Its the messenger, not the message.

Tuesday

19Apr2005

Tuesday, April 19, 2005 at 20:46

I believe this post of mine illustrates that one always needs to look at who the message is coming from, before even going into the message. Just one reason why I rather read the Guardian or The Hindu for any kind of international news.

The American media, (newspapers and TV) is either filled with downright right wing hacks or nominally liberal hacks who are convinced of America's righteousness and the fact that this country is morally superior to all others. What happens here is that what goes for the left in popular discourse wouldn't even approach the centre in most places.

Anyone veering from conventional wisdom is either labeled a kook or totally ignored. Take the treatment of Chomsky for example. I am convinced of the fact that more Indians know of Chomsky than Americans.

Well leaving politics, and coming back to something far removed from politics, one just needs to look at two accounts of the recent incident involving the Norwegian cruise.

Lets take a look at one account of this incident as reported by The Marco Island Sun Times

While certainly a traumatic experience for the 2,000 passengers on board, post-cruise remarks by passengers to reporters that they were glad to get off the "Titanic" is an absurd comparison.

Suffice to say that this is a Florida newspaper where the local economy has a stake in the cruise.

According to NCL, at no time was the ship in distress no distress calls were made and the safety and integrity of the ship was not compromised by the rogue wave.

It's a testament to modern ship-building techniques, coupled with rigid maritime safety protocols, that result in ships like Norwegian Dawn being able to withstand such a horrible natural impact with virtually no structural damage and no serious injuries to passengers or crew.

In fact, after repairs in Charleston and a U.S. Coast Guard inspection, Norwegian Dawn was fit to sail and continued its voyage to New York, arriving a day late on April 18. The ship has resumed its schedule, although no word yet from NCL as to how long additional repairs may take to some of the flooded cabins and public areas.

Need I add this is a paper based in Florida, which has a stake in the cruise industry going strong and any kind of negative sentiment is not at all desirable.

Now lets take a look at how the normal papers reported this.

The couple had taken the cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

Passenger Robert Clark of Brooklyn said the big wave did not directly affect the family's cabin, but it woke him up. In a panic, he ran into the hallway and found passengers from flooded cabins, bunched together and wearing life preservers. ''It looked like the Titanic,'' he said.

The 965-foot ocean liner was sailing back to New York from the Bahamas when it was struck by a storm Saturday and the rogue 70-foot wave, which sent furniture sailing through the air and knocked hot tubs overboard.

Htoo-Mosher described the impact of the waves: ''It felt like we kept stopping and hitting something.''

The plight of the children on the ship was most upsetting, she said.

''That was the worst part, seeing the children not understanding what was going on, getting sick,'' said Htoo-Mosher, whose cabin was not affected. ''It was our first cruise and our last.''

I guess that serves to exemplify the nature of the media here and the reason why it is never advisable to take everything (anything?) the say, at face value without going into where they are coming from.

Samuel Selvan |

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