The Media and Disasters: Pan Am 103 [Hardcover]

Joan Deppa (Author), Maria Russell (Author), Dona Hayes (Author), Elizabeth Flocke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1994

The lucidly written, sobering account of how the press fared in covering the tragedy and how news organizations might improve on their disasters coverage in the future.
--Quill

On a bitter December night in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, the Maid of the Seas, flying from Frankfurt to New York, exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Among the victims were citizens from over 21 countries, 11 villagers, and 35 Syracuse University students returning home from studying abroad. The bombing set in motion a drama of epic proportions, played out on television screens and newspaper pages around the world.
Scenes from the tragedy etched themselves on the public consciousness: a screaming mother at Kennedy Airport, collapsing upon learning of the fate of her child; flames engulfing the modest homes of Lockerbie; weeping Syracuse University students in mourning at a basketball game; the mangled cockpit of the jumbo jet resting in an idyllic Scottish meadow.
Behind these scenes, another drama unfolded: Hundreds of journalists swarmed to the traumatized village. In New York, scores of reporters, photographers, and cameramen rushed to the airport to record the reactions of bereaved family members. All over the country, people watched the names of the dead scrolling across their televisions, many praying for those presumed to be on board. The disaster also engulfed institutions, many unprepared to mediate between the public's need for informations and the need for privacy by those most affected.
In engrossing detail, THE MEDIA AND DISASTERS chronicles the story behind the headlines, illustrating how the media and the people it encounter in pursuit of the news experienced and affected the journalistic process. The book addresses, in narrative fashion, the universal themes common to most tragedies, emphasizing the increasingly powerful role of the media and its agents in representing such catastrophes to the world.
Joan Deppa and her coauthors, all of whom witnessed the effects of this media coverage at Syracuse University, focus on reactions to the disaster--individual and collective. Journalists, police, government officials, rescue workers, and witnesses all had to make important ethical decisions immediately, under conditions of great stress:

--how should families of the victims be informed?
--What could journalists do to get the story without adding to the distress of grieving families and friends?
--should the terrible human carnage of such a disaster be conveyed--in words, in photographs, on television?

One particularly telling debate on these issues pits editors of the New York Daily Newsagainst those of Newsday.
The destruction of Flight 103 forever altered the media landscape. It marked a watershed moment in media history, a turning point in the global coverage of disasters. Just as the Gulf War was piped directly into living rooms two years later, disasters were now live events. THE MEDIA AND DISASTERS is must reading for anyone interested in journalism, communications, the evolution of the media, and institutional responses to disaster.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The authors are all professors in the Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University.

JOAN DEPPA teaches in the Newspaper Department and has more than 16 years experience as a newspaper and wire service journalist, including 7 years in Europe with UPI.

MARIA RUSSELL, who teaches Public Relations worked for 16 years as a public relations counselor, and freq

MARIA RUSSELL, who teaches Public Relations worked for 16 years as a public relations counselor, and frequently assists local, state, and national organizations in media relations training. A former television news reporter and weekend anchor for WIXT-TV, Syracuse,

DONA HAYES is chair of the Broadcast Journalism Department.

ELIZABETH LYNNE FLOCKE, a former newspaper reporter and editor, teaches in the Newspaper Department.

DONA HAYES is chair of the Broadcast Journalism Department.

ELIZABETH LYNNE FLOCKE, a former newspaper reporter and editor, teaches in the Newspaper Department.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press; First Edition edition (January 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814718574
• ISBN-13: 978-0814718575
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #614,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Needs a second look, May 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Media and Disasters: Pan Am 103 (Hardcover)

This book is very important for everyone to read, regardless of whether or not you are in the media. I have read the other reviews of Joan Deppa's book, and let me say that when I first opened it up, that's what I thought. But, I also have a different perspective: having known people who studied abroad when I was in college, it was important to learn that no matter how good something seems, your life can change in seconds by people you have never known. There were students on PAN AM 103 who never made it home for Christmas that year. They never made it home for the New Year, and that is only part of the story.

It may be somewhat romanticized for some. For others, it may be nothing more than a brief look at how the media has changed. For others, it gives insight as to how media coverage changed, and when the invasion of our personal lives and "live" television reports started. As well, as when that brief live shot delay came into effect.

If anything, this book may gloss over a few areas, but please do not blame Deppa. Many people have glossed over areas of tragedies, and she is no different. If you think this book just glosses, and romanticizes the bombing, the loss, the grief and the media coverage, then maybe you should wipe the sleep out of your eyes, take a deep breath and re-read the book. It covers a lot more than you think, and a lot of it only sinks in after a second or a third reading.

It is especially important for anyone who reads the book to realize that people in the media make mistakes - Mistakes like running a list of victims before notifying families, asking the useless question of "How does it feel to have lost your child?" to a grieving parent. People in the media are human. They care, some of them more deeply than others, but like everyone else, they have a job to do. Deppa is no different. In this instance, her job was to tell one story of the events that happened around December 21, 1988.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Obfuscating on Pan Am 103 and the Media, January 25, 1998

By 

from the US "orwellian" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Media and Disasters: Pan Am 103 (Hardcover)

There are only two types of story about Pan Am 103 in the US. One is the "cops and robbers" whodunit treatment, the other the "human interest" story. The former have been strictly limited to a State Department version, reflecting shifting politics and occasional awkward revelations that have appeared in European media and could not be kept away from the American audience indefinitely. Recently even significant items - like the Guardian article (7/14/97,p15) about an high-level Iranian defector who implicates the Iranian government - currently not a popular view in the American establishment - are simply not reported on in the US. (For anyone interested a Norwegian security consultant, Stein Erik Sandvold, posted a remarkably unbiased webpage which contains three different published Lockerbie stories - the "official US State Department" version and two from Europe). The other type of Lockerbie story is the "let's get the reaction of a sobbing relative" school of journalism. That is 90% of what has appeared in the US media - and basically it is the substance of Deppa's book. The self-indulgent reflections of journalists who never uncovered anything or produced anything above the level of supermarket checkout-line rags. The only reporters who ever broke stories about Pan Am 103 were in Germany and to a lesser extent the UK. Years after, this is tiresome - and its the only book that is available in the US. The only other book - a reprint of a UK book, was mysteriously "postponed indefinitely" (information courtesy of a very helpful Amazon.com staffer who called the publisher who declined to give an explaination - but one of the non-US Sandvold articles states that the UK publisher is being sued by a US government employee, warning enough?). How this disgraceful state of affairs came to pass ought to be the heart of this book; Deppa can't even see the problem.

It is really disappointing that when Deppa herself recognizes, in the introduction, that "this particular disaster was international in the ultimate sense of the word: it seemed from the outset to be aimed at an American airliner, probably in retribution for some action by the US government" the book that follows ignores the whole question off what was the US government response, was it adequate, was the investigation by the US press adequate, how and why in this essentially American disaster the US press mustered nothing more than "sob stories" and mouthing the information handed to them by Regan/Bush spokesmen like Oliver Revell. How is it that any attempts to produce stories other than the "State Department version", especially in the US, have been stifled or quietly withdrawn. The watchdog - which is the most important role of the media functioning at its best - was muzzled from the start; how did it happen? That is the real media issue - the one that is particular to Pan Am 103. Deppa systematically devotes separate sections to every conceivable reaction, families, police, journalists, but the government, which she acknowleges is at the heart of the issue, gets a few dishwater pages late in the book that say nothing incisive or new. Its spineless tripe passed off as analysis.

The Pan Am bombing was not a natural occurance - like the Grand Forks flood, the Northridge earthquake, or even some airline disasters. Deppa's treatment, which evades issues by using the Pan Am bombing as thought it were a just another natural disaster, one pretty much like another, is certainly taking the easy way out, but it is an insult to the the very people she interviewed and those who died at Lockerbie.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The "Harlequin romance" treatment of Pan Am 103, January 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Media and Disasters: Pan Am 103 (Hardcover)

The Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing was the largest killing of American civilians by a foreign government since the sinking of the Lusitania. It has been covered for 10 years ad nauseum by journalists - and teachers of journalism like Joan Deppa - in the Oprah Winfrey style "let's get the reaction of a sobbing relative" school of journalism. Deppa herself recognizes, in the introduction, that "this particular disaster was international in the ultimate sense of the word: it seemed from the outset to be aimed at an American airliner, probably in retribution for some action by the US government" the book that follows ignores the whole question of what was the US government response, was it adequate, was the investigation by the US press adequate, how and why in this essentially American disaster the US press mustered nothing more than "sob stories" and mouthing the information handed to them by Regan/Bush spokesmen like Oliver Revell. The has been a lot that has come out - the NSA report of Iranian money, Pierre Salinger's interview of embassy personel, Oliver Revell's (the FBI's counter-terrorism chief) own son's escape from Pan Am 103 ...but you won't find it here.

Deppa systematically devotes separate sections to every conceivable reaction, families, police, journalists, but the government, which she acknowleges is at the heart of the issue, gets a few dishwater pages late in the book that say nothing incisive or new. Deppa's book is more of this self-absorbed journalistic omphaloskepsis, or "self-abuse" - and a lot of "sob story" journalism. There is no hard look at why American journalism in regard to this event has never been above the level of supermarket checkout-line rags. All of the important stories have come from European papers - and the most important ones have never even been published in this country. How this disgraceful state of affairs came to pass ought to be the heart of this book; Deppa can't even see the problem.

How is it that any attempts to produce stories other than the "State Department version", especially in the US, have been stifled or quietly withdrawn. There have been libel cases, threats of libel, perjury charges ...to restain the press (Revell brags about using such threats himself) - and Deppa spends her time dithering over newspaper picture selection! The watchdog - which is the most important role of the media functioning at its best - was muzzled from the start; how did it happen? That is the real media issue - the one that is particular to Pan Am 103. Its spineless tripe passed off as analysis.