Date: June 10, 2008
Source: China Daily News

When Chongqing-based magazine New Travel Weekly featured the May 12 earthquake, it maintained its popular themes of glamour and sex.

Scantily clad models draped themselves over the rubble, bloodied bandages as accessories to their bikinis, tight t-shirts and mini-shorts, under the headline “Reborn from the Ruins”.

The public reaction to this display of questionable taste and insensitivity was immediate.

The outcry at the newsstands quickly reached the city government, which suspended the magazine for “rectification”, and the magazine president and chief editor lost their jobs for “unethical reporting”.

It was an extreme case of poor journalistic judgment, but New Travel Weekly was among the few media whose insensitive reporting during their coverage of the quake raised concerns.

The Chinese media has reacted to the disaster with unprecedented openness and determination to bring the full extent of the catastrophe to the public.

“The earthquake has been a test for reporters,” Yu Guoming, deputy dean of the School of Journalism at Renmin University, said.

“The quake has proved reporters are responsible, compassionate and they put their own safety aside to bring reports to their audiences.”

However, Yu said “just as a test shows one’s weakness, the earthquake also revealed weak journalistic ethics, the inexperience and naivety of some reporters when faced with an event of such magnitude.”

Jiang Min, a policewoman in the city of Pengzhou near the epicenter of Wenchuan, who lost 10 relatives, including her 2-year-old daughter and her parents, at first became a symbol of fortitude in the face of overwhelming tragedy – then later became the face of media exploitation.

Despite her loss, Jiang Min continued relief work with other police and soldiers.

But in one television report, the reporter pressed her to answer the question, “Why are you still here?” A drawn-looking Jiang was pounded with further questions, such as, “Do you think of your own parents and daughter when you see the rescued old people and the kids?”

“I was furious when I saw the report on TV,” Ma Jianan, who works at an advertising company in Beijing, said.

“The reporter was so insensitive to Jiang’s feelings and had little professional ethics.”

Later, Jiang was interviewed several more times by television programs.

Television and radio stations, newspapers and magazines sent hundreds of reporters to Sichuan within hours of the earthquake. They filed stories from the front lines of the rescue and relief effort in Sichuan. Television stations broadcast live news programs of rescue work and newspaper and magazines published special copies reporting on the quake.

But audiences have also been critical of journalists who did not measure up to their expectations, like the CCTV reporter who filed a report on the third day after the quake from a hotel room in Chengdu, rather than from Dujiangyan.

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