Irrational Economist_ Making Decisions in a Dangerous World - Erwann Michel-Kerjan [81]
Finally, and most important, numerous public opinion polls indicate that in the immediate aftermath of a major disaster, public support for generous federal relief has been remarkably strong, suggesting that aggressive lobbying by potential recipients might not have been necessary. In September 2005, for example, when asked in a CBS News/New York Times poll “Which is more important to you right now—cutting taxes or rebuilding New Orleans,” 73 percent said “Rebuilding New Orleans” and 20 percent said “Cutting taxes.” When asked in the same poll “Would you be willing or not willing to pay more in taxes to help with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina,” 56 percent answered “Willing,” 37 percent “Not Willing,” and 7 percent “Don’t Know.” Similarly, when informed as part of an Associated Press/Ipsos poll that “the U.S. Congress is expected to appropriate up to 200 billion dollars to help the affected areas recover from Hurricane Katrina,” 52 percent thought that this was the “right amount” and 15 percent thought that Congress should “spend more,” while only 24 percent thought it was “too much” and 7 percent were “unsure.”13 Apparently, Americans generally—and not just disaster victims—favor generous federal relief in times of disaster. 14
FIGURE 18.2 Natural Disaster Coverage in the New York Times, 1986-2005 Note: This figure was prepared by Stephanie Lo, using the Proquest Historical Database. Search terms were defined as (“disaster” or “catastrophe”) and (“storm” or “earthquake” or “flood” or “hurricane”).
AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION: THE POWER OF THE PRESS IN SHAPING DISASTER POLITICS
Another possible explanation for continued federal reliance on disaster relief, rather than explicit disaster insurance, stems from the extraordinary media coverage that catastrophes typically generate. It is well known that major disasters are often heavily covered in both local and national media. As shown in Figure 18.2, the number of articles about natural disasters in the New York Times predictably spikes in the face of major disasters. (Not surprisingly, a very similar pattern emerges when the same search is conducted on all newspapers in the Lexis-Nexis database.)
Presumably, heavy media coverage of disaster victims inspires sympathy in their fellow citizens (i.e., outside of the disaster area) and, in turn, stimulates broad public demand for disaster relief. With regard to international disasters, Thomas Eisensee and David Strömberg have found that U.S. relief for the victims of disasters abroad is greater when news coverage of the disasters on the major television networks is higher. Significantly, they have also found that such relief is smaller when network coverage of large foreign disasters is crowded out by other major news events. Based on this evidence, Eisensee and Strömberg conclude that “relief decisions are driven by news coverage of disasters.”15
Given the power of news coverage—and particularly television news coverage—to influence disaster policy, it is possible that the rapid growth of federal spending on disaster relief that commenced in the 1960s (again, see Figure 18.1) derived at least in part from the dramatic rise of television news during the same decade .16
Following major advances in television technology in the 1950s, FCC Chairman Newton Minow’s 1961 characterization of television as a “vast wasteland” prompted a “renewed emphasis on news by the networks, and enhanced news coverage by local television stations. That same year, President John F. Kennedy allowed the networks to broadcast a presidential