The numbers are almost impossible to comprehend.
More than 3,500 people, as of Monday evening, have died from the massive earthquakes and aftershocks that struck Turkey and Syria. Two earthquakes measuring 7.8 and 7.5 were followed by aftershocks in frigid winter weather. The impact could be felt as far away as Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Egypt.
Here is a harrowing video of one of the aftershocks and its aftermath caught on live TV. The sound alone is frightening. According to Reuters, the reporter in the video, Yuksel Akalan, said, “As we were heading to the rubble to (film) search and rescue efforts, there were two consecutive aftershocks with a loud noise, and the building you are seeing on my left was brought down to earth. There was a lot of dust. A local resident is coming and he is covered in dust.”
Akalan then met a woman running from the other direction with her children. He lifted the woman’s daughter and then tried to calm her.
The video is just a snapshot of the nightmare.
There are reports of nearly 80 aftershocks, and many of those fortunate enough to survive are left sleeping outside in freezing temperatures.
Khalil Ashawi, a photojournalist based in Syria, told CNN, “It’s a disaster. Paramedics and firefighters are trying to help, but unfortunately, there is too much for them to deal with. They can’t handle it all. Entire families have been killed. Seven to eight people from the same family, all gone. These are the sort of situations I am seeing and hearing about today. It is freezing at the moment, and there are so many people sleeping in the streets right now because they have no homes to go to.
Why was this quake so deadly?
The Washington Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson wrote, “The grim death toll is a result of several factors: the sheer size of the quake; the fact that it struck relatively close to the surface; and its proximity to where people live. Monday’s quake originated just about 11 miles below the surface. That means the seismic waves did not have to travel far before they reached buildings and people on the surface, leading to more intense shaking.”
Johnson’s story goes into exceptional detail about why this earthquake was so destructive. It’s an example of some of the excellent explanatory journalism that helped us better understand what happened.
The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Niiler and Nidhi Subbaraman write, “How the Turkey-Syria Earthquake Occurred: Behind the Science of the Catastrophe.”
The Associated Press’ Mehmet Guzel, Ghaith Alsayed and Suzan Fraser — reporting from Adana, Turkey — noted, “The quake piled more misery on a region that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade. On the Syrian side, the area is divided between government-held territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from the civil war.”
They added, “In the rebel-held enclave, hundreds of families remained trapped in rubble, the opposition emergency organization known as the White Helmets said in a statement. The area is packed with some 4 million people displaced from other parts of the country by the war. Many of them live in buildings that are already wrecked from past bombardments.”
More superb work
Check out this impressive visual journalism in The New York Times from Pablo Robles, Agnes Chang, Josh Holder and Lauren Leatherby.
The piece shows detailed maps of the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria. In addition, there are haunting before and after photos of areas badly damaged by the earthquake. For example, one photo shows the immaculate Yeni Mosque in June 2020. Then next to it, the Yeni Mosque today, looking like a crumpled sand castle on a dirty, dusty beach.
Also, the Times has “After the Quake: Photos From Turkey and Syria.”
Both pieces are powerful journalism that show the impact of this devastating disaster.
So is this piece from The Washington Post’s Adam Taylor, Joe Snell, Olivier Laurent and Lauren Tierney: “Maps, photos and videos show earthquake’s widespread destruction.”
A brutal piece
Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
In a profile that some are describing as “brutal,” The New York Times’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Rogers and Peter Baker write, “Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting.”
The Times writes, “… the painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country. Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”
Harris’ approval rating, according to an aggregate of surveys from FiveThirtyEight, is at about 39% — which is even lower than President Joe Biden’s less-than-impressive 42%. The Times writes, “Ms. Harris’s allies said she was trapped in a damned-if-she-does, damned-if-she-doesn’t conundrum — she is expected to not do anything to overshadow Mr. Biden while navigating intractable issues he has assigned her such as voting rights and illegal immigration. And some see a double standard applied to a prominent woman of color.”
There is some hope among Harris’ allies that she can have a fresh start with a new Senate. No longer required to be close to Washington to cast the deciding vote of a split Senate, Harris can get out more. The Times reports she wants to take at least three out-of-town trips per week.
It’s a smart and in-depth profile. Check it out.
Say what?
President Joe Biden will give his State of the Union address tonight. So to get you ready, check out this headline: “There’s too much State of the Union fact-checking.”
Wait, too much fact-checking? About a president? During his State of the Union address?
Who wrote this? Believe it or not, the man who helped launch PolitiFact — the Pulitzer Prize-winning website whose job is to fact-check politicians such as the president.
These days, Bill Adair is the Knight Professor for the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University. But he is formerly of the Tampa Bay Times, where he was when he launched PolitiFact in 2007.
Full disclosure: Poynter now owns PolitiFact (and the Tampa Bay Times) and Adair wrote his latest piece for Poynter.
So what’s the deal? What did Adair say about the State of the Union, otherwise known as the “Super Bowl of fact-checking?”
Adair wrote that tonight, all the fact-checkers will be “wasting their time on the wrong guy.”
Adair notes Biden is already one of the most fact-checked politicians in America. PolitiFact alone has rated him more than 250 times. Adair’s argument is we have enough fact-checking on the national level and that the “real need is at the state and local levels.”
Adair adds, “I’m not calling for an end to fact-checking the State of the Union. It deserves scrutiny like any major address by any president. But instead of adding another journalist to watch an overcovered event, national news organizations could provide a greater service by looking elsewhere to the lies that are sprouting around the country. Instead of covering the Super Bowl, they should cover the games that are being played around the country every day.”
Speaking of the State of the Union, here’s PolitiFact’s Ellen Hine with “Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union: How to watch, what he’ll talk about, who’s responding.”
Sold!
The National Enquirer, the celebrity tabloid known for its outrageous headlines and eye-raising stories, has finally been sold. VVIP Ventures is buying the National Examiner and the Globe (another tab) from a360 Media in an all-cash deal. Terms are not publicly known.
Katie Robertson of The New York Times wrote, “The National Enquirer has come under scrutiny in recent years for a litany of scandals. It paid $150,000 in hush money during the 2016 presidential campaign to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, for the rights to her story of an affair with Mr. Trump, then never published the story. The practice is known as ‘catch and kill.’ It also helped broker a hush-money deal with the pornographic film star Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.”
What’s next? Robertson wrote, “The buyers said in an interview that they planned to expand the publications’ digital presence and tap the Enquirer’s expansive archives of nearly 100 years of celebrity news and gossip.”
Taking a gap year
Tom Brady, shown here at a movie premiere last week. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Tom Brady is not going straight from the football field to the broadcast booth. Brady, considered by most as the greatest quarterback in football history, announced his retirement (again) last week. He has a 10-year, $375 million deal waiting for him at Fox Sports to be the network’s No. 1 game analyst.
But the wait will be at least a year. Brady told FS1’s Colin Cowherd that he won’t begin his broadcast career until 2024.
Brady said it allows him to take “some time to really learn, become great at what I want to do.” He also said he wants to make sure isn’t rushing into anything, whatever that means. He said during his career, he always wanted to be “fully committed” and that he “never wanted to let people down.”
Of course, almost immediately, some wondered if this meant Brady was leaving the door open to playing again. It was a year ago that he also announced he was retiring and then he changed his mind 40 days later. But Brady seems retired for good this time, even though he didn’t totally slam the door shut in his interview with Cowherd, saying, “I think the future is always very hard to predict for all of us.”
Will he ever go into the booth? Plenty are taking an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it approach, but Brady has 375 million reasons to eventually do it.
Meanwhile, Fox Sports likely will carry on with Greg Olsen as its top NFL game analyst until Brady is ready. Olsen has earned strong reviews from media observers and fans this season and will call the Super Bowl this Sunday with No. 1 play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt.
Media tidbits
- The Los Angeles Times’ James Rainey with “Santa Cruz ‘news desert’? An industry guru’s digital startup challenges local rivals.”
- Mediaite’s Alex Griffing covers Jennifer Griffin’s strong reporting on Fox News regarding the Chinese spy balloon.
- The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin and Katherine Rosman with “Vox Media Is Raising $100 Million From Penske Media.”
- The tension here seems real as ESPN “First Take” co-host Stephen A. Smith and guest Jay Williams talk about controversial basketball star Kyrie Irving. I gotta tell ya, I’m with Stephen A. on this one. Awful Announcing’s Brandon Contes has more. And Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina wrote, “Both men get under each other’s skin. Williams looked bad trying to defend Irving, because there’s no defending Irving at this point. Williams definitely seemed much, much saltier than Smith. The entire thing was beautifully awkward TV.”
- The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch reports that for Super Bowl LVII this Sunday, Fox Sports will have 94 cameras (44 game cameras, 18 pregame cameras, 16 robotic cameras) and 29 field-level microphones capturing game and player sound.
- The Washington Post’s Amudalat Ajasa with “These Black women are changing TV weather, a field long dominated by White men.”
Hot type
- New Yorker editor David Remnick with “The Defiance of Salman Rushdie.”
- Miranda Dunlap — the Culture Desk Editor at The State News, the student newspaper at Michigan State University — with, “Being sexually assaulted was awful. Reporting to MSU might have made it worse.”
More resources for journalists
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