In the latest Global Pulse Episode, host Erin Coker looks at media coverage of the Haiti earthquake. Watch the episode and share your thoughts below!

Does the excessive coverage of Haiti’s earthquake – not to mention the questionable journalistic and medical ethics involved when doctor/reporters can’t decide whether to operate or do interviews — give the viewer a better understanding of the disaster? Or is it little more than the casting of journalists as action heroes? 

The New Republic’s Chief Editor, Noam Scheiber, in his recent article taking the news establishment to task, wrote that “in Haiti the dozens of redundant dispatches are stressing an already perilously fragile situation.”

In a follow-up interview with Global Pulse featured in this week’s episode, Scheiber says, “More information is great. But if an airport is being taxed with a volume way above its normal capacity and as a result aid workers, doctors and nurses can’t get in, then I think we have gotten to the point where one good—information—is trumping another good—relief workers…to the detriment of the people we are trying to help.”

The solution, Scheiber thinks, is a so-called “disaster pool.” Comprising a limited number of reporters in country, the disaster pool would share information with news outlets in a similar manner that White House correspondents share “pool reports” with the dozens of journalists unable to attend a briefing. You can download an MP3 of the complete Scheiber interview here.

This might preclude scenes like those we used in this episode, of Anderson Cooper and Katie Couric aiding wounded children, but it may give networks more time for in-depth stories that discuss Haiti’s tumultuous history, the roots of its abject poverty and what day-to-day life was like for the average Haitian pre-earthquake.

Journalist Marc Cooper, characterizing the coverage as “myopic” and “disaster porn”, on his blog, wrote, “It's a totally legit news story for CNN or anyone else [to] zoom in on this or that dramatic and heart-rending rescue of one or another victim trapped in rubble. But every one of those stories is also a stark and rather sickening reminder of how the daily pre-earthquake deaths, starvation and deprivation were considered SO non-newsworthy.”

This reminds me of my own trip to Haiti in the fall of 2008, as part of a disaster response team after a series of hurricanes killed hundreds of people and badly damaged the city of Gonaïves. While the storms made headlines, the fallout apparently wasn’t on a large enough scale to warrant widespread news coverage. 

Looking back, what I remember most is the darkness. There is little electricity in Haiti, and the nighttime’s dim storefronts and weak candlelight gave the impression of a city that was a relic of another age.

Will Port-au-Prince once again become a forgotten city? As this article from the Columbia Journalism Review reminds me, there was once, and is likely to be again, only one full-time American journalist in Haiti.

How should we view the recent resurgence of Taliban activity in Pakistan?

Be afraid, very afraid.

That’s a common message voiced by media and political observers in recent weeks. Pakistan’s government could go the way of the Shah of Iran in 1979, writes the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Taliban threats to Pakistan’s leadership represent the worst global crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a RAND Corporation official tells the Financial Times.

And it’s hard not to be moved by the devastation occurring in Pakistani regions like the Swat Valley. Doctors Without Borders announced today that it was halting medical services to refugees in Swat due to escalating warfare.

But could all this fear of a Taliban takeover in Pakistan be blinding the U.S. to local realities? An Economist report notes that for all the Taliban’s repellent acts in Swat, the Pakistani military has engendered deep local hostility by its brutal strikes on civilian targets. Rather than pushing for further billions of dollars in military aid for Pakistan to stave off an unlikely Taliban takeover, U.S. leaders would do well to pay more attention to the shaping of local hearts and minds. Central Asia Institute, the education non-profit co-founded by Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson, is one example of a worthy U.S. effort to build rather than break human capital in Pakistan.

Watch the Global Pulse episode on Pakistan here.

This week, Global Pulse is covering the controversy surrounding last week's International Criminal Court decision to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Human rights activists hope the court's action, the first against a sitting head of state, will end the bloodshed that has flared in Darfur since 2003. But many Sudan watchers worry that the warrant could set off further tensions, including a resurgence of a decades-long, north-south civil war.

The Christian Science Monitor examines how Sudan's move this week to expel 13 international aid groups cuts Darfur's humanitarian effort in half, placing over 1 million people at risk for starvation. Likewise, BBC News predicts that rising desperation in Darfur could trigger renewed conflict in south Sudan, where rebel groups have long sought political recognition from the Sudanese government.

Meanwhile, guest columnists at the Huffington Post and the Washington Post call on the Obama administration to use the ICC warrant as justification for a stepped-up military campaign in Sudan. Today's kidnapping of 3 Doctors Without Borders workers in Darfur may further stoke the fire of the military interventionists.

Should the international community enforce ICC wishes and arrest Bashir, even if by military means? Or will enforcement of the court's wishes only lead to further humanitarian catastrophe?