The New York Times
The world’s news media scrambled to enter Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Wednesday, hours after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake decimated the capital city.
By Wednesday evening, about 24 hours after the earthquake, two of the nations three network evening news anchors were live on television, barely, in Port-au-Prince. Reporters and photographers for major newspapers had also reached the city.
In some cases, reporters were arriving in Haiti ahead of international relief organizations. When the “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric arrived at the Port-au-Prince airport around 2 p.m. Wednesday, “there were few signs of the international aid in evidence,” she said on CBS. “There was one Coast Guard C-130 and one U.N. tank in front of the airport but that was about it.”
In the city’s downtown, she said she encountered “shattered buildings, concrete all blown to pieces; buildings were simply eerie shells of their former selves.” More…