Ask the Explainer: Do the Reporters in Haiti Have Their Own Food and Shelter?; Plus: Why don't earthquakes get names
Hoodoo
Plus: Why don't earthquakes get names, like hurricanes do?
By Nina Shen Rastogi
Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010, at 6:43 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2241947/
In the week following the massive Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti, a number
of high-profile American journalists�Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, even
Al Roker�have reported from the ground in Port-au-Prince. This has many
Explainer readers wondering: If aid organizations are having such a hard
time delivering food and medical supplies, how are so many journalists
getting into Haiti?
They're hitching rides with the military. Journalists who want to fly
into Port-au-Prince can sometimes use empty seats on flights run by Air
Mobility Command, the Air Force unit that provides airlift support for
all the armed forces and often assists in humanitarian missions. NBC
Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, for example, flew home this weekend
on an Air Force C-17 shuttling refugees to McGuire Air Force Base in New
Jersey. (There was some extra space available. Williams stressed that he
"would of course have been bumped, happily, from any flight full of
evacuees.")
Journalists who try to piggyback on the military can't be picky: They
may have to put up with losing their seats at the last minute and must
to be prepared to leave from one location (say, Pope Air Force Base in
North Carolina) and return to another (like Little Rock Air Force Base
in Arkansas). An AMC spokesperson estimates that the military has now
flown about 50 media representatives in and out of Port-au-Prince.
Journalists are also coming into Haiti with civilian aid missions or
flying into the Dominican Republic and then traveling in by car, truck,
or helicopter.
What about food and lodging? In the early days following the disaster,
many news organizations were staying close to the Port-au-Prince
airport, setting up temporary "bureaus" near the terminal and camping
out on the tarmac. (The day after the earthquake hit, NBC's Ann Curry
tweeted that she was sleeping in an Air Canada luggage container.)
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Since then, many organizations have found more stable lodgings. ABC
News, for example, has a few dozen people�reporters, crew members,
security, and a medic�stationed at a Port-au-Prince hotel. The ABC team
is bringing in its own food, water, and fuel, routing it daily by ground
and helicopter through Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. (News
organizations commonly use such "staging grounds" when reporting from
disaster zones�for example, Baton Rouge, La., was used during Hurricane
Katrina.) CNN, meanwhile, has bought up most of the rooms in downtown
Port-au-Prince's Le Plaza Hotel. Like ABC, CNN is shipping in supplies
for its 15 correspondents and roughly 60 support staff through Santo
Domingo, though the Le Plaza kitchens are providing some meals.
Several journalists have apparently set up camp at the Hotel Oloffson,
immortalized in Graham Greene's novel The Comedians. (The hotel's owner
tweeted on Sunday: "The Oloffson looks like a refugee camp for
journalists. So many people working and sleeping in the yard.") The
Hotel Montana, however, long a favorite of foreign journalists, has
collapsed.
News agencies emphasize that their presence on the ground is in service
of a greater good�i.e., publicizing, investigating, and humanizing the
disaster. Some critics, however�like the New Republic's Noam
Scheiber�argue that a glut of reporters not only creates redundant
reporting but diverts resources away from those most in need.
Bonus Explainer: Why don't earthquakes get proper names, the way
hurricanes do? Because they happen in one place. A storm can move 3,000
miles across land and sea in its lifetime, and the ability to
disseminate clear information about its path and strength is crucial for
public safety. According to the World Meteorological Organization�the
body that coordinates the naming of tropical cyclones�giving storms
pithy monikers like Mindy or Gordon makes it easier for the media to
report on them and for "widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and
ships at sea" to share data quickly and accurately. For earthquakes, no
such warning system is necessary. So the informal nomenclature commonly
used by geologists�year and then location, as in "the 1989 Loma Prieta
earthquake"�works just fine.
Explainer thanks Roger Drinnon of the U.S. Air Force's Air Mobility
Command, Tony Maddox of CNN International, Jason Maloney of the Bureau
for International Reporting, David Reiter of ABC News, and Seth Stein of
Northwestern University.
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