North America

Abstract

On 19 September 1985, Mexico City was devastated by an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale that claimed more than 10,000 lives. I had arrived in the capital two days earlier with my family to begin work as Latin America correspondent for The Globe and Mail. Instead of the day of logistics and paperwork I had planned, I set out in search of stories among the rubble-strewn streets of a city I barely knew. There was no shortage of heartrending tales of death and survival, but sending them back to Canada was another thing altogether. The quake had toppled Mexico's main telecommunications tower, knocking out international long-distance telephone service and all but severing communications with the world's largest metropolis.One television station, tiny Channel 13, stayed on the air. Its transmissions were picked up through a satellite link by a radio station in Bogota, Colombia, and information was relayed by news agencies there to the rest of the world. Some US newspapers used ham radio operators for coverage in editions of 19 and 20 September. A few foreign reporters based in Mexico City got stories out the first day. Some headed straight for the airport and caught planes before it closed. At least two managed to locate a working telex machine; others drove some distance outside the city to find functioning telephones. I, like many, did not succeed, and in my subsequent years as a foreign correspondent I never forgot the earthquake's lesson: the best story in the world is useless unless it can be transmitted.1Another major earthquake is likely to strike Mexico City at some point. But fortunately for citizens and disaster relief officials, and incidentally for journalists, the prospect of a major urban area being cut off from communication for more than an hour or two is now close to zero. Conventional long-distance telephone service has been augmented in several ways. Cell phone networks, nonexistent in 1985, are decentralized. Today a journalist carrying the right equipment can send a story and pictures home from almost anywhere on earth via satellite phone-and, as the Bogota link demonstrated, satellite phones bypass earthquakes. Private and public wireless data networks and the internet provide further layers of redundancy. In just two decades, in Mexico as elsewhere, both the form and content of international communication have been transformed.Yet while we marvel at what is possible, we risk losing sight of what may be slipping away. The communications revolution is an operational blessing for traditional news media, but it also poses a serious strategic challenge that many have failed to meet. Fast-paced, systematic coverage of global affairs became easier than ever, yet the number of news organizations maintaining a serious commitment to it dwindled. The production of text and images expanded immensely with the rise of the internet, but relatively little of the additional content was generated using the rigorous observation and verification characteristic of good journalism. Whether it has deepened knowledge and understanding among the peoples of the world is open to serious question.It is probably safe to say that none of the original promoters of the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA) foresaw the impact of the internet or wireless technology. If they had, these marvels would doubtless have been incorporated into the rosy visions of continental harmony and self-awareness evoked in NAFTA's defence. They have indeed helped change the landscape and methods of politics. But it is uncertain whether the people of Canada, Mexico, and the United States are on the whole better informed than they were two decades ago about the continent they live in-that is to say, about themselves and one another. The internet has allowed a broader range of voices to be heard in all three countries, to varying degrees, but serious concerns continue to be raised in each of them about the dominance of a few private media interests. …