“There aren’t any small people here,” the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said from Louisiana on his prime-time program Wednesday night, emphatically rejecting the remarks by BP’s chairman that the oil company cares “about the small people.”

Mr. Cooper listed some of the local men and women who had been put out of work by BP’s gusher of oil under the Gulf of Mexico, and concluded, “This is a land of giants.” This is an interesting tidbit:
“Mr. Cooper has spent more time in Louisiana — about 20 days — than any other national television anchor since the leak began. Evincing his frustration and his perseverance, he keeps a daily on-air tally of the number of days BP has ignored his interview requests. “I think there’s a basic lack of transparency in their dealings,” he of BP, in an interview. Read more at the NY Times

Noam Scheiber asks this question today in The New Republic

In his article he states:

“In a wrenching dispatch yesterday, one Time magazine correspondent described how “dozens of reporters watched and filmed” as rescue teams dislodged bodies from the Hotel Montana, where a contingent of UN aid workers was trapped beneath the rubble [...]we rarely bat an eye over the redundancy of the coverage. We just chalk these things up to the cost of a vibrant news media. But in Haiti, the dozens of redundant dispatches are stressing an already perilously fragile situation, as all the journalists scrambling to get into the country chew up valuable capacity and resources. Surely there’s a better way.”

While Scheiber makes a great point in raising the question, he doesn’t touch on the dark, grim side to this question. When you have dozens & dozens of cameras swirling around rubble while the rescue workers pull out a survivor, is it for news, ratings (which unfortunately are tied to revenue), the competitive-exclusivity-on the-story, or all of the above?

What happened in Haiti is beyond horrific, it’s an international tragedy. Social media has (probably for the first time) played a more valuable role in expediting relief efforts, but Scheiber brings up some valid issues in his piece, and raises some questions the media (and it’s critics) often don’t have the courage to address. Let’s hope the rest of the media can pull an Anderson Cooper down there and lend a helping hand when duty calls…and don’t suck up the few resources that are already widely needed down there.

Anderson Cooper was in Haiti doing a segment on the aftermath of the earthquake, when he saw a bloodied young boy who was stuck in the head by looters throwing rocks.
Cooper ran to the boy’s aid and carried him to safety. See the video here:

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David Hinckley of the Daily News thinks it’s Uncomfortable,
or rather: “The promotion of those stories, which is a separate media business issue, still can emit an uncomfortable vibration.” We think it was a heroic act, plain & simple.

Fox News, a “moneymaking juggernaut” according to the LA Times, had about 20 employees in Haiti by midweek, nine of them on-air personalities. However, only one of those correspondents seemed able to get into the heart of the capital, with much of the reporting coming from staging areas and the secure airport.

CNN, in contrast, succeeded much as it did five years ago, when it dominated coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami. CNN had nine correspondents and anchors and some 40 others on the ground, along with generators and equipment that allowed it to broadcast pictures far superior to the Fox News’ grainy images. Read more at the LA Times