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In Ted Steinberg’s Smoke and Mirrors: The San Francisco Earthquake and Seismic Denial, the media is illustrated as a lying source to the disaster of San Francisco Earthquake in 1906. The “Earthquake of San Francisco” was quickly transformed into the “Fire of San Francisco” due to economic outcomes of the disaster. Steinberg makes good observations on the true desires for the businessman and all the companies benefiting from the “Fire”. Many people and businesses realized that fire damage could be covered by the insurance’s policies, therefore, making everyone deny the true disaster and blaming it on something else just for the benefit of it. The desire for profit goes so far that it completely ignores the death toll and the people who went missing and were never found.
The controversy of the media lying about the earthquakes in 1906 is similar to the issues we have now of the media lying about wars and which presidential candidate has the lead, it is a bit disappointing but the media always finds a way of lying about serious matters for profit. It seemed very wrong that the boosters lied about the earthquake just so citizens would not move out and settle somewhere else, was the benefit of profit really worth the lives of many innocent people? This chapter in American Disasters really shows what money can do and it also shows how far businessman will go just to maintain their profits and investments. The media applies differently to us than to the citizens of 1906 because they did not have the technology and ways of communication that we do now, it was really hard trying to find proof in that time but like mgandara mentions “people understand the risks but people today are more aware than ever before” and that is due to our massive forms of communication and our more advanced ways for predicting future disasters.
