I was disappointed last night when I turned on my favorite network news program — only to see a very sparse amount of coverage on the one-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. With nothing more than a 20-second voice-over, the network anchor said, (paraphrasing here):
“It’s been one year since that massive earthquake that killed over 230,000 people in Haiti. One year later, it looks like little has changed. Hundreds of thousands are still living in tent cities … in squalor …”
Wow.
This was one of the worst natural disasters in human history. Millions of people affected. An entire nation shaken. The world captivated. And there was barely a mention on the anniversary. But, I think, perhaps what disappoints me most is the stories they missed. They missed the progress that’s been made. They missed the lives transformed. They missed the Church stepping up and being the Church in Haiti. They missed organizations like Compassion International making a difference. And, perhaps, most importantly, they missed the story of hope.
One year after the quake, they missed hope.
Read the entire post at our site dedicated to Haiti and our work there in the aftermath of the earthquake.
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So little of the news seems to be about hope at all. I can’t say as I am surprised they left it out in the snippet about Haiti- hope, sadly, doesn’t seem to sell.
You know im not surprised either. Most of the time when they talk about crisis like this they choose to leave out all the religious people like chritains.If they mention christianty on T.V everyone wants to bash on them.Then nobody watches their station. It’s really sad that people are ashamed to say that Jesus is Lord!!!
I watched news coverage, as well, with an eye toward how they covered the anniversary. Some networks did better than others but it would have been much more uplifting to hear about what had been accomplished in a year (and who is still hard at work 🙂 rather than what hadn’t.
That’s why I’m grateful for this blog that shares the stories of hope with those of us who have such an interest in offering hope to others.
Thank you!!
In Holland they had something special on the news: thousands of Haitian Christians praising the Lord and in an open air service after a minute of silence you could see the Holy Spirit start to work through these people when they started to shout and praise the Lord! It gave me goose-bumps! It was very positive with positive testimonies from Christians that God would lift up Haiti etc.; normally Dutch news television isn’t this positive at all! I was amazed that they showed this and I wish you could have seen it!
My husband came home upset because one of is favorite radio shows (public radio) actually interviewed people claiming that evangelicals were working around the local churches, not with them. He finally had to turn it off because he realized that yelling at the radio wasn’t doing anything other than just making himself more upset.