I see a risk now that the international aid effort is becoming or will become not much more than a vanity fair - who is giving the most? Don't the most current newscasts make a perfect backdrop for what used to be called "keeping up with the Joneses"?
Now, as the lists of missing, dead, and shelterless battered by the Indian Ocean, and the lists of evacuated vacationers also battered by the crushing waves of a horrendous tsunami, gradually give way to lists of which countries are giving the most per capita, it is not only a vanity fair but also a matter of statistics. And I thought it was mainly a matter of foreign aid and logistics.
I see in the news on television and internet that there are many, many dead and many more who are shelterless - and a good number of lucky, yet severely traumatized tourists being safely evacuated. The missing, of course, are not visible to the living eye. We grieve most for them.
But all of the figures are staggering. The same applies to the amounts of donations from each nation, mounting daily in the figures on the band that runs across the television screen. But, yes, will we really see the aid that is expressed in those numbers arrive locally? Where leaders rush to give numbers to the press or to get their cabinet representatives over there and on the ground - in the spotlight, capturing camera presence - I can't resist thinking it might just be a publicity effort.
I am sure, yes, I know that these countries which are making such a big publicity splash over their relief aid are also nations of very charitable and generous people. And probably it is necessary to make sure that everyone knows who is giving what. Good publicity is more important to success today than anything else. (It will even go a long way to cover up a lack of the substantiality which generally goes under the term which we also sometimes refer to as "quality".)
There are not so many people in the world who watch and compare the media from multiple countries in different languages. But I do. I watch and read the U.S., the German, and the Danish media in the English, German and Danish languages. Of those three countries, it was the German media who began reporting the seriousness of this catastrophe on the same day, and it was the German government that had a crisis room set up on the same day to coordinate their national efforts under the hands of competent cabinet leaders as well as rescue and travel branches. And it is the German cabinet that is meeting today to discuss sustained and massive financial aid to the region.
This morning I saw that CNN has gone back to their usual routine, and Danish television never parted much from their usual routine. Have to mention here that it is hard to tolerate the showmanship of the CNN reporters - most of them building on their own image as they report. Remember Clark Kent, the news reporter who serves as the alias for Superman? Clark Kent is a quiet man, not a dashing bragger. When I say bragger, I'm thinking of the reporters who say, "This is theeeeeeeee worst that Iiiiiiiiii have ever seen." Then, on one of the early days, I caught one of the trailers saying, "Witness the pain of a village in India ... "
Yes, good people, witness that pain. It's the same tone those adventuresome and embedded reporters have used since travelling with the crusade to free Iraq from terror. (I do appreciate the few CNN reporters who have their own individual style and thus maintain a truly human touch. And I have appreciated CNN when they really were the first to let me know.)
I witness the pain in the images and the words they issue, and I feel it. So right now I find the more quiet and somber tones of the German reporters and moderators - the ones in the studio mostly in black - much better suited to my mood. Many German citizens are affected by the tsunami flooding in southeast Asia, so there is good reason for the German broadcasters to continue their special reporting and to speak on a level tone. Unfortunately, I can't get any Swedish television channels here, so am not able to compare how they are handling the topic of the day. The Germans and the Swedes are the two countries with the largest number of vacationers missing - with figures varying from one to three thousand each.
Yet, do I need to know even one of the missing victims to feel the pain, to grieve over the waste of all those lives? Especially of those who were so young. It is such a loss. And now I am learning very quickly how much human capacity we lose day for day for not being more diligent in getting education and utilities to those needy nations faster. Maybe it can be in the form of income from tourism - I'm not capable of forming an opinion on that - but surely this is not enough. Tourism too often signals a double standard.
In Denmark there has been public discussion about the government funds being used to evacuate tourists who had not taken out travel insurance. If they had insurance, then there surely are organisations to manage their evacuation. That the government did invest in returning those of their countrymen home who had not invested in travel insurance, is basically not fair to the ones who paid for insurance beforehand - and this explains why a government speaker has made it clear that this was an exceptional catastrophe which justifies exceptional action. There are lots of things that could be commented here. Maybe I should check the conditions of the last travel insurance that I had - did it include evacuation after a natural catastrophe? Most of my insurance policies don't cover that. Hope a tsunami never hits the coasts near where I live!
Looking at it from another angle, people pay such high taxes in Denmark - and always have - because the tax rate is supposed to include rather comprehensive health insurance among other government services. I'm sure that most people in Denmark also feel that being evacuated in a time of need is part of that coverage. Actually, any time one needs to draw on health insurance - if one really needs it - it is a natural catastrophe.
Yes, and the other interesting item at this point is that the large global insurance companies are not expecting a great financial burden from this natural catastrophe, because very few of the multitude of victims in those Indian Ocean nations had insurance.
Then we have the discussion of why there was no warning. Good question. Complex answers. A warning system (or if only the warning which was issued had been passed on more responsibly) could have saved many lives. But millions would still be homeless, because the warning can't stop a tsunami from destroying the infrastructure and dwellings. So most of this catastrophe would be there with or without a warning.
I also wonder, where are our rich nations going to take that money from to help the battered nations build something up again? Each and every one of the western nations donating aid is already struggling, either to maintain a balanced economy or to grapple with mounting debt and lack of sufficient economic growth.
This may be the first time in history that we will truly be called upon to cut back and really share with the needy in our "one world". Right, the Danish government and the others will have to refrain from such special treatment of their people - or refrain from something else.
Of course, when the media go back to their usual routine, it signals to us - the people - that now it is time to turn our minds back to the normal things, such as delicious meals, fine wine, sport events, royals and celebrities, etc. President Bush is also back in Washington D.C. now, no longer speaking from "The Western White House" at his home. (When did that come in?) And he has two former presidents to his right and left to bolster him. This is interesting, but I won't waste any more words on such trivia.
The media are showing - or not showing - all of this or part of it to us, that is, to whoever is interested. It is almost impossible to foresee where these events will lead us. But I see that the media are our leaders, in particular the electronic media.
Lucky the countries that have responsible leadership in their media representatives, not only because those people mirror their nation's population, but also because they inform and are thus formative of nations.
