Does the U.S. Media Care About the Possible Disaster Unfolding for Bangladesh?

Why should they care? They have far more important things to talk about.

Like...

Ticker: Chuck Norris asks for campaign cash

Whoopi: I didn't use the c-word about Bush

'Ghost' on camera spooks customers

'Nasty gator' eats robbery suspect

Most Americans can't find Bangladesh on a map anyway. Besides, there's no oil there.

Now, if this was bearing down on Miami, you might hear something about it.

I noticed the same thing. I only heard about Sidr through this blog, but found no mention of it in the MSM. Not even BBC news! I am still a bit suprised, though maybe I shouldn't be.

Putting sarcasm aside, mostly because it is too easy, especially when Stacy Peterson is all over the news today, maybe it is time that we all started to vote by remote.

Most news media want to be able to frame this story in one of two ways. Either they want to show it is an example of Global Warming at work, or they want to make it into a disaster story after the fact showing how we react to the disaster to help all of those people. Before the fact, it does not pull at the heart strings and so they don't know how to show it.

Maybe we should all put the link to the above image into an email and send it to our local television station and ask if they are waiting for the ___ to hit the fan before they decide to cover this. Maybe the story is about what we are doing now to prepare to help afterward. Are supplies being gathered? Is our military (planes, boats,etc.) on alert for possible duty in life saving operations? Or will we wonder later why it took so long (as in the hours it took to find out that the oil spill in San Francisco Bay was 58,000 gal., not 150 gal.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like the projected storm path, combined with the counter-clockwise rotation, will be driving a whole lot of water right into the Bay of Bengal and directly up the Ganges plain.

Chris: Any word on how storm landfall will coincide with the tides?

The Weather Channel had a segment on the storm this morning. They talked about the strength of the storm, how the intensity would likely decrease, but how the enclosed Bay of Bengal will cause huge surge/waves/destruction. But you're right, it's sad that other media outlets aren't covering the storm.

And what's possibly more sad is that most residents in that region probably don't even know its coming.

If it weren't for the intersection I wouldn't have heard of it as well. I regularly look at bbc, and international herald trib. so I don't think this is peculiar the American media.

I only just now learned of this thanks to Andrew Sullivan's blog (The Daily Dish). The way I see it, the American MSM only covers Bangladesh after a spectacular natural disaster has already struck and left lots of dead bodies rotting in the water.

At least, I'm 47 years old and can't ever recall them covering any other sort of story about Bangladesh except the coverage they gave it during their war of independence when they broke away from what at the time was known as West Pakistan (Bangladesh was called East Pakistan). That happened around 1970 or so.

Other than that? Only natural disasters.

They'll get right on it - after the storm has left and the flooding has caused lots of drownings.

The MSM doesn't much like covering new stories. It's much, much happier going over the same, familiar territory again, and again, and again, and ....

I don't see a hint of this on the BBC's website either. Maybe, just maybe, Americans don't suck that much worse than other people...

This is sad, I thought I would be up to date with world events, but this slipped by. Slipped? no, completely ignored by nearly everyone in the Western hemisphere.

A giant sunken bowl, with poor infrastructure is in being ignored till too late. again. and again.

The shopworn trope that "America doesn't care" is hardly consistent with the American private donations and government funding to international disaster relief - specifically, earthquakes or tsunamis in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Iran - in just the last few years. Or AIDS relief (compare Europe to the US on AIDS funding to Africa). I know, it's more gratifying to that pseudo-Kohlbergian sense of personal righteousness to bash America for its real and purported sins of omission and commission. (I'm not picking on Chris Mooney; he simply pointed out the obliviousness of the US news media, which is true of nearly anywhere in which the US is not directly involved. Rather, I am commenting on the thread.)

They just talked about it on CBC Newsworld, so at least some journalists in Canada care.

There wasn't much warning on the media here too! Many people are stranded in te offshore islands including Saint Martin's island.

My father was the Relief Commissioner of East Pakistan when the cyclone Bhola devastated the coastal belt in 1970. I think he logged several thousand flying hours in American and Russian choppers flying 4-5 times a day to the affected areas supervising relief work for six months or so.

I hope we are spared of the carnage this time.

@Andrea: after several equally large hurricanes in the late 80s and early 90s, there was a massive effort to improve storm preparedness. Surprisingly enough, these systems are highly effective, and we dodge (on average) one Cat5 typhoon every year with minimal loss of human life. Property damage is another matter altogether, but that is to be expected when you cram 160 million people and their belongings into an area the size of Maine.

Finally, the consternation about the event not getting enough exposure in the western media is silly: I'm sure when the storm hits there will be plenty of coverage. After all, the media is reactive, not predictive.

Just now NTV correspondent from Mongla Port in Southern Bangladesh reported that the storm has started hitting Hiron Point, Dublar Char and Sunderbans at a speed of 80-100 kms and is likely to intensify in 6-8 hours at a speed of 150-180 kms. 25,000 fishermen are stranded in Dublar Char and for the last two hours communication with the community has been lost. Many fishermen chose to stay and try their luck against the wrath of Nature. NTV also reported that Mongla is without any electricity and the gusts are increasing.

Shuvro and Dian should remember that we have been to all these places on our boat trip to the Southern most tip of Bangladesh on board the Queen of the Jungle to Dublar Char and Hiron Point many years back.

The issue isn't what the US media cares about. The issue is what can be done to warn or to prepare for a potentially significant disaster to the area. There is nothing more patronizing and condescending as the suggestion that nothing in the world matters unless the US media and its most supposedly "sensitive" and "progressive" citizens care about the particular issue.

Equally condescending is the attempt to use poor countries as fodder to whip up "awareness" about climate change. Bangladesh would be severely affected by cycles of drought,storm and monsoon even if the weather were exactly the same as it was in the year 1500.