…even given the unrelenting grimness of much of the news that emanates from the Middle Eastern Region this week’s coverage of the aftermath of the earthquake is remarkable. The images are searing, the distress vivid and the unfolding awfulness will stay with anyone who sees the footage forever. It all seems so desperately unfair, as the shock affected areas were already very poor and afflicted by conflict in the case of Syria. People whose resilience was already tested to the limit have had their world shattered and their families torn apart, and we all have to fervently hope that the warring parties can put politics aside to focus on the humanitarian catastrophe instead. This is also one of those times where high quality journalism plays such a vital role, bringing the true scale of the horror into our living rooms and onto our screens where it cannot be simply ignored. Our comfortable existence in a tectonically stable and relatively affluent area of the world needs to be shaken to prompt action, and that hopefully is what is happening nightly at present – and if we can all contribute to the international DEC Appeal then hope might just be restored…eventually.
