PressEthic

As the Times devotes significant attention to the Hurricane tragedies are we missing out on other important news? Please note the following statistics relate only to Section A of the New York Times from Monday 20 September to Friday 24 September and do not include any editorial, op-ed, obituary and world/national briefing articles.

Hurricane Katrina dominated the Times this week. 25% of the articles in the first section of the New York Times related to Hurricane Katrina. On average this equates to about 8 articles per day. The articles pertain to a vast array of subjects, but all are essentially based on issues surrounding Katrina. I do not wish to undermine the tragic nature of the event, but 25% of news coverage is a very significant proportion.

Today was the first day where Katrina did not feature in the greatest number of news stories. As the Times switched focus from one fearsome storm to another, Hurricane Rita related stories numbered the most. This week 7% of articles in the first section of the Times stemmed from Rita.

In total, a third of all the stories this week were Hurricane related news. For instance on Thursday there were 3 full pages, entitled ‘Storm and Crisis’ filled with a plethora of Katrina (and Rita) stories. Stories included rescuing pets, con-artists tricking police into giving up personal information and a piece on the democrats boycott of the Republican parties inquiry into the response of the Hurricane.

With such intense coverage of the Hurricanes, you have to wonder what we are not reading. I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but surely with so much attention focused on the Hurricane the Times must be sacrificing other important stories. For instance on September 20, Globalinfo ran a story staying the UN Human Rights committee asked NGOs to report evidence of US abuse of human rights during their war on global terrorism. This investigation into US human rights practice was (to the best of my knowledge) not reported in the Times at all. Obviously not all news can be included, but are important stories being left out? Furthermore stories that did make the Times , may not be covered as extensively as they might have been during another period. (This is of course hard to ascertain.)

This is not just important for Times readers, but readers around the globe. Seth Mnookin in his book Hard News (p. xiii) says:

The rest of the media world, from broadcast news to cable outlets to other newspapers to glossy magazines, still looks to the Times to tell it what’s important, what each day’s conventional wisdom will be... Every morning, the Times' front page comes closer than any other single source of information to determining what will count as major news or the next twenty-four hours.

As one of the world’s most revered publications, the Times influences the news agenda across the globe. So when the Time’s focuses so exclusively on one event, you wonder how this affects the news agendas across the globe.

Hurricane Katrina was an incredibly tragic event and there are ongoing stories worth covering. However at present the Times could well be over-covering it. This is somewhat understandable due to enormous public concern, however I wonder if other stories are being marginalised as a result.