Disasters – Page 9 – Open Minds!

Share (information) if you really care: Challenge to humanitarian community

Why can’t we humanitarian workers talk to each other in the field?

Why must we, instead, badger and harass people affected by a disaster or war, asking them for the same information over and over again?

With these simple yet important questions, Dr Jemilah Mahmood, President of MERCY Malaysia, started off the first panel discussion on humanitarian realities at the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ organised by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). The meeting, held in Geneva from 22 – 26 October 2007 at the Palais des Nations, has brought together over 200 persons involved or interested in information and communication aspects of humanitarian work.

I was nearly dozing off on a surfeit of humanitarian jargon and acronyms when Jemilah started her reality check. The medical doctor turned humanitarian leader spoke from her heart, and spoke such common sense that sometimes seemed to elude the self-important UN types.

Jemilah argued that there was a greater need for community based information gathering and communication, rather than just data mining that often takes place in crisis or emergency situations.

“Communication with affected communities needs to be a genuinely two-way process,” she said, echoing the discussions at my own working group on ‘Communicating with affected communities in crisis’.

She talked of people in Aceh, Indonesia, and elsewhere who survived the tsunami — and then faced a barrage of questions and questionnaires from an endless stream of aid workers, many of who asked the same questions again and again! Why couldn’t the first group/s who surveyed survivors not have shared the information they gathered, she wondered.

“I sometimes see how humanitarian agencies are fighting with each other to keep field information to themselves,” she revealed.

There is also a need for humanitarian workers to be more sensitive to and respectful of affected people’s culture and social norms. For example, it is inappropriate to go to predominantly muslim communities and ask about their sexual habits or probe incidents of rape — even though gathering such information would be relevant in some situations. “The humanitarian workers need to find the right ways to tackle these and other challenges,” she said.

Sometimes well meaning aid workers inadvertently overstep their boundaries. In the aftermath of the Pakistan earthquake of October 2005, community meetings were scheduled at times when the people had to break their day-time fasting.

Today’s crisis affected people are becoming better informed and more empowered. Jemilah recalled how mobile phones are increasingly spreading news and information among crisis affected people on the arrival of new food or medicinal stocks. Once in Aceh, the news of vaccine stock arrival spread within hours through mobile texting or SMS, prompting thousands of people to turn up asking for this service.

The humanitarian community needs to combine technology, common sense and human considerations to deliver better services and benefits, she argued. “Technology alone won’t do this for us, but it offers us useful tools,” she said.

She added: “There are huge opportunities to use modern communication technologies to plan better, reduce disaster risks and have a well coordinated response in times of disasters.”

In short, we need locally relevant, low-cost solutions to improve information gathering, information sharing and communication all around, she argued.

MERCY Malaysia is an internationally recognised medical and humanitarian relief organisation. “MERCY Malaysia is not just a response organisation,” says its president Dr Jemilah Mahmood. This realisation came during the Afghanistan crisis (in October, 2001), when members decided it would be more prudent to look towards providing Total Disaster Risk Management (TDRM) to ensure that affected communities become more resilient after a disaster.

Since its inception, MERCY Malaysia has served hundreds of thousands of victims of natural and complex humanitarian disasters from Kosova, Indonesia, India, Turkey, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran and Sudan. Hundreds of volunteers, both from the medical and non-medical field, have been trained and deployed to these areas. Dr. Jemilah Mahmood herself has led most of these missions at home and abroad, in particular to Kosova, Indonesia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq and most recently to Palestine.

Read The Star newspaper (Malaysia) article on MERCY Malaysia on 12 October 2007

All Geneva photos courtesy UN-OCHA Flickr on Global Symposium+5

The many lives of PI: Crisis communication and spin doctors

Where does public information (PI) work end and public communication (PC) work begin?

And how can we separate public information work, which is mostly institutional propaganda, from public communication of issues and knowledge directly relevant to saving lives or improving them?

This is the question that we often grappled with this week in Geneva, during the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ organised by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). The meeting, held from 22 – 26 October 2007 at the Palais des Nations, brought together over 200 persons involved or interested in information and communication aspects of humanitarian work. I was part of working group on ‘Communicating with affected communities in crisis’.

I raised the importance of separating PI from PC from the very beginning of our discussions. PI and public relations (PR) both have their place, I said, but it was not in the same league as communicating issues and knowledge.

Members of my working group – drawn from humanitarian organisations, UN agencies and the media – broadly agreed with this view. But many couldn’t help sliding back to their own agency’s PI/PR agendas during our discussions!

This is no accident. In this age of spin and soundbites, many development and humanitarian agencies are under pressure to raise their individual profiles in the public eye. In trying to do so, they give far higher priority – and resources – to PI/PR than to engaging in issue-based communication, or, to use one of their own favourite phrases, ‘evidence based advocacy’.

For public communication to assume its rightful place in the development process and humanitarian intervention, all key players will need to be more restrained with their PI/PR agenda. But looking around the massive UN complex in Geneva, where a dozen UN agencies are competing with each other for the public’s and media’s attention, I can’t quite see this happening soon.

I touch on this in an essay in August 2007 titled Cheque-book development corrupting the media. Here’s an extract:

“As development organisations compete more intensely for external funding, they are increasingly adopting desperate strategies to gain higher media visibility for their names, logos and bosses.

“Communication officers in some leading development and humanitarian organisations have been reduced to publicists. When certain UN agency chiefs tour disaster or conflict zones, their spin doctors precede or follow them. Some top honchos now travel with their own ’embedded journalists’ – all at agency expense.

“In this publicity frenzy, these agencies’ communication products are less and less on the issues they stand for or reforms they passionately advocate. Instead, the printed material, online offerings and video films have become ‘logo delivery mechanisms’.”

So the first step would be to deliver less logos and more real information.

Read my other relevant blog posts:

August 2007: Cheque-book Development: Paying public media to deliver development agency logos

April 2007: Say MDG and smile, will ya?

April 2007: MDG: A message from our spin doctors?

Everyone has information ‘needs’ — and information ‘wants’ too!

When the development community talks of people living in poverty (or ‘the poor’) they almost always talk about somebody else — it is not ‘us’ but a remote, often nameless ‘them’.

And when the humanitarian community talks of people affected by crises — disasters or conflict — that too almost always is about somebody else, typically in a poor country.

The well-meaning, do-good people in development and humanitarian communities are fond of talking about the information needs of the poor or crisis affected. These ‘needs’ are usually defined in terms of survival, sustenance or relief.

It’s as if people in poverty or crisis situations only have a simple set of information needs, but none of the information ‘wants’ that we, the privileged, have in abundance.

In Geneva this week, I have argued that everyone has a right to not only information needs, but also information ‘wants’. Development or emergency relief would become truly meaningful only when both these are met.

I’m participating in the Global Symposium+5 on ‘Information for Humanitarian Action’ organised by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). The meeting, held from 22 – 26 October 2007 at the Palais des Nations, UN headquarters in Europe, brought together over 200 persons involved or interested in information and communication aspects of humanitarian work.

I was invited to be part of working group 5 on ‘Communicating with affected communities in crisis’. Members of this group were drawn from national and international humanitarian aid agencies, UN system, governments and the media.

Our brief was to ‘look at the information needs of affected populations both during emergencies and in longer term recovery efforts’. We were to ‘evaluate the nature of these needs, to identify actions necessary to achieve operational reality, and to consider the strategies required to integrate beneficiary communications into the humanitarian response framework, particularly through the opportunities offered by the current reform process’.

Now that’s all well and good, and we did that part of our work in earnestly and seriously. The outcome was presented on Oct 25 to the plenary stimulating discussion and debate.

But I kept reminding our working group that we really have to think beyond the mere information needs of people, and address their information wants as well.

This basically means information related to cultural and social aspects. Humans don’t live on bread, water, clothing and shelter alone. We are complex and nuanced beings with a vast array of interests — and that’s equally true for the city stockbroker, village farmer and the aid worker wearing a UN cap.

Evidence of this is all around us if we only care to notice. For example:

* Tens of thousands of people driven to temporary shelters by disasters or wars followed the 2006 Football World Cup in Germany from their make-shift homes. Football mania didn’t stop at the periphery of a camp.

* Every time there is an important cricket match in South Asia, it unites the rich and poor, the sheltered and homeless, and those living normal or crisis disrupted lives.

The sooner we in the development and humanitarian sectors recognise this reality, the better.

Photo shows working group 5 in session: photo courtesy UN OCHA.

I made a similar point in an essay written in mid 2004 on using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for poverty reduction:
“I cringe every time I hear remarks about the poor just needing survival or sustenance related information. The information needs and wants of the poor can be as diverse as everybody else’s. Sarvodaya – Sri Lanka’s largest development NGO — once surveyed the information needs of poor people in rural and semi-urban areas. Their findings included: health and nutrition information, as well as details on bank loans, foreign jobs and insurance policies. There was also interest in world affairs, national politics and cultural affairs…”

Read my full essay in GKP Partners Newsletter (My essay is the last one, so keep scrolling down, down, down.)

Three years later I found myself making the same point to a different group, many of who are information specialists working in crisis and emergency situations.

This kind of perception will continue as long as we harbour the us-and-them divide.

Geography lesson that saved many lives: The story of Tilly Smith and Asian Tsunami of 2004

Today, 10 October, is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. The theme this year is “Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School”.

This year’s campaign, spearheaded by UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction aims “to inform and mobilize Governments, communities and individuals to ensure that disaster risk reduction is fully integrated into school curricula in high risk countries and that school buildings are built or retrofitted to withstand natural hazards.”

Buried beneath this development jargon that UN agencies are so fond of is something very important: sensitising the next generation about living with hazards can help make our societies better able to cope with disasters when they do happen.

And you never know when an informed and alert school kid could save the day — and many lives.

A good example came from Thailand when the Indian Ocean Tsunami arrived without any public warning on 26 December 2004.

ISDR BBC

Tilly Smith, an eleven-year-old British schoolgirl, was on holiday on Maikhao Beach in Thailand with her family when the tsunami hit. Just a few weeks earlier, she had studied tsunamis in school — and immediately recognized the signs of the receding sea as a sign of an impending disaster. She warned her parents, which led to all the hotel guests being rapidly moved from the beach.

This simple, timely action by a single schoolgirl saved the life of dozens of people. Tilly’s story highlights the critical importance of basic education in preventing the tragic impacts of natural disasters.

Watch her story on YouTube:

This 5 min video, produced by UN/ISDR in 2005, is available in English, French and Spanish. Watch the English version on their website, which is now hidden under all that bureaucratic babble:
Higher resolution WMV file – more suited for broadband Internet connections
Lower resolution WMV file – will play better on narrowband Internet connections

According to the Wikipedia, Tilly’s family have declined requests to be interviewed by commercial and national broadcasters, but Tilly has appeared at the United Nations in November 2005, meeting Bill Clinton the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Relief, and at the first year anniversary in Phuket, as part of the campaign to highlight the importance of education.

In December 2005, Tilly was named “Child of the Year” by the French magazine Mon Quotidien. On the First Anniversary of the Official Tsunami Commemorations at Khao Lak, Thailand on December 26, 2005, she was given the honour of closing the ceremony with a speech to thousands of spectators which read in part:

National Geographic online: Tsunami Family saved by school girl’s geography lesson

BBC Online: Award for tsunami warning pupil

Playing games on disasters: we do and we understand!

Today, 10 October, is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. So we’re going to talk about playing games on disasters.

Yes, that’s right: games. Disasters are serious phenomena, but there’s no reason why disaster awareness and preparedness have to be all dull and dreary.

There’s a old Chinese saying: “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.” Disaster preparedness and training are now moving more into the realm of understanding by doing — simulations or drills for community evacuation, and games that allow players to prevent or manage a disaster.

I first played such a game in January 2007 when, while in Honolulu for a conference, I took the day off and flew to Hilo where the Pacific Tsunami Museum is located. The volunteer-run museum, based in what is known as the tsunami capital of the world, engages local people and foreign visitors (including curious US mainlanders) on the science, history and sociology of tsunamis.

A basic game there allows a visitor to be play the role of Director of Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) , a US government institute that monitors seismic activity and has a mandate to issue alerts, watches or warnings to all countries in and around the Pacific Ocean. The game allows players to choose one of three locations where an earthquake happens — Alaska, Chile or Japan — and also decide on its magnitude from 6.0 to 8.5 on the Richter Scale.

In the real PTWC, five geophycisists are on duty round the clock. If the magnitude exceeds 7.5, the epicentre is located. If it’s in an area likely to cause a tsunami, a tsunami watch is sent to nearby coasts and a tsunami watch is set for areas with a travel time more than three hours away. Messages are sent to the tide observers for reports on the first wave, and telemetered water level gauges are checked. It’s by quickly assessing the seismic, sea level and historical data that scientists at PTWC decide if a warning is needed for areas already placed under a tsunami watch.

Since the system was set up in 1947, it has never missed warning of a damaging tsunami, but there have been a number of very expensive evacuations that turned out to be unnecessary. “These precautions are needed to ensure public safety, but scientists are working to minimise unnecessary warnings without ever missing a hazardous event,” the Tsunami Museum panel explained.

It’s revealing to play the role of a scientist who must quickly marshal lots of information and decide on whether or not to issue a warning. The cost of inaction can be high — but a false alarm doesn’t come cheap either.

I played the game three times, and each time erred on the side of caution — costing the hapless Hawaiian tax payers lots of money.

In real life, those who have their finger on the alert/warning button have to take many considerations into account. Repeated false alarms can erode public confidence in early warning systems. But suppressing a warning on a real breaking disaster — such as what happened in Thailand when the Indian Ocean Tsunami broke in December 2004 — can be truly devastating.

I don’t envy those who have to make this decision as part of their daily work. But after playing the game, I appreciate their challenges a great deal better.

Read my SciDev.Net essay (Dec 2005) The Long Last Mile on challenges in communicating early warnings on disasters

Images from the Majority World: Global South telling its own stories

This image captures a typical scene in a South Asian village. The invitation arrived from Suchit Nanda, a talented Indian photographer who shoots men, women and scenes from different cultures and societies as he moves around Asia and elsewhere.

Suchit’s work is being marketed by MajorityWorld.com, a new global initiative founded through the collaboration of The Drik Picture Library of Bangladesh and KijijiVision in the UK to champion the cause of indigenous photographers from the developing world and the global South – the Majority World!

“Very few published images of the South are taken by local photographers. They are invisible and don’t get a fair deal. This is what kijiji*Vision is campaigning to change,” says Colin Hastings of kijiji*Vision, a co-founder of Majorityworld.com.

The Step-children of Tsunami: Overlooked and forgotten

Meet Mala. She lives in in Kottaikkadu village in Kancheepuram District in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state.

She was 11 years old when, in December 2004, the Asian Tsunami crashed into village without warning. This made her very poor family desperate and destitute.

The disaster didn’t kill anyone in her village, but caused considerable property damage. In her case, the waves that rolled in spared their small hut, but her fisherman father was nearly drowned: he survived with some injuries.

But the family’s fishing boat and gear were gone. That was a mighty blow.

After the waves had retreated, they returned to their house and started rebuilding their lives. They thought the world’s generosity in responding to the Asian Tsunami will somehow bring some help.

They were wrong.

When the Tsunami triggered massive aid donations, all affected countries pledged to distribute it in a fair, equitable and transparent manner. But as the aid trickled down layers of government and charities, various biases and distortions crept in.

What happened in Mala’s village was an example. We came across the situation when tracking Mala’s family for a whole year (2005) after the Tsunami, documenting their long road to recovery as part of our Children of Tsunami media project.

We tracked two affected families each in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, filming their progress — or the lack of it — every month and producing video reports that were uploaded to a dedicated website.

Follow Mala’s story through monthly video reports on our website

The most striking example of aid disparity came from India. Even months after the disaster, Mala’s family — or anyone else in her village — received absolutely no relief or recovery assistance.

Officially, it was because ‘no one was killed’ in her village. But everybody in Kottaikkadu village knew the real reason: in the Indian social hierarchy, they occupy the lowest level, known as ‘Dalits’.

Apparently, that was why both government agencies and charities stayed clear of the village.

Our India production team, led by senior journalist and film-maker Satya Sivaraman (with video camera in the photo, below), investigated further. They compared Kottaikadu with its adjoining village of Alambara. Both had suffered similar damage during the Tsunami: people lost their boats and nets, but there were no deaths.

Yet the people of Alambara – who belong to a supposedly higher caste of fishermen — received food items, boats and fishing nets from various outside sources.

In fact, they felt quite sorry for their neighbours in Kottaikkadu. “On the day of the tsunami we ran over 15 kilometers,” said Kuppuraj, a resident of Alambara. “Kottaikadu villagers, who live just 600 meters away…ran with us — but nobody has helped them to recover.”

There was another incident that showed up the caste-based discrimination, which my colleague Manori Wijesekera, production manager of Children of Tsunami, has just reminded me.

In March 2005, our India film crew found Mala’s father seriously ill with a lung infection (triggered by his near-drowning during the Tsunami) and his family so helpless that they were unable to even seek medical attention.

So the crew put their filming gear aside, and became good Samaritans: they rushed the sick man to a nearby government-run hospital. But once there, doctors refused to admit or treat him — all due to the patient’s supposedly low caste!

It was only when Satya and crew threatened to film the entire sorry episode, and have it broadcast on television later that day, that medical attention was finally provided. Discarding their production plans, our crew stayed with Mala’s family at the hospital through the night and next day to ensure the doctors gave her father the correct medical attention. The family believes that the production team saved her father’s life that day.

Read more about what happened at Children of Tsunami website

Watch the March 2005 video report that covered the hospitalisation incident

While their father was recovering, Mala’s mother toiled as a labourer to keep the home fires burning. Mala has one younger sister and two younger brothers.

Children of Tsunami: Rebuilding the Future was TVE Asia Pacific’s response to largely superficial media coverage of the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004. It tracked on TV, video and web the personal recovery stories of eight affected families in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand for a year after the disaster. Its many media products — distributed on broadcast, narrowcast and online platforms -– inspired public discussion on aid management and optimum rehabilitation choices.

As we discovered along the way, some of the affected could be better described as Step-children of Tsunami.

In one of my early blog posts, I paid a tribute to the most extreme example of such a child, Thillainayagam Theeban.

The Tsunami has become yesterday’s news, but there are thousands of affected children, women and men who are still living on the edge of survival.

Children of Tsunami revisited two years later

All images courtesy Children of Tsunami media project, TVE Asia Pacific

Love Thy Mangrove: A Greenbelt Report from Pra Thong island, Thailand

This is Jureerat Pechsai, nicknamed Deun.

She is a member of the Moken community – indigenous people living on the coast and islands on Thailand’s southern coast. Their nomadic lifestyle has earned them the name Sea Gypsies. In Thai, they are called Chao Ley — or people of the sea.

They traditionally live on small boats and move from place to place. When the Monsoon rains make the seas rough, they set up temporary huts on islands – such as Pra Thong Island, where Deun lives.

Pra Thong is an hour’s boat ride from the mainland city of Phuket — some conservationists call it one of the “Jewels of the Andaman” for its biodiversity. It is also an important nesting beach for turtles.

It was on this island that my colleagues from TVE Asia Pacific met and filmed with her in late 2006 for our Asian TV series, The Greenbelt Reports.

The Asian Tsunami of December 2004 devastated the Moken way of life. Their temporary huts were destroyed, and many families lost loved ones. The losses would have been greater if not for the mangrove forest close to the Moken village.

“Moken loves the water, the forest and everything. And we love the mangrove forest the most. The mangrove forest is like a living creature that has helped the Moken people for years. It’s our most beloved place on the island,” says Khiab Pansuwan, an older woman who is a leader in Deun’s community.

After the Tsunami, some Moken felt that they could not return to their nomadic lives. They have chosen to live on the mainland where they feel safe from the waves. Others who remained on their island had new, permanent houses built for them. But the Moken are quick to abandon these whenever they hear rumours of more Tsunamis.

Watch The Greenbelt Reports: Love Thy Mangrove on YouTube:

The mangrove replanting work on Pra Thong island is led by two women, Khiab and Deun.

Deun has been a volunteer with conservation organisations. She learnt about ecosystems and how to protect mangroves and endangered species like sea turtles. She can see many changes in her environment after the tsunami.

“After the tsunami, there are a lot of changes. We didn’t have much grass before, but now weeds are everywhere. The weeds are now more than grass,” says Deun. “In the past, we used to have more and more beach every year. But now the sea has come so close…”

The Tsunami’s impact is not the only factor affecting the mangroves here. Dynamite fishing, oil from boats, foam from fish and oyster nets are all damaging this life-saving greenbelt. Some people also cut down mangrove trees.

But Khiab and Deun are determined to rally everyone around to replant and regenerate their mangroves.

Says Khiab: “The community forest is part of the Moken people. We don’t want to cut the trees or clear it. We want to replant the trees so the forest is like before. We don’t want anyone to cut down trees because the mangrove forest saved many Moken lives.”

The two women are determined to rally everyone around to replant and regenerate their mangroves.

Replanted mangroves will ensure not only protection from the waves, but also a continued supply of shell fish and crabs – the main source of income and food for the Moken.

The Moken have traditionally managed the mangroves sustainably. They fish in different areas of the forest during the year, giving time for fish stocks to regenerate. Logging for firewood is done only in moderation, in designated areas.

But these mangroves are now under threat from outsiders who see it as a source of firewood and shell fish. Only a few Moken are left in the village to protect the forest from these intrusions.

Khiab and Deun have much work to do.

NOTE: We are now looking for more stories like this to be featured in the second Asian TV series of The Greenbelt Reports. See TVEAP website news story calling for story ideas.

All images and video courtesy TVE Asia Pacific

Baby 81: The Asian Tsunami’s big ‘non-story’

When many journalists chase the same unfolding story, it’s common for them to acquire the ‘herd mentality’. This ‘media pack’ can sometimes lose sense of direction, perspective — and even the truth.

A good example is the story of a Sri Lankan baby who grabbed world media attention for a few days as a “celebrated” Tsunami orphan.

The four-month-old boy, Abhilash Jeyarajah, was picked up by a neighbor who found him under a pile of garbage soon after giant waves lashed Kalmunai on 26 December 2004. The man handed over the child to the Kalmunai hospital. The parents, who also survived the waves, later found their child.

That should have been the happy ending for that family — but it was not to be.

Newspapers, television and news agencies reported how squabbling broke out among several couples over “Baby 81” — as he was dubbed by hospital authorities in Kalmunai, going by the admission number. As many as nine couples who lost their infants in the tsunami all claimed he was theirs — or so the story was spread by the news-hungry media who had descended on tsunami-hit Sri Lanka in their hundreds.

Photo courtesy Reuters

Even the usually cautious New York Times carried the story, referring to him as a “celebrated orphan”.

The story assumed a momentum of its own. One leading American TV network invited the baby and his parents to visit the US to be their studio guests and tell their ‘story’.

It was only many weeks later that the truth began to emerge.

Police denied nine couples had claimed him as their own. Kalmunai hospital authorities confirmed that only one couple had come forward to claim the baby. The man who handed over the child to hospital told police that he had known the child was that of his neighbors — there was no dispute about the parentage.

“Because it had a miraculous escape, a lot of people showed interest in the child, but they never said they were the parents,” chief inspector W. C. Wijetilleka was quoted as saying. “Only one couple claimed the child. No one else has come forward to make a legal claim.”

“As far as the police and the courts are concerned, only one couple is claiming the child,” inspector Wijetilleka said. “We have reported the facts to court and the judge ordered the hospital to release the child to the parents.”

The story was fuelled by the hospital’s initial reluctance to release the boy until he was well enough. The couple then petitioned the court, which ordered on 12 January 2005 that the baby be given to them. DNA tests, presented to court on 14 February 2005 confirmed their claim as biological parents.

Read Lanka Business Online account of what happened: Baby 81 – the story with nine or more lies

Read Reuters AlertNet guest blogger Glenda Cooper’s recent update on the Baby 81 saga

This non-story was discussed during the Asian regional brainstorming on Communicating Disasters that TVE Asia Pacific and UNDP organised in Bangkok, Thailand, in December 2006.

“The young couple was at the centre of endless media coverage for several weeks,” Asoka Dias, Station Director of MTV/MBC Network, Sri Lanka, told our meeting.

He added: “This created public impression that they also received a great deal of money and other help, which was not the case. They have had to relocate to a new neighbourhood, and are struggling to lead normal lives.”

Read the meeting report of Communicating Disasters

Broadcasters united by Tsunami, but now divided again

In the broadcast industry, everybody knows each other — but then each one minds his or her own turf.

The United Nations, humanitarian agencies and advocacy groups have all tried to get media to co-operate more with each other, but these have remained largely token efforts.

Let’s face it: the broadcast media is fiercely competitive. TV networks and channels compete with each other in a given country or region. With channel proliferation there are more offerings chasing the same eyeballs.

But extraordinary situations bring out spontaneous collaboration in extraordinary ways. One such trigger is disasters.

Last December, speaking at a regional brainstorming on Communicating Disasters that TVE Asia Pacific organised with the UNDP, veteran Indian journalist A S Panneerselvan related a heart warming story of Indian broadcasters coming together on one such occasion.

The first hours and days after the Tsunami saw the highly competitive Indian news media organizations sharing each other’s information, visual and contacts in the true spirit of cooperation.

“Generally, the Indian news market is highly competitive with 18 TV news channels. They’re not willing to share visuals or co-operate. But something extraordinary happened soon after the Tsunami news broke. For the first time, none of the channels was insisting on exclusivity. They were simply downloading each other’s images, without even bothering about the rights or other issues.

“This was indeed rare. We know how many contracts have to be signed even for broadcasting 10 seconds of a cricket match. The kind of cross-flow of information after the Tsunami was amazing. All channel rivalries were momentarily forgotten.

“The only problem was with the international relief agencies, who are extremely hierarchy conscious. They were not easily available to the news media, and often they spoke only to influential Western news agencies such as Reuters and BBC.”

Panneer is now executive director of Panos South Asia. He was formerly the managing editor of Sun TV and bureau chief for Outlook magazine in India.

Read the full report of the Bangkok meeting on TVE Asia Pacific website