Dirty little secret revealed: Sean Penn was right; the media did drop the ball on Haiti

It’s been six months since the 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 230,000 people and leaving 1.5 million homeless. There are still few jobs to be had and no permanent shelter. Only two percent of promised reconstruction aid has been released. And according to a report issued this week by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies, only nine percent of pledges by governments (about $50 million) has actually been delivered.

Sean Penn has been a vocal activist for Haiti since the quake, remaining in the country with his daughter to help over the past six months. He brought up an interesting point yesterday in speaking with Harry Smith of CBS News’ Early Show: "I think that the media has played an enormous part in the failures that are still going on today and the recovery here and the relief operations."

Smith then said: "People would be curious why you went in the first place. And then, why you stayed. What's the best answer for that?" Penn answered: "...if they're wondering that, then that would be an indictment of the American and the international press that came here in the immediate aftermath of this devastating earthquake."

Penn elaborated: "The United States sent its military, that did an extraordinary job in immediate relief....And then when they went on with other deployments, when the amputations en masse stopped, the media left."

I ran a Factiva search to prove or disprove Penn’s theory. If you’re not familiar with Factiva, it’s an advanced search tool from Dow Jones that enables you to analyze media coverage. Factiva’s database includes more than 28,000+ leading media sources from 157 countries in 23 languages, including regional and industry publications, Web and blog content.

Using Google, I found the two most popular (and relevant) search topics:

1.       Haiti earthquake

2.       Haiti news

Using these key words, Factiva revealed the following levels of media coverage over the six-month period: 

While Factiva isn’t a be-all-end-all and doesn’t include every publication or blog in the world, it’s comprehensive.

This data suggests Sean Penn may be onto something.