Another twist in the apparent media bias treating the disasters of China compared to that of Myanmar is the current push to question the value of the 3 days of mourning called by the dictatorship for the losses of Cyclone Nargis. While it is true that it follows late, and is second to the 3 days called for the Sichuan earthquake, this amount of questioning was absent when the Chinese authorities made their announcement.

Or rather, who did Shari Villarosa speak to? Shari Villarosa is formally the USA Chargé d'Affaires for their Embassy in Rangoon since 2005. Some news outlets have called her in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis the "de facto USA ambassador to Myanmar". During my introduction to Managing News targeting the tracking of disasters I already knew she was one the names I wanted to tag in the system. But I didn't need to: Managing News picked her name up automatically and promoted it to the to the front of the tag cloud. I knew I had to track her because as soon as all media outlets were talking of 100,000 deaths there was no other source but her. Ms. Villarosa had thrown that figure, referring to an unnamed NGO working in Myanmar, and that was the single source of the figure: unconfirmed, unquestioned... Shari had just said it.

And indeed, unfortunately the Cyclone Nargis aftermath is shaping up to be one of the worst catastrophes seen in the region. Although it is likely that we will read plenty of accounts pointing to the magnitude of the natural event, like most others the disaster is fueled by poverty, repression, and the use of a vulnerable geography. However, the emerging picture is right now is tragic and convoluted, and will predictable remain that way for days.

Early reports around Cyclone Nargis that hit Myanmar last Saturday point to tremendous building destruction and around 350 death. But something does not feel quite right in this figure. While fairly ugly, these numbers do not correlate very well with the type of news flow that is received after cyclones, or most important the way that news come from Myanmar. Either this is a slow news day and this is being picked up to fill the front pages, or unfortunately, there is something much bigger going on, and we might be reading very soon figures of a catastrophe of much bigger proportions.