The mass media can and often do play a significant role in disasters

TERRORISTS DESTROY WORLD TRADE CENTER, 
HIT PENTAGON IN RAID WITH HIJACKED JETS
 
The only previous banner headline was for Pearl Harbor. 
It might be assumed that when disaster occurs, all media would cover it, 
especially if it occurred in their coverage area. That is not the case -- at least for radio. 
Wenger and Quarantelli found that while newspapers and television provided extensive 

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coverage of disaster – 83.3 per cent of television stations pre-empted regular 
programming – many radio stations ignored disasters, even local ones: 
A total of 18.6 per cent of the radio stations [examined for 
the study] did not cover the disaster in their community at 
all. Three of these were small stations with no news 
department; they continued with their normal 
programming…. Thirty per cent of the stations who 
covered the disaster in their area never pre-empted local 
programming, and 28.3 per cent did not increase their 
normal time allocated for news (Wenger and Quarantelli, 
1989, p. 39). 
While all television and print media tended to expand news coverage – television 
replaced regular programs, newspapers enlarged the space for news – the two did so 
differently. The electronic media tended to reduce the normal gate-keeping function by 
which editors control what goes over the air. Reports are broadcast live and interviews 
with those calling in or reached by phone are run without editing (Waxman, 1973; Sood, 
Stockdale and Rogers, 1987).
Video tape was not edited as carefully as usual and 
significantly more live coverage was aired. One station we 
studied, for example, devoted hours to live coverage of a 
major toxic spill from its own helicopter. Raw tape brought 
to the station was aired in unedited form. Another station in 
the immediate aftermath of a tornado aired live footage 
shot out of the station’s back door, and also placed raw tape 
taken by a citizen with a home videocamera on the air 
(Wenger and Quarantelli, 1989, p. 14). 
In contrast, print media assign the task of “rewrite” to reporters who normally 
would not perform that function. Those rewrite persons take material filed by reporters in 
the field and shape it. Then the stories pass through the normal gate-keepers, editors and 
copy editors. Editors’ perceptions about disaster still controls what appears in the paper. 
Stories that challenge editors’ misconceptions will not be published (See Breed, 1955). 

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