“News biases relief in favor of certain disaster types and regions: for every person killed in a volcano disaster, 40,000 people must die in a drought to reach the same probability of media coverage. Similarly, it requires 40 times as many killed in an African disaster to achieve the same expected media coverage as for a disaster in Eastern Europe of similar type and magnitude.”

This, and other findings on media coverage of natural disasters are presented in the article “NEWS DROUGHTS, NEWS FLOODS, AND U.S. DISASTER RELIEF” by Thomas Eisensee and David Strömberg.

The article has also recieved some attention on the world politics blog The Duck of Minerva.