Impact of local media reporting the earthquake

Pakistan was hit by the worst earthquake in its history earlier this month where so far over 54,000 are known to have died in Pakistan and 1,300 in Indian-administered Kashmir. Some aid workers say the donor response to the massive disaster had been muted compared to other big disasters because the crisis has been less effectively covered by the media, in particular by local news services. "Drastically reduced local media capacities, after the earthquake destroyed all the resources, have certainly had a role in reducing international attention including the relief and rehabilitation response," Adnan Rehmat, country director for the international media support NGO, Internews, said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. "The media output simply does not match the scale of the disaster and its aftermath." But media workers were victims too, according to bodies like the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). They say approximately 50 journalists based in Balakot, Muzzafarabad, Karachi and Islamabad have been identified as killed, missing, injured or directly affected by the earthquake, through the loss of family members, their homes or in many cases both. On Saturday, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Pakistan, Jan Vandermoortele, tried to explain why the UN's flash appeal for the South Asian quake was only about 30 percent funded. "We saw the tsunami happening, we saw the airplanes flying into the twin towers in New York, these impact on the minds of people," he added. "Here we only see the consequences. This is definitely one of the reasons the response has been slow and inadequate so far." However, Rehmat pointed out that getting news, pictures and footage out of the quake zone remains beset by huge logistical problems, particularly for poorly resourced local and regional media. "A dreadful lack of resources - both technical and logistical- restricted the ability of national media to not just reach some of the more inaccessible places in the quake regions but also some of the bigger towns and cities." The Internews head called for more resources to be made available to local journalists to enable them to tell the real story. "Expensive satellite phones and laptops are needed to file field reports - resources that an overwhelming majority of national media do not provide to reporters." However, Owais Aslam Ali, Secretary-General of the Pakistan Press Foundation, a journalism training and research institute, said local media had played a key role in reporting the quake - in particular to other Pakistanis, both at home and abroad. "As far as the media is concerned, both national and international have been playing a significant role. This is why the response from our own people is so overwhelming because we can relate to our own people, and wherever in the world Pakistanis are, the response has been the same."