After almost a month of Japan making do without nuclear energy, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda may have finally persuaded local communities that it is safe to restart two of the 50 reactors that have been idled in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Nonetheless, 70% of Japanese say their country should reduce its reliance on nuclear energy, in a poll conducted as the country’s last nuclear power stations went offline. This is a much larger number taking this position than in the weeks following last year’s nuclear meltdown at the quake and tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

Increased skepticism about nuclear power is coupled with widespread dissatisfaction with the government’s performance: eight-in-ten say the government has done a poor job dealing with the Fukushima crisis and six-in-ten disapprove of how Tokyo has handled the overall recovery from the earthquake and tsunami.

Read the full report.

What is clear, however, is that most Japanese foresee a rocky economic road ahead. A 52%-majority expect economic conditions to worsen over the next 12 months. In 2010, as the national economy showed signs of recovering from the global recession, only 33% of the Japanese public thought economic conditions would deteriorate in the coming year.

And while hopeful about the long-term future of the country, few Japanese see the current economy as a solid foundation for rebuilding after the March tragedy. Just 10% describe the economy as good, compared with 88% who say the economic situation in the country is bad. These views are virtually identical to last year.

These are the principal findings from a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, conducted by telephone with 700 adults in Japan between April 8 and April 27, 2011. The poll found that while the immediate brunt of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami was concentrated in only a few coastal areas, 41% of Japanese across the country report being affected by the earthquake and tsunami in some way. Roughly a quarter (26%), for instance, say that as a result of the earthquake and tsunami they had trouble obtaining food or clean drinking water, while 18% experienced electrical blackouts. Overall, 13% of Japanese say they lost time at work, while one-in-ten reports physical damage to their homes or property.

The Japanese public applauds how the country’s Self Defense Force has responded to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but is highly critical of the how the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) have handled the multiple disasters. More than nine-in-ten (95%) describe the Self Defense Force’s response positively. By contrast, only about 20% say the national government or Prime Minister Naoto Kan have responded well to the crisis. The harshest criticism is reserved for TEPCO, with just 10% saying the power company has done a good job responding to the earthquake and tsunami. A modest majority (54%) give the media favorable marks.

The poll finds that while the Japanese are broadly unhappy with their own government’s handling of the March 11 catastrophe, there is considerable praise for the United States in assisting Japan with the impact of the earthquake and tsunami.

A majority say the U.S. has done a great deal to help with relief efforts in Japan. Far fewer say the United Nations, European Union or China have done a great deal to assist Japan with the aftermath of the disaster. Thanks in part to American relief efforts, favorable opinion of the U.S. is at its highest point in nearly a decade, climbing to 85% positive this spring. The image of the United Nations has also improved in conjunction with earthquake assistance, and China’s image has seen a modest uptick.

One of the biggest questions raised by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is nuclear safety. About six-in-ten (59%) in Japan are worried that they or someone in their family may have been exposed to radiation from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. About seven-in-ten (69%) say they disapprove of how the national government has handled the situation at the crippled nuclear facility. Not surprisingly, few Japanese want their country to increase its use of nuclear power. However, opinion is about evenly split as to whether Japan should maintain (46%) or reduce (44%) its current level of reliance on nuclear energy.

Continue reading the full report and view the survey methodology at pewglobal.org.

The national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Aug. 19-22 among 1,003 adults, finds that midway through the 2010 hurricane season, there is broad skepticism about the nation’s preparedness to deal with hurricanes and other natural disasters. Majorities of most political and demographic groups — including 57% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans — say the nation is not better prepared for such disasters than it was when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

College graduates are an exception; those with college degrees are about equally likely to say the country is better prepared (46%) as to say it is not better prepared (49%).

By contrast, just 35% of those who have not graduated from college say the country is better prepared, while 61% say it is not.

Progress since Katrina

Nearly seven-in-ten say a lot (14%) or some (55%) progress has been made over the past five years rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast following the damage from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

This is significantly more than said progress had been made in December 2006. Nearly a quarter of Americans say not much (23%) or no (2%) progress has been made.

Across groups, substantial majorities say that a lot or some progress has been made rebuilding following the disaster.

However, Democrats are somewhat less positive in their evaluations of progress compared to Republicans and independents; 63% of Democrats say a lot or some progress has been made, while 75% of Republicans and 74% of independents say this.

College graduates are somewhat more likely than those without college degrees to say progress has been made (75% vs. 67%).

Those living in the South — which includes the Gulf Coast-are more likely than others to say progress has been made.

Three-quarters of Southerners (75%) say at least some progress has been made, compared with two-thirds (66%) of those in other regions.

And Southerners are about twice as likely as others to say there has been a lot of progress rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (21% vs. 11%).

View the topline and survey methodology at people-press.org.

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which began with the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20 and continued to gush for another three months, posed a daunting set of challenges for the news media.

Unlike most catastrophes, which tend to break quickly and subside almost as fast, the spill was a slow-motion disaster that demanded constant vigilance and sustained reporting.

The story was also complex, dominated by three continuing and sometimes competing story lines from three different locales — the role of the London-based oil company, the efforts of the Obama administration and the events in the Gulf region — that taxed reportorial resources and journalistic attention spans.

Coverage of the disaster also required a significant amount of technical and scientific expertise. News consumers were introduced to a series of new terms and concepts as the media tried to explain the efforts to contain the spill and formulate reliable estimates of the extent of the environmental and economic damage.

The news media, in short, found themselves with a complicated, technical and long-running disaster saga that did not break down along predictable political and ideological lines. And they were reporting to an American public that displayed a ravenous appetite for the spill story.

How did the press handle the challenge?

A new study of media coverage of the oil spill disaster by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, given the tough task they faced, the media as a whole seemed to rise to the occasion.

News organizations displayed real staying power as events continued to unfold. They spent considerable time reporting from the Gulf and humanizing the crisis. They largely avoided the temptation to turn the disaster into a full-blown political-finger-pointing story. And in many cases they used their websites’ interactive features to illuminate aspects of the story that would have been harder to digest in print or broadcast formats.

In short, a news industry coping with depleted staffing, decreasing revenues and shrinking ambition was tested by the oil spill and seemed to pass.

To evaluate that coverage, PEJ studied approximately 2,866 stories about the oil spill produced from April 20 to July 28 — from the day that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded to the day after BP CEO Tony Hayward’s departure was announced.

The study finds eight essential points about how the media covered the disaster:

• The oil spill was by far the dominant story in the mainstream news media in the 100-day period after the explosion, accounting for 22% of the newshole — almost double the next biggest story. In the 14 full weeks included in this study, the disaster finished among the top three weekly stories 14 times. And it registered as the No. 1 story in nine of those weeks.
• The activities in the Gulf — the cleanup and containment efforts as well as the impact of the disaster — represented the leading storyline of the disaster, accounting for 47% of the overall coverage. Next came attention to the role of BP (27% of the coverage). The third-biggest storyline was Washington based — the response and actions of the Obama administration (17%).
• The Obama White House generated decidedly mixed media coverage for its role in the spill saga, but questions about its role diminished over time — in part thanks to a Republican misfire. And the administration fared considerably better than BP and its CEO Tony Hayward, who on balance were portrayed as the villains of the story.
• BP emerged as the antagonist in the media narrative about the oil spill, particularly its CEO Tony Hayward. But outside of two Louisiana politicians playing smaller roles, none of the top newsmakers were portrayed as protagonists in the saga.
• The Gulf saga was first and foremost a television story. It generated the most coverage in cable news (31% of the airtime studied), with CNN devoting considerably more attention (42% of its airtime) than cable rivals MSNBC and Fox News. The spill also accounted for 29% of the coverage on network news as the three big commercial broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — spent virtually the same amount of time on the story.
• The spill story generated considerably less attention in social media, on blogs, Twitter and YouTube. Among blogs, for example, it made the roster of top stories five times in 14 weeks. But during those weeks one theme resonated — skepticism toward almost all the principals in the story.
• While some did better than others, many traditional media outlets made effective use of interactive features on their websites to track key aspects of the disaster. The PBS NewsHour’s Oil Leak Widget, for example, monitored the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf. The New York Times website offered a video animation that helped explain how a last ditch effort to prevent the spill failed.
• If anything, public interest in the Gulf saga may have even exceeded the level of mainstream media coverage. According to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, often between 50% and 60% of Americans said they were following the story “very closely” during these 100 days. That surpassed the level of public interest during the most critical moments of the health care reform debate.

Continue reading the full report — and test your knowledge of how the media covered the disaster in the Gulf — at journalism.org.

A majority of Americans see the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as a major environmental disaster, but nearly as many voice optimism that efforts to control the spill will succeed.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted May 6-9 among 994 adults, finds that the public is critical of the response to the crisis by the federal government and British Petroleum, the company that operated the oil rig that exploded on April 20 and is now struggling to stop the underwater oil release.

Evaluations of the initial government response are similar to public views of federal efforts immediately after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. Currently, 54% say the response by the federal government has been only fair or poor, which is comparable to the government’s initial rating for handling Hurricane Katrina in September 2005 (58% only fair/poor). Nonetheless, British Petroleum gets even more negative ratings for its handling of the oil leak (63% only fair/poor).

The criticism extends to President Obama, with just 38% saying they approve of his handling of the oil leak and 36% saying they disapprove. About a quarter (26%) offer no opinion. Still, opinion about Obama’s performance is not as negative as opinion about former President George W. Bush’s response to the flooding caused by Katrina. That September, 52% disapproved of Bush’s response to Katrina and 67% said he could have done more. Today, 47% say Obama could have done more to get the government’s response to the oil leak going quickly.

The spill also appears to have taken a toll on support for offshore drilling near the United States. Currently, 54% say they favor allowing more offshore drilling for oil and gas in U.S. waters, which is down from 63% in early February and 68% in April 2009. Virtually all of the decline in support for offshore drilling has occurred among Democrats and independents as Republicans remain as supportive as they were before the spill.

There also is slightly less support for increasing federal funding for research on wind, solar and hydrogen technology than there was in February (73% today, 78% then). About two-thirds (65%) favor spending more on subway, rail and transit systems, compared with 70% in February. About half (45%) favor promoting the increased use of nuclear power, down slightly from 52% earlier this year.

In general, the public is divided over whether oil spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico are unavoidable if the United States is going to get an adequate supply of energy: 41% say such spills are unavoidable while 45% disagree.

The public had a much different reaction in April 1989, shortly after the huge oil spill caused by the crash of the Exxon Valdez tanker ship in Alaska. At that time, 74% said such spills were unavoidable while just 18% said they were not. The percentage saying such spills are unavoidable has declined substantially across partisan groups, education levels and regions.

Major Disaster Unfolding in the Gulf

More than half (55%) of the public say the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is a major environmental disaster; another 37% see it as a serious problem — but not a disaster. Just 4% say it is not too serious.

At the same time, 51% say efforts to control the spill and keep it from spreading further will be successful. About three-in-ten (29%) say those efforts will not succeed.

Independents (60%) and Democrats (55%) are more likely to say they see the spill as a major disaster than Republicans (46%). Democrats also express less certainty that the efforts to control the spill will succeed: 57% of Republicans say they think these efforts will be successful, compared with 47% of Democrats. More than half of independents (52%) agree.

Those following news about the growing oil slick very closely also are more likely to see the oil leak in the gulf as a major disaster. Among those who say they are following this news very closely, 67% characterize it as a major environmental disaster. Among those following it less closely, just 47% say they see the spill that way.

Rating the President’s Performance

Obama’s overall approval rating is unchanged from last month; 47% say they approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, while 42% disapprove. But a smaller percentage (38%) say they approve of his handling of the oil leak in the Gulf, while 36% disapprove. About a quarter say they do not know (26%), more than double the 11% that say they do not know when asked about the president’s overall performance.

Not surprisingly, partisans offer decidedly different takes on Obama’s response to the worsening oil slick now threatening much of the Gulf Coast. More than half of Democrats say they approve of how Obama is handling the oil leak (53%), while 23% disapprove. Opinions among Republicans are the reverse: 18% approve of the job Obama is doing while 54% disapprove. Independents mirror the nation as a whole: 37% of independents approve and 38% disapprove of Obama’s performance on this.

In September 2005, shortly after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, about half of the public (52%) disapproved of Bush’s response to the disaster then unfolding in New Orleans and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast; 38% approved of his performance. At that time, the partisan differences were also stark: two thirds of Republicans (67%) approved of his job performance, compared with 20% of Democrats and 38% of independents.

The public also was highly critical of how Bush’s father, President George H. W. Bush, handled the response to Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. More than half (52%) disapproved of the president’s handling of the crisis that April. About a quarter (24%) said they approved of the older Bush’s performance, while 24% answered that they did not know.

By another measure, close to half the public (47%) says Obama could have done more in his initial response to the oil spill in the Gulf. Just more than a third (36%) say he did all he could. Again, partisan views differ sharply. Six-in-ten Republicans (60%) say Obama could have done more, compared with 53% of independents and 32% of Democrats.

In 2005, a greater percentage of the public (67%) said that George W. Bush could have done more to get relief efforts going quickly following the devastation caused by Katrina. Fewer than three-in-ten (28%) said Bush did all he could do. At that time, the partisan differences were also sharp: More than eight-in-ten Democrats (84%) said Bush could have done more, compared with 71% of independents and 40% of Republicans.

Less Support for Offshore Drilling among Democrats and Independents

The spill also seems to have taken a toll on support for offshore drilling near the United States. Though more than half (54%) say they approve of offshore drilling, that is down from 63% in February and 68% in April 2009.

But more Americans still say they favor allowing increased drilling in U.S. waters than favor promoting the use of nuclear power (45%). The public expresses slightly lower levels of support than in February for each of the four approaches to boosting the energy supply included in the survey. Currently, 73% favor more funding for alternative energy sources, while 65% favor more spending on mass transit.

Opinions among Republicans are unchanged from February (76% approve), but the percentage of Democrats and independents that say they favor off shore drilling has dropped 13 points each to 41% among Democrats and 53% among independents.

Public Critical of Both Government and British Petroleum

Americans are more critical of British Petroleum than the federal government when assessing the response of both to the crisis in the gulf. More than half of the public (54%) rate the response of the government as only fair or poor, while 33% rate it as good or excellent. Republicans are much more likely to be highly critical than Democrats or independents.

Just 16% of Republicans rate the government response positively, while 71% say it has been only fair or poor. Independent views also tilt negative: 52% say the response has been only fair or poor, while 37% say it has been excellent or good. Democrats are more divided: 42% rate the response as excellent or good, while 46% rate it as only fair or poor.

More than six-in-ten (63%), meanwhile, rate BP’s performance as only fair or poor, while 24% rate it as good or excellent. Similar majorities of independents (67%), Democrats (65%) and Republicans (59%) rate the company’s response as only fair or poor. Three-in-ten Republicans (31%) rate the response as excellent or good, compared to 19% of Democrats and 24% of independents.

p>View the topline and survey methodology at people-press.org.

A trio of natural disasters in the Pacific Ocean made major news the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, 2009. On Sept. 29, a massive tsunami struck the Samoa Islands and reportedly killed more than 175 people, with that story filling 4.2% of the newshole. One day later, an earthquake off the coast of Indonesia killed an estimated 1,100 people, accounting for 4.1% of the week’s coverage. Earlier in the week, a typhoon in the Philippines (0.9% of the newshole) led to the country’s worst flooding in more than 40 years, with more than 450 people reportedly lost.

Combined, the three tragedies accounted for 9.2% of the newshole from Sept. 28-Oct. 4 — making it the second-biggest week of natural disaster coverage in 2009. These stories generated more coverage (15.4% of the airtime studied) on the network newscasts than in any other media sector, a finding that confirms the networks’ general tendency, as measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index, to devote significant coverage to natural disasters.

The year’s single biggest week of natural disaster coverage was Aug. 31-Sept. 6. Coverage of wildfires burning near Los Angeles, which destroyed hundreds of homes and killed two firefighters, filled 9.6% of the newshole that week. Combined with coverage of Hurricane Jimena (1.0%), which struck Mexico but caused little damage, natural disasters filled 10.6% of the newshole that week.

The No. 3 week was April 6-12, when an earthquake in Italy (5.8%) left 50,000 homeless and wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma (0.9%) destroyed dozens of homes and killed three people. Those two events combined to fill 6.7% of the newshole. The fourth-biggest week was May 4-10, when wildfires that scorched parts of Santa Barbara, Calif., (2.9%) and storms across the southern states that spawned at least 30 tornados (1.2%) combined to account for 4.1%. The No. 5 week was Aug. 17-23, when Hurricane Bill in the Atlantic (3.0%), Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan (0.2%), and the early phase of the L.A. fires (0.3%) filled 3.5%. Next came the week of Feb. 9-15 when wildfires across Australia (2.3%) and an out-of-season tornado in Oklahoma (1.2%) registered at 3.5%.

Still, these disasters pale in comparison to what was, by far, the biggest natural disaster story since PEJ began tracking media coverage in January 2007. The Oct. 21-26, 2007 wildfires in Southern California that destroyed an estimated 1,500 homes and claimed more than a dozen lives filled 37.5% of the overall newshole that week. Those fires were the second biggest story of 2007, trailing only the massacre that left 33 dead on the Virginia Tech campus, which filled 50.9% of the newshole from April 15-20, 2007.

Go to journalism.org to design your own chart from these or other stories in the news.

On Tuesday, August 5, a strong aftershock struck Sichuan Province, the site of a devastating earthquake in May. The quake struck the region only a few hours after the Olympic torch relay passed through the province, one of the last stops before the opening ceremonies in Beijing. The weekend prior to this latest aftershock, Deborah Fallows visited the region to report on the recovery and the people still dealing with the original earthquake’s devastation. What follows is her reporting from that weekend.

Media focus in China turned away weeks ago from the May 12 earthquake to the Beijing Olympics, which begin in just a few days. With the emergency in Sichuan Province passed, reporters and cameras have left the earthquake zone, ranks of volunteers have thinned, and even the army has largely gone away. In mid-July, Chinese television showed grateful Sichuan farmers and peasants pressing baskets of decorated, hard-boiled eggs into the hands of soldiers, as their convoys headed home.

My husband and I fled the pre-Olympic crowds descending on Beijing for a week in the Sichuan countryside to see for ourselves what the news was no longer telling us: how are the earthquake survivors doing, what does the resettlement look like, and how does it feel.

After two years of living and traveling in China, we have become accustomed to unusual situations. But we were unprepared to witness the massive scale of this disaster and to imagine the immense task ahead for the people of Sichuan, already poor, to recreate their lives. In every direction, as far as we could see, walls of once-lush mountainsides had simply fallen away, leaving barren, brown basins or gaping, raw topography. Roads heaved up, bridges fell into rivers, big buildings balanced in crazy impossible angles, dwellings became rubble. What is left of life seems largely askew, but here are a few things I saw that surprised me at this stage:

Organization out of calamity.

As we drove out of the basin of Chengdu city and into the mountains, the first signs of earthquake were the parade of red and white banners strung across the highways. They were morale-boosting and even celebratory. The characters announced that the people of Sichuan thanked the people of various cities, or counties, or provinces around China for their help and support. Then came the signs of destruction.

At first we saw only an occasional house or tall building, often with cracks in the pattern of a giant X tearing out from the corners of each window frame. But the number of damaged buildings began to multiply, until an intact one became the exception. Tents appeared, either bright sky-blue or army green, or in camouflage patterns. Then row upon row of portable housing trailers, made of white Styrofoam and covered with a thin metal skin.

As we drove higher into the mountains, the housing trailers with 4 or 5 side-by-side rooms, showed signs of becoming villages: laundry lines, some playground toys, mops and brooms leaning against the doors, an occasional bicycle, and among the most resourceful, a few tables set up to sell drinks and soap. The public toilet I used in one such camp was familiar to China in every respect: a squatter, no cubicle doors, dim light, bad smell, evidence of occasional cleaning, unworking flush. The rumor is that people will be in these housing camps for three years.

There were many inventive shacks, devised by people who refused to let go of their grip on the land to move to the portable housing. These were made from anything left standing. Sometimes they were fashioned around the single standing wall of a house, or a lone upright cupboard, or a wooden frame covered by a woven floormat. Even the most makeshift dwellings often had colorful doors. Many doors seemed to survive intact and some shacks I saw had entire walls made from a row of doors hinged together side by side.

Everywhere along the roadside were neatly categorized bundles of debris: stacks of planks and boards; piles of rusty rebar; neat heaps of tangled metal wires; piles of mendable furniture; mountains of red bricks; scores of intact frames, windows mostly. Much of the human grief was stripped away, as all these remnants of personal lives became so much recycling or resale material.

Communicating with the outside world.

Chinese TV has filled the vacuum left by the end of riveting earthquake news with repetitive docu-dramas and plaintive reenactments, gala concerts, fund-raisers, and readings of personal stories to weeping studio audiences. All these productions are many steps removed from the plodding, dirty, smelly, real chores of putting lives together again in the villages. The world isn’t watching any more.

But devastated Sichuan is still looking out at the rest of China. The first order of recovery was to resurrect television and mobile phone networks, rural China’s sources for information and communication. We saw satellite dishes everywhere, wired into tents and shacks; we saw a man on a bike, balancing a new-found TV in his basket. We saw many people chatting on mobile phones, from teen-age girls in jeans to peasants in traditional Tibetan garb. Over 500 million Chinese use mobile phones, and China Mobile had their towers up and running quickly after the earthquake.

We saw no evidence of newspapers and no ad hoc internet cafes. The quasi official surveyors in China report that about 7% of rural Chinese use the internet.¹ Behind this statistic are mostly young people seeking entertainment in internet cafes. Last week, I asked one 18-year-old in Baoshan village about the internet in his town. He said that the town’s primary company, which is owned collectively by the village residents, got an ADSL line up and running just the day before, but that was all the connectivity they could expect for a while.

Detritus.

Much of the debris with no value is simply left where it landed. I saw two examples that were especially poignant. One was in a parking lot in a village just one ridge away from the epicenter in Wenchuan County. The road literally ended here now, where a resort had once flourished. The main building was still standing, but car-sized boulders had crashed down the mountainside and into its walls. Purple curtains hung out of the broken windows, faded and torn now by the rains since May. A peaked roof over the main entrance had collapsed. The statue of a dragon rested out front, virtually untouched. The resort parking lot, the local people told us, had been used as a temporary morgue for the hundred or so victims from the immediate area. The lot was cleaned out now, except for some small cast-off items including rubber gloves and face masks. One small pile had mostly burned, but a half-charred wooden chair, a remnant of a gas mask, and a pair of sneakers remained. Shreds of blue plastic were scattered around, along with some bits of blankets and fabric. I guessed that the workers had run out of stamina to finish the job, and these leftovers would be there for a long time.

Our last stop was a village outside Dujiangyan, where a 2,000-year-old irrigation system still functions to siphon water out to Sichuan Province. In the village of Juyuan was a school where about 900 children died. There has been much chatter in the press, on the internet, and on the streets about the quality of school buildings like this one in Juyuan, where concrete floor slabs simply collapsed into a stack like pancakes.

No school remains here now, barely even rubble. Everything has been cleared away, except bits of stones and the playing field with its fallen basketball post and muddy puddles. There is no makeshift memorial. There are no grieving parents to be seen. A few small groups of people were combing through the remains, but there isn’t much left for them to find. There were others, like us, who came by in cars to look through the wire fence. The only thing left to look at are the other buildings that ring the former school grounds; all those buildings are still standing, damaged and vacant, but upright and intact.

Notes

¹ www.cnnic.net.cn/en/index/

I have continued to watch Chinese TV and monitor the internet since the earthquake happened, one week ago. Chinese TV has regained its footing and is back to being the voice of the government. The internet has become a more wild-west version of itself, with a virtual explosion of content that runs the gamut from informative to creative, cynical, touching, responsible, irresponsible, angry, maudlin…

Day 5: On Chinese TV, footage of planeloads of aid pouring in from around China and the world began to replace footage of new rescues, which were becoming scarce. We heard, however, that 63 more people had been found alive, and workers and officials alike declared they would continue searching “as long as there was even one percent of hope.” The TV strayed from message, touching the hot button issue of Tibet, with video of monks praying for earthquake victims. They also showed aid and relief workers arriving from Taiwan, and aired a long, rather puzzling and awkward interview about the motives and methods behind the Taiwanese rescue efforts.

Meanwhile, the voices on the internet took on many tones: tearful, desperate, cynical, doubting, original, catty, and one quite rare in China: religious. John Kennedy, who translates and reports on Chinese blogs for Globalvoicesonline.org, a new media project which translates and curates blogs from around the world, wrote: “‘Pray for the disaster victims, god bless China’ has been the main motif on many main Chinese blogging websites.” I also saw a report about a letter that a schoolgirl wrote in gratitude to “Grandfather Wen [Wen Jiabao, China's premier]” and pushback comments suggesting the letter was obviously written by an adult.

There was argument about whether or not a young mother, who bore the brunt of a collapsed building, sacrificing herself to huddle protectively over her rescued infant had, or had not, typed a message onto the cell phone found alongside her, which said something like, “Dear baby, if you survive, please remember that I love you forever…” Lists after list of places to make contributions appeared.

Day 6: Three kinds of TV programming took over: a mishmash of live reporting from the disaster areas of the now wholly exhausted, depleted villagers, who were either waiting, grieving, or starting to set up camp in tents. As well, there were broadcasts of made-for-TV events from Beijing, with somberly-dressed, highly-cued studio audiences who were singing and donating money. And there were retrospective collages of the previous days’ footage. One showed an entire village buried like Pompeii was, with just one broken wooden-framed roof showing above the fields of mud.

Again, the internet was revealing its quirky side: A firefighter scheduled to be married in Shenyang, northeast of Beijing, found himself in Sichuan instead. He and his bride decided to hold the ceremony anyway – over the internet. The wedding happened via video link-up. The groom reportedly said, “I am fine. I will do my best, I promise. I love you.” They were officially married before the internet connection went down after 18 minutes. On a less joyous side, the government issued an order to suspend online game-playing and entertainment during the upcoming three days of mourning.

Day 7: Chinese TV programming was now fully recovered from the shock of the earthquake, and it was again functioning in lockstep. Early in the morning, all the state-run CCTV channels were broadcasting the same prepared programs simultaneously. Even in the afternoon, most of them continued in synchrony. We saw flags raised, then lowered to half staff; heard announcements for the 3 minutes of nationwide silence planned for exactly one week after the earthquake occurred, at 2:28 p.m. We heard of a rescue of two elderly women, and as if there hadn’t been enough horror, we learned that new landslides had buried hundreds of relief workers.

On the internet, a major blog service and new media provider, Neatease.com, which had been collecting online donations, said it was severing ties with the China Red Cross for their failing to specify how much money had been collected. The China Daily reported that public security authorities were investigating 40 cases of people “spreading rumors” online about the earthquake. Two people were detained.

At 2:28 pm, I went outside our apartment building, alongside a big street and one of the major intersections of Beijing. Hundreds and hundreds of people left their offices, restaurants, and apartments to stand together to show respect with three minutes of silence. Cars stopped, and people got out to stand beside them or to look out over the bridges they were crossing. Jackhammers ceased pounding; cranes stopped moving. People were checking mobile phones for the time. Then, on cue, horns from every single car began to sound. It was not honking, but one long, continuous wail. This apparently happened all across China. Then after three minutes, cars started up again, and jackhammers and bus horns, too. Young women wiped their eyes with the backs of their hands. I thought that, for a few moments, the country had achieved its goal to be a “harmonious society,” just as the Party has been trying to build–but at what a terrible cost.

Read the account of the first five days of news coverage

Beijing – On Monday, May 12, at 2:28 pm, I was working at my desk on the 21st floor of the apartment building where we live in Beijing. Like many other people at that moment, I suddenly felt dizzy and lightheaded. I gripped the edge of my desk, wondering if I might faint. Then the curtain pulls began to sway, and the walls began to creak. After years of living through earthquakes in Japan, I recognized the signs. After a minute or so it was over.

Within about 15 minutes, my search for “earthquake China” on Google was producing results. Reuters showed up first, reporting a website announcement from the U.S. Geological Survey that there had been an earthquake in Sichuan Province, about 1000 miles southwest of Beijing. One of China’s most popular English blogs, Danwei.org, weighed in at 2:47 pm, with a short report and including a link to Twitter, which was beginning to come alive with comments and messages from all over China. There was nothing on the TV, and there wouldn’t be for about four more hours.

I have been tracking the earthquake story on TV and on the internet for more than four days now, and here are some of the things I saw:

Day One: Chinese TV has little more than a few fact-based reports about the earthquake. Mostly, it’s business as usual. The internet is exploding with news and information and also with reporting and personal comments in the hyperactive Chinese blogosphere, Twitter, and all the instant messaging services in China.

Day Two: The TV has a few reporters on the streets doing spot reporting and interviews from as far into the earthquake areas as they can reach, which is not very far. There is some footage of organized response teams, the arrival of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Sichuan, and scenes of devastation. The internet is getting organized, with collections of amateur videos, photography, and trading information on whereabouts of people in the earthquake area who can be useful to each other.

Day Three: TV pieces become more heavily produced, and they begin to include solemn background music, as well as announcements posted in black and white coloring. Talk shows emerge with experts and officials. There are personal interviews with survivors, and newscasters occasionally struggle to keep composure. The internet gets out information on donations as well as quacky theories on whether animal behavior can predict earthquakes. Everyone agrees that the government is moving forward with “unprecedented transparency” in media coverage.

Day Four: TV pieces take on distinct, strong tones of nationalistic pride. Flanks of soldiers in army fatigues run in formation through rubbled streets, clamber over landslides, portage boats, jump out of helicopters. Medical staff in white uniforms; rescue squadrons in florescent orange; parades of ambulances. Legions more of soldiers carry the injured piggy-back style or swaddle babies in their arms. There is footage of cranes, steam shovels, and people digging by hand through impossible mountains of debris. Also, there is seemingly no censorship on Chinese TV; the faces in all these productions tell everything. The soldiers are young; the grief is raw; the eyes are desperate. Chinese TV viewers are used to melodrama, but it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the scale and the personal toll. In one scene, a camera peers into a small crevice left between two collapsed floors of a building. You see the eyes and face of a young teen-age girl trapped there. You see she is waving her hand at the rescuers, and she calls out “I’m happy. I’m happy. Tell my mother not to worry!” Online, the internet reports dig deeper into seismology; questions of building standards; comparative (non)reporting of past earthquakes; special sites for personal messages; pleas for news of missing people; more information about donations and charities.

This story will continue for a long, long time.

Read more about the Internet and censorship in China.