Irrational Economist_ Making Decisions in a Dangerous World - Erwann Michel-Kerjan [82]
It may have been more than coincidence, therefore, that the Alaskan earthquake of 1964, which marked a “turning point in the federal government’s role in disaster relief,” was itself prominently and poignantly covered on the evening news at the time, with dramatic on-scene reporting and graphic video of the devastation.20 By bringing the tragedy of natural disasters into America’s living rooms, television likely increased public pressure for federal relief of the victims. This dynamic may also help to explain why Congress has relied so heavily on emergency supplemental appropriations in funding disaster expenditures, since public demands for action, probably driven in part by intense bursts of media coverage at times of disaster, are themselves episodic.
What remains less clear is why public attention to disasters—fostered perhaps by media coverage—has translated into large disaster expenditures but not into fundamental reform of the way those expenditures are financed. In many other contexts, intense media coverage of major tragedies or scandals has helped to provoke significant policy reform, even over the objections of powerful concentrated interests. The media’s exposure of the Love Canal toxic-waste tragedy in upstate New York in 1978, for example, led directly to the enactment of Superfund, despite strenuous (and well-financed) opposition from the chemical industry, which was expected to bear much of the cost. Similarly, the extraordinary civil rights protests and violence in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 attracted nationwide media coverage and led directly to passage of the Voting Rights Act that same year.21 Why hasn’t comparable coverage of major natural disasters pushed Congress to reform federal disaster policy, bringing it more in line with traditional insurance principles?
One possible answer to this question relates to the nature of the media coverage that natural disasters elicit. News reports about natural disasters, which surge when disasters strike and then quickly dissipate, tend to focus on loss of life, physical damage, and harrowing stories of those who survived the onslaught. There is generally much less attention to what preventive measures could have been taken, and even less to the intricacies of how federal relief could (or should) be financed. In the case of Love Canal and Selma, leading news stories focused not only on the victims but also on the alleged perpetrators, thus virtually ensuring that demands for punishment and appropriate policy reform would loom large on the national agenda. In the case of natural disasters, by contrast, the most obvious culprit, Mother Nature, cannot be punished or easily reformed. Accordingly, the stories generally focus on victims rather than on perpetrators, sparking sympathy rather than outrage—that is, unless, as in the cases of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 (during the presidency of George H.W. Bush) and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (during that of George W. Bush), seemingly inept relief and recovery efforts themselves invite public outrage.22 The point is that, by its very nature, news coverage in cases of natural disaster generally directs public attention toward the need for immediate relief of the victims, and federal lawmakers appear (for the most part) to respond accordingly.
CONCLUSION: REFRAMING THE DISCUSSION AS A PREREQUISITE FOR REFORM
It is no secret that the current (and long-standing) federal approach to financing disaster losses is far from perfect. Since disaster risk is spread unevenly across the country, financing federal relief out of general revenues involves large cross-subsidies, from low-risk