Canadian vs. American disaster coverage

[marshwiggle]

Over the last few weeks, seeing coverage of things like the BC flooding (and East coast flooding) and the Kentucky hurricanes, I noticed a trend. In both cases, coverage on CBC or CTV (Canadian televison networks for those unfamiliar) followed the usual pattern of in-studio newscasters talking to local reporters. I noticed that Canadian reporters tended to focus on efforts being made to help people in the short term and plans for recovery in the future, whereas American coverage focused more on the damage and suffering in the moment. (Also, American reporters tended to use the name on the in-studio newscaster much more. "Well, Angie, you can see the devastation. Angie, this used to be someone 's house!". This focuses on attempting to personalize everything, rather than focusing on the community.)

Anyone notice anything like that? I think I just noticed it because of seeing lots of coverage from both sides of the border of similar kinds of stories. I'll  be on the lookout for it now.

[mahagonny]

Yes, I suspect the USA tries to keep their viewership high through star newscasters and spectacular footage. They thrive on shock value more. Or maybe it's that we are more ready to use someone's suffering to make allegations of injustice against 'the system' and each other. Or, worse yet, maybe it's that we have begun hating each other so much that for some viewers the suffering is entertaining. Whatever it is, negativity sells.
I notice some of them almost fetishize the newscaster when times are good too. Playful banter between the team, etc. How cute they are. Brings out my cynicism.
(Old-timer beef) I miss the days of the fatherly, not-sexy single face of Walter Cronkite and the faith people had in his steady temperament and (mostly) keeping the melodrama within reason.
The back-and-forth discussion, talking heads amplify the political spin with the ruse of objectivity, straight-up inquiry. Both FOX and CNN do it regularly.

[arcturus]

What I noticed when I moved from Canada to the American Midwest was the excessive "thanks be to god" in every local newscast. That, and the "Canadian Arctic Coldfront" as the cause of the cold weather (as if Canada was responsible for our winter weather!). Otherwise, news coverage seemed pretty much the same in both countries, with a fair share of disaster recovery and disaster as disaster stories.

[hmaria1609]

Putting this out there: It's not uncommon for reporters at local affiliate stations to be pulled in for reporting on the national network.  For ex. "Here's Bruce from our local ABC affiliate station in [town/city name] with more." That local reporter gets 15 minutes of fame.

[marshwiggle]

Putting this out there: It's not uncommon for reporters at local affiliate stations to be pulled in for reporting on the national network.  For ex. "Here's Bruce from our local ABC affiliate station in [town/city name] with more." That local reporter gets 15 minutes of fame.

That's the same in every country, so that in itself wouldn't account for a difference between countries. What the local reporters are primed to talk about seems to be different.

[Hegemony]

I suspect it's of the "If it bleeds, it leads" nature. The news media are in desperate competition with each other, and now with social media and the internet. So everything is bite-sized and sensationalized. And there is ticker-tape news going across the bottom of the screen and always movement and pictures, to try to keep your attention by frantic means.

I haven't seen Canadian news broadcasts, but it's distinctively different from British ones.

[mamselle]

The greatest difference I've seen over several years' worth of comparison, is that American news is national news.

International news is only covered if Americans are involved, hence it's simply an extension of American news--it's just that which takes place elsewhere.

That may also be true of other countries to a degree--each is most interested in its own national coverage, of course.

But from what I've seen overall, American coverage rarely extends to other countries' significant events whether or not they include or involve Americans.

Because that's just not, well, NEWS, is it?

I've come back from trips wanting to know, say, what happened to the imprisoned Bulgarian nurses, or Segolene Royale's election bid, and having to hunt, even on Google, even in French, for the answers.

For that reason, I keep <<Le Monde>> on my newsfeed and keep searching for things in French on purpose to keep them coming in, otherwise they drop off the search strings.

Other places just cover more of the world than the US news services do.

M.     

[kaysixteen]

Michael Moore made remarks very similar to marshy's in one of his flicks, I think 'Bowling for Columbine', where he tried to figure out why there was so much more gun violence in the US vs Canada, even though guns are still readily available there-- indeed, he goes across from Detroit to Windsor, ON, to the local Walmart and walks out with a rifle or shotgun, sold to a foreigner with really no questions asked.   Moore made a comparison of various aspects of the two societies and concluded that tv news was vastly different north of the border, focusing more on BBC-style straight news, vs the endless sensationalist violence shown here.... I am not sure how accurate this is, but it did seem credible.

[marshwiggle]

I suspect it's of the "If it bleeds, it leads" nature. The news media are in desperate competition with each other, and now with social media and the internet. So everything is bite-sized and sensationalized.

The interesting thing is that all of the reports started with showing/interviewing individuals who had been severely affected by the disaster, but the Canadian news then went on to discuss what measures (such as military being brought in, emergency shelters set up, supplies, etc.) while US news seemed to mostly stop after the "personal tragedy" part.

So "if it bleeds, it leads" applies in both places, but "How do we deal with this?" seems to not be as much of a concern in the US.

[Langue_doc]

Long ago, a student who had won a Fullbright to study in a foreign country told me about what they learned about this country during their orientation: surprise #1, according to the person leading the workshop, most people in the said country read newspapers; surprise #2, American news is relegated to the fourth or fifth page of the newspapers in said country, instead of on the first page. Stu obviously knew more about the said country as Stu had spent some time there, so we had a good laugh at the ignorance of the "experts" in DC.

As for marshwiggle's observation:

whereas American coverage focused more on the damage and suffering in the moment. (Also, American reporters tended to use the name on the in-studio newscaster much more. "Well, Angie, you can see the devastation. Angie, this used to be someone 's house!". This focuses on attempting to personalize everything, rather than focusing on the community.)

this is the case here in our local news too, with the focus on the here and now; disasters are promptly forgotten the next day despite it taking the survivors years to rebuild their lives. The anchors' constant use of the reporters' first names gives the viewers a false sense of camaraderie as it obscures the hierarchy in the "newsroom".

[mamselle]

The rudeness of keeping the camera running on someone who's clearly broken down and is crying and trying to turn away is something I don't recall seeing elsewhere, although on that, I could be wrong since the two families I have most often visited either don't own TVs or don't watch them very often (and I don't either, which made me feel right at home...).

M.

[marshwiggle]

The rudeness of keeping the camera running on someone who's clearly broken down and is crying and trying to turn away is something I don't recall seeing elsewhere, although on that, I could be wrong since the two families I have most often visited either don't own TVs or don't watch them very often (and I don't either, which made me feel right at home...).

M.

Sadly, this makes me think of when the Challenger space shuttle exploded. Maclean's magazine, in Canada, had a cover photo of the look on *Christa McAuliffe's mother's face at the moment of the explosion. There was a lot of (entirely justifiable) outrage by readers who felt that it was insensitive to show that. As many people said, how is it "news" that a parent is overwhelmed by grief when their child dies?

So, I can't claim Canadian media never engages in that kind of behaviour.

*For those to young to remember, Christa McAuliffe was a school teacher who became an astronaut, and was going to teach a live lesson from the shuttle.

[csguy]

I sometimes feel there's entirely too much US news on Canadian TV.