Letters: Earthquake Coverage

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MICHELE NORRIS, host:

Our coverage from China continues to bring in hundreds of e-mails from our listeners. We get this note from Frank Star(ph) of Burlington, Vermont. Night has fallen on my street and I still hear the stifled sobs in Melissa Block's voice as she described the horror of discovering children's bodies in the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Her real-time reaction makes the despair and sorrow of losing a loved one so palpable. This kind of reporting is so much better than just stating numbers or showing a photo in the abstract. It makes world events as startlingly real as though they occurred on your own street.

Diane Petersgeg(ph) of Lititz, Pennsylvania had a similar response to Melissa's story yesterday about a couple digging through rubble for their child and his grandparents. As painful as the experience was, I thank you for putting a very human face on this enormous tragedy. Sometimes in the business of our own lives, we hear the news and it just doesn't really register. I will never forget this report.

We received an admonition from Salvatore Princiapato(ph) in New York City. He calls our stories from Sichuan province, quote, very emotional but bereft of any social, political and most of all journalistic value. Most listeners don't have to hear prolonged clips of victims' families suffering to understand the enormity of the situation. It disempowers people and reduces them to ineffectual sentimentality, as if nothing we do save raise a piddling amount of relief money can impact the severity of the tragedy.

Well, thanks to our listeners for the hundreds of responses to our earthquake coverage, good and bad. You can write to us by going to npr.org/contactus. And please, remember to tell us where you're from and how to pronounce your name.

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