Are pictures worth a thousand words for China and Burma ?

A striking recent example of this has been the unfolding humanitarian disaster of the Burma cyclone. Figures of 150,000 dead and twice that many displaced were being reported and yet for weeks the only pictures reaching us were of Buddhist monks tidying up trashed temples and shaky video grabs of flooded paddy fields taken from overflying aircraft. The lack of internal media combined with lack of access to both foreign media and aid agencies meant that it was almost impossible to get any pictures that would do justice to the true scale of the disaster.

Eventually some quite shocking but poor quality images reached us. The Guardian published the picture of a dead family laid out in front of their house across its centre spread. A disturbing but powerful image which in its detail symbolised the suffering and destruction that was taking place in Burma

In contrast to the Burmese military Junta the Chinese authorities have displayed unprecedented openness in the reporting of their recent earthquake. With 60,000 dead so far this is another terrible disaster and has received massive newspaper coverage due in part to the access that media organisations have received and therefore the still and moving pictures that have been available.

A cynic might suggest that with all the anti Chinese feeling inflamed by the Olympic torch tour the Chinese authorities have seen this disaster as a smokescreen to remove Tibet and human rights from the headlines. It is hard to find any pictures at all of the 1976 earthquake that raised the Northern Chinese city of Tangshan ( with up to 750,000 dead this was the second worst ever earthquake in history) and yet this week we have pictures of the Chinese Vice Premier scrambling over the debris in Sichuan Province personally directing the relief effort.

Obviously the frustration of picture editors is nothing at all compared to the trauma of the victims of these natural disasters, however without pictures the sad reality is that the millions dead, dying and homeless in Burma and China will not receive the coverage that such dramatic and terrible events deserve.