American Samoa just got hit very hard by a earthquake and tsunami. Entire villages have been wiped out and hundreds if no thousands of people have been killed or missing.
If you look at many major newspapers, you can hardly tell anything happened. They are reporting on the earthquake in Indonesia but nothing about a U.S.territory . Why? This is Obama's first real test regarding a duster. How is he and his administration responding? Are the Samoans getting all the help they need? Is the necessary rescue equipment being sent? Is there enough food?
All we get are crickets from the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, SF Examiner, etc. Why? Who are they protecting and why?
At the Prairie Café...
5 hours ago
I don't think they're covering anything up -- they simply lack journalistic resources in the Samoan islands, which are sparsely populated and have not been a theater in the global war on terror. Indonesia has been in the news a great deal over the past several years, so all of those papers have probably established contacts there.
ReplyDeleteUSA Today has a very good article (first posted yesterday but updated more recently):
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-09-30-tsunami-hits-samoa-islands_N.htm