By Brad Lendon
Advertiser News Editor

At a newspaper where I used to work on the Mainland, a colleague one day came up with a chart for us to gauge the newsworthiness of wars, natural catastrophes and accidents from far-flung places down to the local suburbs.

For instance, a plane crash in our county that killed two rated higher than a plane crash in Canada that killed 10, which rated higher than a jumbo-jet crash in China that killed hundreds. One death in a local thunderstorm equaled two dozen dead in a storm in France equaled 20,000 dead in a Bangladesh cyclone.

The chart was an attempt at humor, playing off newspapers' well-known preoccupation with local news. But it also showed something else: Ethnocentric biases and attitudes had deep roots in our industry.

That was 15 years ago, and some events of the past few weeks showed me that the attitudes that spawned the creation of that newsworthiness chart still exist in the world and in the news business.

On Tuesday, floodwaters took a heavy toll in Europe. Dozens were killed. About 200,000 people were forced from their homes.

Also on Tuesday, South Asia was enduring catastrophic rainfall and flooding. Almost 1,000 people were dead and millions were homeless.

Which of these events was more important?

Judging by the coverage provided by the news services to which The Advertiser subscribes, it wasn't the one that took the heaviest toll in lives and created the most misery.

The Associated Press sent 30 inches of story on the European floods. The Knight Ridder News Service provided 25 inches. The Associated Press moved an 18-inch story on the Asian floods.

A search of Tuesday's photo database for captions with the word "flood" turned up 13. Twelve were for pictures from Europe. Only one was from South Asia.

The numbers reflect a bias toward developed countries in general and Europe in particular. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that the news services have more clients in Europe and developed countries.

But I think part also can be attributed to age-old biases of race and nationality. American culture is still dominated by white people of European ancestry. The stories we were offered reflected that.

But in Hawai'i, we try to ensure that the content of The Advertiser reflects the Islands and our place in the world. While we also consider local news to be our franchise, we look at the world from a Pacific perspective. So when considering how much space to give a story, we'll usually give more to stories in the Pacific and Asia.

Using the catastrophic weather example, when a typhoon killed dozens of people on Chuuk (formerly Truk) in the Federated States of Micronesia in July, The Advertiser carried stories for several days, following the storm's progress past Guam and to the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. Those are places to which we have close cultural connections. So when our news services offered only minimal follow-up coverage, we used staff writers to find local relief connections and follow developments through them.

When news services do offer tidbits of news from our region, we use those items in our daily Asia and the Pacific package.

In discussions with our wire editors and page designers, I try to emphasize that we don't necessarily take our cues from the wire services or equate volume with importance. I want our coverage edited in a way that tries to judge the relative significance of stories not just by their datelines. I also want coverage to reflect Hawai'i's cultural links.

In the case of last week's floods, we carried stories on both the Asian and European flooding on Page A3 of the Wednesday paper. We used a longer story on Asia, a shorter story on Europe. We used pictures from both places.

I think we struck a fair balance. And I think it was good that we had such a discussion on our news desk.