Disaster fatigue: when it comes to natural disasters, our attention spans are short. What happens once the media glare is gone?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: MEDIA

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti on January 12 and much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, was reduced to rubble, thousands of journalists from around the world rushed to the island nation in the Caribbean to report on the disaster. The scale of the devastation was shocking: more than 300,000 people killed, many more injured, and millions made homeless in what was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Practically overnight, celebrity news anchors like Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric, and Brian Williams were broadcasting live from Haiti.

Four months later, most of the reporters are gone, and the story of Haiti's desperate struggle to recover is largely absent from websites, news shows, and newspapers.

Some Haitians say they already feel forgotten. "Is anybody really hearing our call?" Joceline Magloire, a mother of five, still desperate for a tent and food, asked a wire service reporter.

This isn't the first time that a high-profile disaster has faded from view. This August will mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the most destructive storm to have ever hit the United States (see Voices, p. 29). It devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf coast of Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving more than 1,800 people dead.

Five and a half years ago, a massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean slammed into coastal regions of Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, killing 250,000 people in a single day and leaving another 2.5 million homeless. And two years ago, an earthquake in the Sichuan province of China killed 87,000 and left 5 million more homeless.

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All three of these disasters were huge news stories when they happened. Journalists rushed in to provide wall-to-wall coverage, celebrities lent their star power to fund-raising efforts, presidents made speeches promising aid, and contributions poured in. But before long, the stomach-turning images of despair and the heart-wrenching rescue stories faded and so did the news coverage.

"To some degree the media's behavior in these situations reflects the attention span of the public," says Butch Ward of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "The actual process of recovery is not a matter of weeks or months, but years and decades. And, frankly, the general public is not all that interested."

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From the media's perspective, there are several things at work. Sometimes another big story comes along to knock the disaster off the front pages...