and its assumptions to change.
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