Disastrous Coverage

Covering a breaking news story that involves death and despair, following a natural disaster, is painfully difficult work.

But the reporter should never be the story.

The story should be the crisis. The impact on the effected community. The challenge the community faces in restoring itself, to regaining or even just attempting to reclaim what was lost.

In the now five year race by electronic journalists to out Anderson Cooper Anderson Cooper, Diane Sawyer seems to have outdone herself with her work on this evening's World News broadcast.

She was in the right place, on the ground reporting on this terrible situation in northern Japan. But her writing suggested the entire nation was deprived of essentials, the editing of her anchor piece melded days old footage with what a camera captured today, without a single reference to any sense of time, and she injected herself into virtually every frame of her piece, hardly a first for an anchor, but an unnecessary addition to each shot when the visuals for this story already speak with a clear and credible voice.

Let's see some questions of authorities with regard to this horrific impending nuclear power situation, let's document the work being done by relief workers from the range of nations that have responded to the crisis, let's let those involved in the story tell us what they're doing. Just because the language isn't English, and the patterns and practices are not western, does not mean there are simple and earnest stories that can be told, and told for the cameras, sans the anchor prattle.

Perhaps it's just the rush of adrenalin that comes with being on the scene of a situation like this. So let's see how Sawyer follows up during her time on the ground, and let's see if her focus and treatment do not devolve into worn words and hyperbole.