2006/4

Carlos A. Valle
‘Why, as we look back, do we see the path of human history punctuated by cataclysms and disasters? What really happened to those civilizations? Why did they run out of breath, lack the will to live, lose the moral strength?’ (Sculpting, 225) asked the great Russian cinema director Andrey Tarkovsky in Sculpting in Time. He died 20 years ago but these questions are still present in a world that mercilessly repeats oppression by hunger, pain and death.

Mark Pelling and Kathleen Dill
This article, from a briefing note prepared for Chatham House,1 presents initial findings of a study reviewing historical data on the political outcomes of disaster at the level of the nation state and below. It draws on academic papers, practitioner and media reports of large natural disaster events from 1899 to 2005.

Ned O’Gorman
At the basis of the present-day concern with disaster, whether natural in origin (e.g. hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, or volcanic eruptions) or directly human in cause (e.g. wars, terroristic acts of violence, or breakdowns in technological systems), is a modern desire for social order. As the following article argues, media attention to disaster may take up many concerns, but it is always infused with a distinctly modern disquiet about social order.

En enero de 1999 un terremoto destruyó casi por completo la zona del eje cafetero colombiano, lo cual puso en marcha un modelo de intervención sui géneris de reconstrucción en casos de desastre: el gobierno colombiano atendió el desastre a partir de la colaboración Estado y ONGs de todo el país, a través del Fondo por la Reconstrucción.

Philip Lee
Amnesty International wants nations to ‘reaffirm and reassert human rights as embodying the common values and universal standards of human decency and dignity, equality and justice’ (Report 2005). It also calls on them to ‘be vigilant in protecting civil society, because the pursuit of freedom depends on civil society as much as on the rule of law, an independent judiciary, free media and elected governments.’ How can the mass media contribute?

Ullamaija Kivikuru
With the growing speed of the news apparatus and the harsh media competition found in practically all countries in the world today, conflict and disaster reporting have become a central part of front-page journalism. However, the tsunami on 26 December 2004 was exceptional in its scope. The catastrophe that caused the death of 300,000 people became the most reported natural disaster in history, prompting millions of news stories and a flood of funding amounting to over US$ 9 billion, according to Reuters. On the other hand, the tsunami coverage brought up issues which characterise the whole field of catastrophe communication in today's world.

Nalaka Gunawardene
In the months following the mega tsunami of December 2004, some people believed that it had caught the Indian Ocean rim countries entirely by surprise. This misconception, repeated by governments and aid donors alike, as the following article shows, even found its way into some independent analyses.

William A. Dorman and Daniel Hirsch
On 26 April 1986 a catastrophic accident occurred at the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine, 100 kilometres northwest of Kiev. Over a hundred times more radiation was released than that of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Radiation fallout contaminated parts of Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine, resulting in the resettlement of more than 350,000 people. In 2005 the World Health Organisation estimated that some 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the accident. During this era of the ‘Cold War’, Western media coverage was intense. But was it fair? And what lessons does it have for media manipulation today?

Bolivia se encuentra en un importante período histórico de redefinición y readecuación del papel del Estado y de la sociedad a través de un proceso constituyente estructural, que estuvo siendo demandado desde hace más de una década por los pueblos indígenas y originarios. En este marco, se ha comenzado a plantear temas fundamentales en la mesa de discusión pública; empero, la comunicación no parece ser uno de estos. Frente a este panorama, periodistas y comunicadores han iniciado el debate desde diversos enfoques. El presente artículo plantea pistas para coadyuvar a la reflexión que si bien pertenece a un país específicamente, puede ser aplicada a cualquier otro que se encuentre en una etapa fundacional similar.

Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and Bernadette Cole

Sierra Leone is emerging from a decade-long civil war, which ended in 2002. The war undermined an already fragile political, educational, economic and media infrastructure, leaving the nation struggling to pick up the pieces. Nevertheless, Sierra Leone also has a proud tradition of indigenous indepen•dent media. This article looks at Sierra Leone’s newspapers as a case study in the difficulties of supporting the right to communicate under conditions of poverty and underdevelopment.