By Katherine Baldwin - TrustMedia Consultant, Reporting Crises and Disasters, Miami, January 2011
Natural disasters and crises in Latin America and the Caribbean kept the region’s journalists busy in 2010. A massive earthquake devastated Haiti in February, followed shortly after by an earthquake in Chile, while storms battered the Caribbean islands later in the year. Given the region’s vulnerability to natural disasters, reporters need all the skills they can get.
Seeking to improve those skills, twelve journalists from Guatemala, Paraguay and Caribbean islands including Haiti took time out from the daily news agenda in their home countries to take part in a week-long Thomson Reuters Foundation ‘Reporting Crises and Disasters’ course in Miami, January 17-21, 2011.
Trainers Tim Large, editor of AlertNet, the foundation’s humanitarian website, and Katherine Baldwin, a former Reuters and AlertNet correspondent, led the course, which aimed to improve participants’ reporting, writing and interviewing skills when working in an emergency situation, as well as broaden their awareness around issues of personal safety and legal dangers.
Natural disasters are high-adrenalin situations that require sound thinking, good teamwork and sensitive reporting skills. To simulate such a crisis situation, participants were transported to the fictitious nation of Arkadia, a country plagued by a violent insurgency and beset by natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis and an outbreak of deadly flu.
As the trainers acted out the roles of various disaster survivors, rebel chiefs and government ministers, participants put their reporting, interviewing and writing skills to the test, learning more about speed, accuracy, unbiased reporting, writing with colour, sourcing, sensitive interviewing and the importance of staying level-headed in a crisis. Some of their work was captured on video, allowing participants to learn from their own and others mistakes and successes.
The course was highly interactive, with participants sharing their own experiences of covering natural disasters in the region, with the Haiti quake being a hot topic. As well as several of the participants, trainers Tim and Katherine both spent time in Haiti after the quake and were able to share their experiences from that disaster and others around the globe.
Reuters TV producer Ben Gruber and Latin American pictures editor Rickey Rogers, who both reported on post-quake Haiti, shared their experiences with the participants, while seasoned Reuters correspondent Tom Brown explained how the agency mobilises to cover a massive breaking news story. Participants also heard from a representative of USAID, who outlined the workings of the United States’ government’s humanitarian arm and fielded a barrage of questions.
By the end of the course, the Latin American and Caribbean journalists said they felt better prepared to report on and write about natural disasters and more aware of the need to put their safety first, no matter how important the story. They also went home with a mandate to prepare a grab bag, buy water purification tablets and store their passport, blood type and banking information in a safe place, ready for the next disaster.
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