At hundreds of miles of damage from the earthquake in Shan State has produced a tragedy that could prove far more deadly: two weeks ago, 7,000 fishermen who sailed on the fragile bamboo rafts along the southern coast were caught in a storm. Less than half of them have returned to the mainland and the meager handful of observers who relayed this information gradually resigns himself to a fatal outcome.
The fact that the magnitude of the number of probable victims - of around 3700 - was overshadowed by the 75 deaths recorded in Shan State is symptomatic of two things: the first is the extreme difficulty in obtaining information about a region where the authorities increase distrust, fearing foreign journalists and aid workers because of the fiasco that followed Cyclone Nargis in 2008.
The second is the somewhat myopic view of the international media. The Burmese press has reported for the first time something went wrong in the south on March 24, eight days after the storm. The article, published in the daily New Light of Myanmar, began as usual by the answer given by the government and devoted almost all his lines to praise the rescue efforts.
That's the kind of thing we expect the official media. But tinted stories of heroism began to arrive from coastal villages saying that many of their inhabitants were not returned. This information is all the more worrying as the fishing season for shrimp in full swing and the Gulf of Martaban teeming with thousands of boats rudimentary hardly capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions.
In several discussion forums on the Web, some area residents with Internet access have yielded disparate accounts of the situation: some say that everything went well while another, posing as a survivor says that the water was covered with bodies and some were crushed between the boats.
Estimates of the number of dead and missing ranged from 0 to 10 000. Last Wednesday, after several media reports that thousands of people could have disappeared, some international humanitarian organizations in Burma still astonished by reading field reports from the region. On Friday, the UN said it was concentrating on the Shan State.
With this UN declaration, any hope of a happier outcome was probably gone. If it turns out that thousands of people perished at sea in recent days and that no one except their relatives were aware, when the Burmese junta, whose rescue efforts show that she knew early what was happening, must bear a large share of responsibility for not having sought the assistance of humanitarian organizations generally better equipped to deal with such crises.
The international media have also fallen for the old traps that are lazy and the dominant trend. Since the disaster that hit Japan, earthquakes are competing with popular uprisings to win the "A". The journalists were then armed with a divining rod for digging up these subjects and rushed in the direction of the slightest tremor, ignoring much larger tragedies.
Humanitarian organizations, which have unique access to the area and often serve as crucial sources of information for the media, have also been slow to react and their efforts were perhaps restricted or diverted by the earthquake. What happened in Shan State is horrible and it should absolutely be more vigilant, both to rescue the survivors still trapped under the rubble and make sure that the Burmese junta does not divert money from the humanitarian aid and does not dam the rescuers, as usual.
The merit of the magnetic attraction to the subject of the earthquake, with its regional and shaking his soundbites shock is to have lit a serious defect of the media: the hierarchy somewhat illogical that we set for classifying some events on the planet. We all pray that the death toll in eastern Burma does not become drowsy more.
But in a few weeks or months, when a more accurate assessment of victims of the storm will reach us in this region of the Irrawaddy hidden from view, we are likely to find that the response to disasters in Burma is afflicted with myopia. Unlike other natural disasters in the past, the government responded to the earthquake with an amazing speed and visibility, attracting rightly praises rescue teams but leaving drowning can be a little more fishermen missing.
As for us journalists, too often we follow all the media fanfare in despising certain subjects that deserve our attention, however, and that to satisfy the thirst of the public and avoid this extra bit of investigative work long and frustrating whose profession seems satisfied. 
The fact that the magnitude of the number of probable victims - of around 3700 - was overshadowed by the 75 deaths recorded in Shan State is symptomatic of two things: the first is the extreme difficulty in obtaining information about a region where the authorities increase distrust, fearing foreign journalists and aid workers because of the fiasco that followed Cyclone Nargis in 2008.
The second is the somewhat myopic view of the international media. The Burmese press has reported for the first time something went wrong in the south on March 24, eight days after the storm. The article, published in the daily New Light of Myanmar, began as usual by the answer given by the government and devoted almost all his lines to praise the rescue efforts.
That's the kind of thing we expect the official media. But tinted stories of heroism began to arrive from coastal villages saying that many of their inhabitants were not returned. This information is all the more worrying as the fishing season for shrimp in full swing and the Gulf of Martaban teeming with thousands of boats rudimentary hardly capable of withstanding extreme weather conditions.
In several discussion forums on the Web, some area residents with Internet access have yielded disparate accounts of the situation: some say that everything went well while another, posing as a survivor says that the water was covered with bodies and some were crushed between the boats.
Estimates of the number of dead and missing ranged from 0 to 10 000. Last Wednesday, after several media reports that thousands of people could have disappeared, some international humanitarian organizations in Burma still astonished by reading field reports from the region. On Friday, the UN said it was concentrating on the Shan State.
With this UN declaration, any hope of a happier outcome was probably gone. If it turns out that thousands of people perished at sea in recent days and that no one except their relatives were aware, when the Burmese junta, whose rescue efforts show that she knew early what was happening, must bear a large share of responsibility for not having sought the assistance of humanitarian organizations generally better equipped to deal with such crises.
The international media have also fallen for the old traps that are lazy and the dominant trend. Since the disaster that hit Japan, earthquakes are competing with popular uprisings to win the "A". The journalists were then armed with a divining rod for digging up these subjects and rushed in the direction of the slightest tremor, ignoring much larger tragedies.
Humanitarian organizations, which have unique access to the area and often serve as crucial sources of information for the media, have also been slow to react and their efforts were perhaps restricted or diverted by the earthquake. What happened in Shan State is horrible and it should absolutely be more vigilant, both to rescue the survivors still trapped under the rubble and make sure that the Burmese junta does not divert money from the humanitarian aid and does not dam the rescuers, as usual.
The merit of the magnetic attraction to the subject of the earthquake, with its regional and shaking his soundbites shock is to have lit a serious defect of the media: the hierarchy somewhat illogical that we set for classifying some events on the planet. We all pray that the death toll in eastern Burma does not become drowsy more.
But in a few weeks or months, when a more accurate assessment of victims of the storm will reach us in this region of the Irrawaddy hidden from view, we are likely to find that the response to disasters in Burma is afflicted with myopia. Unlike other natural disasters in the past, the government responded to the earthquake with an amazing speed and visibility, attracting rightly praises rescue teams but leaving drowning can be a little more fishermen missing.
As for us journalists, too often we follow all the media fanfare in despising certain subjects that deserve our attention, however, and that to satisfy the thirst of the public and avoid this extra bit of investigative work long and frustrating whose profession seems satisfied.
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