Newspaper coverage of emergency response and government responsibility in domestic natural disasters: China-US and within-China comparisons

Abstract

Based on a comparative approach, this article reports content analyses of news articles about a devastating earthquake that occurred in Sichuan province, China, from six Chinese newspapers, indicating that the Chinese media, in reporting the government’s emergency responses, had many similarities with the American media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Further comparisons, however, suggest that the claim of a ‘watchdog’ media culture during disasters, as measured by the frequency of media accounts of the government’s responsibilities, is still relatively premature in China. Moreover, party-controlled and market-oriented media in China had different focuses in their coverage of natural disasters. The market-oriented media played an important role in making the Sichuan earthquake more transparent and the authorities more responsible. Provincial media in China may be less regulated by the central government and are in a good position to cover sensitive stories outside their own province. But they will not have a long-term impact without an overall government policy of open information and media deregulation. By contrast, fewer variations in story focus were observed in the American media, and the overall difference is relatively limited.