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Tv & Radio > News & Features Sunday May 14, 2006
Lessons from afar
AIR RAVES BY ANTHONY THANASAYAN
TEN days ago, the Pacific waters off the island of Tonga were struck by a strong earthquake while the islanders were mainly asleep.
The 8.0 magnitude quake, according to the US Geological Survey, was centred some 16km below the ocean floor about 160km north-east of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa.
The earthquake occurred at 4.26am, Tonga time, on May 4 (11.26pm on May 3 in Malaysia).
I first stumbled upon the breaking news on BBC World Television on Astro a few minutes after 1am. It was the top story on CNN too.
Moments later, both international news channels said that experts at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii had issued alerts that a destructive wave could hit Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Samoa or Hawaii.
Throughout the warning announcements, the broadcasters in the TV studios maintained a calm demeanour, assuring TV viewers that the warnings were meant as a precautionary measure. No deadly tsunamis were detected yet, they said.
Then within the hour, CNN was first to announce that all alerts had been officially cancelled.
One could see the great relief on the smiling faces of the CNN newscasters that a potentially dangerous crisis was over.
Witnessing the whole drama unfold on the TV screen during the wee hours of that frightful morning – even though it was a false alarm – I thought it offered some good practices that our radio stations (and TV, of course) could emulate should we be threatened again by an undersea quake closer to home.
Many of these pointers are really common sense – to remain cool and focused all the time, being there for the viewers, and speaking in an appropriate manner (never flippant, laughing or joking), etc.
The most important thing of all is to get the facts right.
The only local English FM broadcaster that reads the news after midnight is RTM’s TraxxFM which delivers news every hour.
Sometime in February or so this year, the government broadcaster made a welcome improvement by getting its newsreaders to read the news around the clock instead of letting the deejays do it when newsreaders weren’t available.
Some of the deejays’ news reading was so atrocious that it completely ruined the bulletins. On the night of the Tonga quake, I was pleased that TraxxFM reported the event on its 2am bulletin.
However, in its 3am bulletin, it completely left out the vital detail that the tsunami threats were over.
I could only imagine how horrible it must have been for listeners – particularly for Malaysians who have relatives or friends in the affected regions – who hadn’t switched over to other news sources for details.
A final suggestion to TraxxFM: please always give the Malaysian time whenever you quote the local time of a news-breaking story overseas. This would help Malaysians make better sense of the news instead of them having to figure out the time difference.
In the Tonga case, TraxxFM disclosed the local time of the undersea quake together with the Greenwich Mean Time or GMT (world time) equivalent.
But not many Malaysians are familiar with GMT or that we have to add eight hours to the international time zone to make it Malaysian time.
Anthony Thanasayan, who was born disabled, is an avid radio listener. His work, training special dogs for the physically handicapped, has been featured on local and international radio. His dogs, he says, help him ‘stay in tune with life’. E-mail him at athanasayan@hotmail.com.
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