Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan has reportedly killed more than 1,700 people and affected more than 21 million, leaving many injured or homeless. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, said in August that the flooding was the worst disaster he had personally seen.
But despite the breadth of this cataclysm, Pakistan has not garnered as much media coverage as Haiti did during the aftermath of its earthquake earlier this year, some critics said.
On Saturday morning, the Organization of Pakistani Students at Boston U. along with the BU Niger study abroad alumni network, hosted a Pakistan-Niger Disaster Relief 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament to benefit the flood victims in Pakistan and famine victims in Niger.
Shahrose Aziz, a senior in the School of Management and president of the OPS, said that they hosted the event to spread awareness of the situation in both countries.
“It’s a really complicated situation. Obviously Pakistan has been a conflicted area for a while now,” Aziz said. “At first . . . [the news] didn’t say that too many people died, but as the days went on, and days became weeks, it just got worse . . . I think that was one of the reasons the media got a little slow.”
More than 13 million people have been affected by the floods, more than the total number of people affected in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, combined.
But Aziz said he’s read articles arguing that the amount of media coverage differed because of the type of situation.
“Earthquakes and certain natural disasters that happen all at once gain more attention,” he said.
Aziz believes that the international community responded constructively once the news was out.
Alex Zito, a BU graduate student and 2002 alumni of the BU Niger study abroad program, serves as the faculty advisor to the OPS.
“If a thousand was given to Haiti in terms of attention . . . only a hundred was given to Pakistan,” Zito said.
He emphasized the importance of spreading awareness of both situations.
Zito said he believes that BU generally has an aware and caring population, and that there are sincere people who truly want to help.
Zahra Motiwala, a senior in the School of Hospitality Administration, agreed that the Pakistan disaster wasn’t getting as much attention as that in Haiti.
“I’m from Pakistan, so I’ve personally seen everything. And we think it’s devastating. But we don’t actually know the true meaning of the word ‘devastation,'” Motiwala said.
She believes that the Pakistani media has exposed more of the natural disaster. However, she argues that the American media doesn’t have the “necessary instruments” to report extensively on the issue.
International relations professor Charles Dunbar, who has served as a foreign service officer and ambassador in several Middle Eastern countries, said that he thought the intensity of coverage on the Haitian situation was a matter of proximity.
“Haiti is very close to home, and there is a big Haitian-American population [in the U.S.]. We have a long history of dealing with Haiti and feelings of responsibility for the country . . . it’s very understandable that there was a lot of coverage devoted to Haiti for quite some time,” Dunbar said.
However, he asserts that there was a “surprising lack of attention to the Pakistan crisis.”
Dunbar agreed with Aziz that the type of situation determined the amount of coverage.
Dunbar said that since Haiti’s disaster happened all at once, that might help to explain why there was so much more coverage of Haiti when compared to Pakistan, which he said “was a little more subtle.”
“I do think it’s very important, obviously,” Dunbar said. “That showing our intent and actually delivering our intent of giving a very large amount of assistance to Pakistan is important in light of our complex relationship with that country, in the context of the war in Afghanistan,” Dunbar said.
Journalism professor Bob Zelnick agreed with Dunbar.
Zelnick concurred that the large number of Haitians in the United States and Haiti’s proximity to the U.S. played a major role in the media’s extensive coverage of Haiti.
Reporting on Pakistan would also cost a newspaper or television affiliate much more money than reporting on Haiti, Zelnick said.
Still, Zelnick said, the media has made “a hash of its financing, a hash of its coverage of foreign affairs.”
“When I was covering Moscow for ABC News in the early 1980s, we had bureaus in Frankfurt, we had bureaus in Warsaw . . . that’s gone now,” Zelnick said. “ABC subscribes to several foreign services that provide video and actualities of events around the world, and they have some guy sitting in London watching the satellite feed . . . That’s a quantum difference from 25-35 years ago.”