Media Coverage
El
NIÑO is one of the most extensively covered natural disasters in the history of
news broadcasting, because it affected the lives of millions in a broad
scale. The two main international news
agencies the British Broadcasting Company
and Cable News Network have
made numerous reports on the EL NIÑO event, CNN even has a special site for EL
NIÑO, http://europe.cnn.com/SPECIALS/el.Niño/
where you can track latest changes and find explanations and predictions of the
phenomenon.
The wide range of El Niño is apparent when we look at the sections
of coverage. El Niño comes up quite
frequently in main news sections first as immediate dangers, such as floods,
create a human drama (At least 30 killed in Peruvian Mudslide, BBC). The effects of El Niño continues as the
damages reflect on the economic situations of the countries (El Niño to slow economic growth, BBC). There are scientific explanations given for
El Niño (Global warming may cause El
Niño, BBC), (Coral shows El Niño’s rise,
BBC) as well as predictions (El Niño end in sight, BBC).
Technology is an important advantage of the current broadcasting
companies. Many of the websites we
looked at contained animated diagrams, maps and videos that explained the
phenomena and made the news material accessible from distant locations. Most of the news was accompanied by satellite
images of sea-surface height and temperature of the world. With the help of online news and reports on
EL NIÑO we are becoming more informed and cautious but avoiding its danger will
not be very easy.
