Katrina, the TV news, and parallels with China

I've got a couple of things to say about Katrina. I have been watching this with a lot of concern, and have been especially concerned for those people in New Orleans who are too old, sick, or otherwise incapacitated. We have two young kids, a toddler and an infant, and I can't imagine being in a hospital maternity ward with no electricity, or attempting to evacuate my family from a flooded urban area without help. These are the types of situations that a lot of people are being forced into.

But the network television news programs don't show too much of that. Images of looters and desperate people at the Superdome are much sexier. CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith even remarked about the "Great Video" coming out of New Orleans, when he started his broadcast this morning at 7:30 am EST. The footage he was referring to was a bunch of people on the roof of a high-rise building in the flood, waving desperately at the helicopter as it circled, obviously hoping it would land or drop supplies. "Great Video"? The nerve! Obviously, there is a segment of the broadcast news press corps who are more obsessed with showing "great" TV imagery than showing compassion for the people victimized by this disaster.

I have a feeling most people in Asia don't really care too much about this. It's like Americans reacting to a flood in Hunan, or an earthquake in Iran. It's happening somewhere else on the other side of the world, to people we don't know, so why should we care? I have experienced this before. I had just arrived in Taiwan from Boston on Sept. 11, 2001 when the planes hit the Twin Towers. In the days that followed, I encountered a few people that expressed sympathy, but no one who could appreciate the depression or anguish that I and many other Americans felt.

But seeing images of people evacuating New Orleans, I wonder if some of the older people in China and Taiwan aren't reminded of similar evacuations in the 20s, 30s and 40s, as cities emptied in advance of approaching armies. There is something universal about the situation of refugees, even if the causes of their plights are the result of any number of man-made or natural disasters.