There is an "ethical dilemma" in charity advertising: the same media space used to talk about one person's misfortune can inspire people's compassion and raise more donations than saying that 10,000 people are waiting for your help.
The structure of human moral perception determines that our ability to empathize with individual lives is far greater than a bunch of numbers, even if it is actually very important.
By the same token, in countries with relatively free press, after a disaster occurs, reporters not only pay attention to the wise decisions of leaders and the hard work of rescue officers and soldiers, but also visit survivors and family members of the deceased, allowing them to tell their own experiences and grief, and tell the stories of the deceased, so that readers can empathize, remember the lost lives, and help survivors overcome difficulties.
This is exactly what various media outlets in Nepal are doing. Whether it was the mainstream media "The Kathmandu Post" or the digital media OnlineKhabar, reporters went to hospitals, schools and villages to record the experiences of various ordinary people, including a child who was washed away by the flood while eating breakfast, a father who waded into the water to save his son and never came back, and a sister who ran through the morgue looking for her brother's body...
According to the British "Guardian" report, in Nepal, reporters scrambled to get as close as possible to the disaster area to interview survivors and rescue workers. Villagers described minute by minute what they saw and felt as the floods destroyed their homes.
Why tell the story of an individual life?
Telling the story of an individual life is not just about inspiring sympathy in the reader. It should be said that it first lies in respecting every life and recognizing its irreplaceability. The dead are not homogeneous units, but rather the disappearance of a whole set of relationships, memories, and unfinished business.
Therefore, individual stories can remind people to cherish life, draw lessons, and hold people accountable better than cold numbers. The deceased’s name, age, address, specific place and moment of death are the most basic files of disaster events. In addition, there should be more traces of life.
The New York Times' "Portraits of Grief" series after 9/11 wrote a short biography for each of the more than 2,000 victims. Instead of just listing resumes, the editor asked reporters to capture a moment that reflected the person's hobbies, personality, habits or life details.
Without a list of the dead, there is no basis for accountability. When the list is blurry, so are the responsibilities. The China Eastern Airlines crash that occurred four years ago is an example.
vice versa. If the government wants to downplay the value of life, reduce the possibility of accountability, or even "make funerals happy" - using rescue to let the media sing praises for itself - then it will prevent reporters from contacting the victims and make them just cold numbers, leaving the camera to the leaders and the rescuers commanded by the leaders.
Moreover, under the control and guidance of censors, countless people in China's public opinion field stigmatize reports that report the individual life stories of the deceased and survivors, calling them "eating human blood steamed buns" - although the original creator of this metaphor, Lu Xun, criticized them for being extremely indifferent to the suffering of others, having no clear understanding of the meaning of struggle, and only following the crowd's heckles.
The Guardian report continued: "In China, state media broadcast multiple programs about the floods and sent their own reporters to the area, but the reports focused on the rescue operations rather than the scale of the destruction. In a report sent back from a resettlement site in Tibet, the reporter did not talk to anyone sitting behind him."
In fact, in Chinese official media reports, ordinary rescuers are just numbers and background boards. The Guardian reporter found that “China has sent hundreds of emergency personnel, but there are very few details about what they are doing.”
Flash flood disaster occurred on the China-Nepal border. How does China conduct public opinion censorship?
A New York Times reporter believes that China’s information control may hinder Tibetan flood rescue efforts. Its reporting noted that censorship and strict information controls are common in China, but are particularly acute in Tibet, which has been under Chinese control since the 1950s and has seen protests demanding more autonomy. Foreign journalists are not allowed into Tibet except for strictly scheduled government tours. Tibetans in the region can be detained or arrested for talking to journalists or posting anything online that is seen as contrary to the government's narrative, according to human rights activists.
The "national gate" was washed away and the "national people" were buried
It has been widely noticed by the media that a widely shared clip showing a mudslide engulfing a border crossing in Gyirong County, Tibet, has been censored on Chinese social media platforms.
In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Mira, editor of China Digital Age's "Sensitive Dictionary", pointed out that other mudslide surveillance videos that met the censorship requirements during the same period were widely circulated on various platforms, so the reason for the censorship may be the symbol "国门". Censors don’t want people to see “the country’s gates being washed away.”
Some readers also believe that Chinese social media platforms are full of videos about the disaster, and many media outlets update the rescue progress in a timely manner. Even if they are not allowed to watch "the country's gate was washed away," is it not too serious news censorship?
I would like to add here that censorship of political symbols is of course of great significance to autocrats, but in disaster reporting, the most serious and cruel censorship is the censorship of people, the neglect of individual lives, and the trampling on the dignity of the deceased and survivors.
Not only was the "national gate" destroyed by floods, but the living lives of "national people" were also buried under official media reports.
Xinhua News Agency has no shortage of reports on this disaster, updating it several times a day. Its reporting is a "classic textbook" on the results of this review. Take the latest news as an example. Among the 222 characters in the full text, only 33, about one-seventh, are related to the disaster, all of which are numbers: "Two people from Resuo Village have been rescued. The Geelong mudslide disaster has killed 7 people and 554 people have lost contact." The rest of the text is used to describe "the vigorous and orderly advancement of various rescue and rescue efforts."
It is also a news source. An article published yesterday had a title of 51 characters: "The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting to study and deploy debris flow disaster relief and rescue work in Jilong County, Shigatse City, Tibet. General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping presided over the meeting." The content exceeds 1,000 characters. "Li Qiang guides rescue and emergency response work in Gyirong, Tibet" comes second, with about 800 characters.
Some people would say that it is understandable that timely news reporting only sees numbers but not people. It is conceivable that in the news reports that Xinhua News Agency is preparing to send out in the future, people will be written about, but first of all, how the leaders made wise decisions, how the commanders resolutely implemented them, secondly, how the rescue officers and soldiers sacrificed their lives, and finally, how the victims in Tibetan areas showed their gratitude to the Party.
Besides, even if Xinhua News Agency can show its conscience, consider individual lives, and not allow more reporters to go to Tibetan areas and conduct more diverse reports, it is still criminal news control and media censorship.
Nepal implements a federal democratic system and the media ecology is relatively diverse. In May this year, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released the 2026 World Press Freedom Index. Among 180 rated countries and regions, Nepal ranked 87th, and China ranked 178th for the second consecutive year, only higher than Eritrea and North Korea.
Changping is a senior media person and current affairs commentator. He is currently a columnist for Deutsche Welle, executive editor of China Digital Times, and chief curator of the June Fourth Memory·Human Rights Museum.
