BUKIT ANTARABANGSA LANDSLIDE: How RTM can use the citizen media to assist reporting of disasters

Yet another tragedy happens at the Ulu Kelang hills, 15 years later after the collapse of the Highland Towers which took 48 lives. This time, two posh housing aread were affected - 14 bungalows lost their foothold to crashing earth and 4 lives were taken at 4am in the morning of Saturday Dec 6.

While the news was related quickly by the Online portals of mainstream media and updates equally efficient, the national media, RTM, was rapped by its minister Shabery Cheek.

BUKIT ANTARABANGSA TRAGEDY: RTM rapped for slow updates

KOTA BARU: Upset with RTM for being slow in disseminating news about the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide yesterday, Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek has directed the national network to provide regular updates on natural disasters in the country.

The information minister said the move would allow the public to get the latest information on disasters like yesterday’s landslide.

More at the minister's blog here

In a later post, the minister said RTM would interrupt several programmes to bring in the latest report on the landslide to give a clear picture on the incident to the public.

“I have asked RTM to give the latest report from time to time and stop several other programmes,” he told reporters after attending a briefing on the flood situation in Kelantan at the Kota Darul Naim, here.

The Bernama radio, however, has done quite admirably, with updates and interviews done regularly, to provide listeners with the latest.

In tragedies and disasters like this, mainstream media (not online) could have ploughed the blogosphere for material - the latest, people-reported information to beef up their news and updates. If there were videos uploaded by those who were at the scene, by all means, get them up while your television or radio newscrew try to get your own filming done and getting them back to the office. Places to go in times like this are Youtube and Google Blog Search. Right keywords will yield most interesting results and might save your day and your job.

For Online news portals, this is also the time to maximise the reach of your brand and corporate identity. Instead of using your own video servers, why not use embed your logo on the video and upload them to Youtube for viral distribution and saving your own server bandwidth? There are simply more traffic in Youtube that you can ever do on your own domain name and it makes good sense to tap them and make your site known to these new markets as well.

Below is a good video done by an eyewitness. It is not even a video but a compilation of photos strung together as a slideshow. Tells a different story of the tragedy and makes good study for online media, don't you think?