(See Appendix B for chronology of media coverage
of forecast information)
In
May of 1997, radios and newspapers began to announce the possible arrival of El
Niño. Specialists held meetings and there was extensive press coverage in Piura
in the second half of May. The pubic took notice when SENAMHI officially
forecast El Niño on June 6 of 1997 (see APPENDIX B for a detailed chronology of
media coverage of climate forecast information).
In
order to understand the stance of the media regarding the El Niño phenomenon,
it is first necessary to consider three issues. First, Peru is extremely
centralized - a topic that we have already mentioned, and we will now emphasize.
Lima, the capital of the country, has eleven times more inhabitants than
Arequipa, the second city. Likewise, the economy is so centralized that bank
deposits in Cusco, a high profile department in the country's interior, barely
reach 1% of the deposits in San Isidro, one of the more opulent districts of
the city of Lima.
Secondly,
we must keep in mind that the weather in Lima is very stable and very boring.
There never are extraordinary events and, although humid, it is always
basically temperate throughout the year. It never rains: no thunder or
hailstorms or hurricanes or any event to stir human curiosity. Consequently,
the press has no interest in the weather. In other latitudes there is keen
interest in the weather due to the occurrence of meteorological events of short
duration and high impact. Given the high degree of centralism, the apathy in
Lima regarding the weather is reflected in the media in general. In spite of
the enormous diversity in the country, the decisions of the programming executives
are weighted in favor of the sparse weather culture of the audiences in Lima.[1]
In
contrast with the high quality of weather programs in other countries, our lack
of interest in the weather has made our underdevelopment in this area evident.
Weather reporting in Lima is a minor and unelaborated subject.
A
third element that must be considered is: the political value of El Niño and
the intense partisan struggle that it
unleashed. In effect, the government tried to showcase the efficiency of its
plans and highlight its efforts, while the opposition pointed out the opposite.
The opposition media characterized the government's plans to deal with the very
serious threat of El Niño as weak and flawed. The official media, in stark
contrast, published the same news headlining the speed and notable efficiency
of the government. The political posturing of the media, on both sides,
relegated the scientific and engineering realities surrounding this issue to
the back seat. Inevitably, political considerations had a major impact on
strategic decisions regarding El Niño.
A
lot of media coverage, often contradictory, was given to El Niño during the
preventive phase, between June and December 1997. A multitude of experts
engaged in a somewhat confused public debate on the weather. The topic was the
magnitude of the coming rains. The entire country was listening in on the
debate between the scientists, including the elite and the decisions makers, on
this increasingly important matter. The memory of the highly destructive “Mega
Niño” of 1983 was still fresh in their minds, and the concerns of the public
and of the government were justified.
SENAMHI
was right as to the total magnitude of the rains, but they overestimated their
duration, having predicted that they would begin earlier and would finish
later. On the other hand, the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP) led by Ronald
Woodman, along with IMARPE, optimistically predicted a moderate El Niño without
dramatic climatic alterations. This state of affairs thoroughly confused public
opinion. None of the official scientific institutions got it completely right.
The confusion of the experts accounts for some of the media's inability to
depict the future course of events with any clarity. In spite of the fact that
the IGP was better prepared in the area of weather forecasting, it was SENAMHI
that accurately forecasted the magnitude of the rains that, after all, was
really the most important subject.
Exasperated
by the complexity of the debate on the intensity of the future rains, in
September 1997, the executive branch reacted. President Alberto Fujimori
ordered the state-sponsored scientific institutions to speak through one
official spokesman. It was agreed that ENFEN would be the only entity
authorized to release an official opinion on behalf of the government.
This
debate bombarded the public with scientific opinion and speculation. The focus
of the debate was correct, because it was important to forecast as accurately
as possible when and where the rain would fall, how much, etc. The problem was
that the debate was limited to abstract scientific speculation, without
embracing the concrete problems facing the citizenry. The citizenry did not
receive guidance on what to do to protect itself under any of the scenarios contemplated
by the experts. During the preventive phase, the scientists were not focused on
formulating practical advice for families. They took refuge in their theories,
many of which did not agree with each other.
Television
coverage improved during the course of El Niño. In December 1997, a TV program
directed by Abraham Levy and broadcast from America Satel used visual
techniques showing weather variations over time, a first for Peruvian
television even though it is widely used in North America.[2]
During
El Niño, America Satel leapfrogged even the official meteorological agencies.
Levy showed satellite images in motion. These images can be downloaded at no
cost in Peru. A software package allows these images to be serialized and
projected on television. Thanks to this, America Satel had up-to-date imagery
on the rains and their progress.
The
America Satel experience demonstrates that TV has the technical means to make
weather information available, and it could offer very attractive weather
programming which would be particularly welcome in the provinces. This has not
yet happened, however, because everything revolves around Lima. Not only is the
government centralist, but so are the national television networks. Perhaps the
advertisers, aware that the only significant Peruvian market is in the capital,
orient program production to more lucrative ends. Unfortunately then, these
improvements have not been continued. Two years after El Niño, the entire
effort that went into meteorological programming on television has returned to
the unattractive flat format.
According
to Lourdes Palacios, information manager for the "24 Hours" news
program of Panamericana Television, prior to the 1997-98 Niño the weather was not
news. Only the irruption of this extraordinary event was able to change
attitudes for a while. Now, with the event behind us, there has been a return
to the usual monotony. The owners of the TV networks believe that the low
ratings do not justify the cost of making good and dynamic weather programs.[3]
This
bias toward the extraordinary in the selection and treatment of information is
one of the key characteristics of Peruvian TV. It is newsworthy only if it
translates into higher ratings. This attitude dominates the decision makers in
the media and naturally determines the treatment of weather-related news. This
explains the scarcity of programs and journalists specialized in the weather.
In Lima there is no dramatic weather to feed into this conception that is so
prevalent in most TV stations.
In
Peruvian TV, excepting the short episode with America Satel, all of the
meteorological information that was issued from the preventive phase of El Niño
remained bottled up in a somewhat fruitless trilogy. That triad was made up of
the flat news format, the confused debate on the magnitude of the rains, and
the sensationalist intent of the producers.
The
radio-listening audience is quite large in Peru, especially in the blue-collar
sectors. In a survey carried out by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) it
was found that 74% of the Peruvian workers from these sectors regularly turned
to the radio as a source of information. The same survey found that 82% of the
workers watched TV frequently as a source of information. The audiences are
thus pretty even, making it clear that both media compete and that radio has
not lost its vitality.
When
it comes to news, the blue-collar audience in Peru tunes in very narrowly. When
asked which radio station they got information on El Niño from, fully 60% of
the people interviewed by the IEP answered “Radio Programas del Peru” (RPP).
The rest of the audience prefers “Cadena Peruana de Noticias,” (CPN), “Radio
Cadena” and other minor stations.[4]
The
radio programs dedicated to El Niño were a mixed bag; nevertheless, they were
usually more interesting than those seen on television. There were interesting
spots during El Niño, but this has not fostered the formation of permanent
programs dealing with the weather, its variations, or its economic and social
effects. These radio broadcasts featured reports and interviews and call-in
segments that allowed the public to talk directly with the experts. The
abundance of these talk shows and call-in segments gave the listening audience a
sense of participation in the process. However, as in the case of America Satel
on TV, the increased creativity during the crisis did not carry over into
permanent weather programs on the radio.
The
press is a singular domain whose rules are, in part, different from those that
govern TV and radio. Excepting the so-called
“chicha” dailies, most of the newspapers are directed to the middle
class. The influence of the press, therefore, is of key importance in that it
targets diverse elites, albeit lacking reach into the larger population mass.
In
keeping with their own journalistic traditions, the newspapers in Lima had
different approaches to El Niño. Pictures and diagrams emphasized the visual. “El
Comercio” published pictures proper to the Internet era. This was the main
innovation of the press, an appropriate use of images that created a visual
experience for the public. This visual experience is what has remained in our
memory representing the dynamic El Niño.
We must also consider
the effect of the lack of specialized journalists or of regular sections in the
newspapers. Although “El Comercio” has a Spartan weather section, in the other
dailies it is nonexistent. The weather is not featured regularly in the
political press like “La Republica” or “Expreso,” or in the newspapers that
focus on the economy, like “Gestion” and “Sintesis.” You will not find anywhere
in the written media, not even in “El Comercio,” news on the weather, other
than a daily note containing a terse communiqué from SENAMHI.
The
experience of the last El Niño burst upon a communications media ill-prepared
to handle weather-related news, suddenly taking on major proportions. When this
happened, El Niño became headline news for almost two years, even though it was
highly politicized. In the end, however, it did not bear permanent fruit: Peru
continues to be without professional reporting of meteorological issues in the
news media.
[1] The first scientific study of the climate in Lima is the 18th century work by Hipolito Unanue: Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima y sus influencias, Barcelona, La Académica, 1914.
[2] A preliminary overview of the role the media played during the 1997-98 El Niño can be found in “Medios de comunicacion, sensacionalismo o doctrina” by Angela Zelada, Prevención, año 5, # 11, mayo 1998.
[3] Interview of Lourdes Palacios in Lima, August 1998.
[4] The Instituto de Estudios Peruanos conducted a survey in six coastal cities immediately after the 1997-98 El Niño.