On the Media: CNN gets Haiti quake coverage right
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Anderson Cooper clambered to the top of a pile of rubble along a ruined Port-au-Prince street, joining the clutch of men digging fervently inside a dark crevasse. As his cameraman zoomed in on a pair of small, naked feet, the CNN anchor described the struggle to free 13-year-old Bea.
The images swept the cable station’s audience, in an instant, into a moment as intimate as it was epic, as unsettling as it was affirming -- a microcosm of Haiti’s struggle these last three days. Could a handful of amateur rescuers, armed with a single shovel, win one skirmish against the country’s sweeping devastation?
A few moments later, the men dragged the dusty, disheveled girl -- one leg probably broken -- into the sunlight. Some 18 hours after a massive earthquake, Cooper and his CNN colleagues were the first Western broadcast journalists who delivered the most indelible images from the heart of the impact zone. So he had the privilege Wednesday afternoon of interviewing Bea, who told the world that, despite her cries: “I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t scared of anything.”
Continue reading On the Media: CNN does it right in Haiti, but Fox drops the ball
-- James Rainey
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Audio slide shows: Hope and Survival (graphic content)
Desperation in Port-au-Prince (graphic content)
Triage at the airport
Photos: Earthquake hits Haiti
Videos: Haiti earthquake and its aftermath
