ST. BONAVENTURE (May 10) – Brian Williams of NBC lands in Heathrow, London, and gets off the plane to cover the royal wedding. He checks his Blackberry after his flight for an update on the storms in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Williams sees the death toll hit 83 and continue rising. As he leaves the airport the number of deaths updated to 172. Before reaching central London he directs the driver to get off the highway. Williams got back on a plane and headed to Alabama to cover the tragedy that would soon dominate NBC’s newscast.
The tornadoes that ripped through the Southeast on April 27 covered news channels from April 25 to May 1, accounting for 15 percent of news coverage, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism News Coverage Index.
The earthquake in Japan and powerful tsunami on March 11, as reported by The New York Times, killed nearly 20,000 people according to PEJ. The story of the catastrophe in Japan accounted for more than three-quarters of airtime on broadcast and cable news channels
