Touristes de désastres

Dans Spiked, un article virulent sur les touristes de désastres qui devraient rester chez eux.

Extraits:

« Because parts of the media are always looking on the dark side, they are suckers for rumour mongering. After the New Orleans hurricane, journalists recounted wholesale stories about babies being raped and scores of people murdered - all of which turned out to be untrue. Too often, the media seize the biggest estimates of deaths, rather than the most realistic. The New Orleans death toll was estimated at 10,000; in actual fact it was nearer 1000. We could find that the estimates of the Pakistan earthquake dead are similarly off the mark. »

( ) »Saviours are another kind of Western dispatch, from aid agencies and governments as well as the media. The main concern for saviours is to be seen to care; it's not practical results that count, but the gesture.

Everybody wants to be photographed helping stricken victims. This concern with being seen to care makes for ineffective aid. As the recent World Disasters Report noted, after the south Asian tsunami in December 2004 aid agencies flocked to high-profile camps where their efforts would be caught on prime time TV, but ignored more remote regions. Some areas were oversubscribed, others left without aid. Bickering was rife: agencies refused to share information with rivals, and in one region 20 surgeons competed for one patient. »