Affirmative Duties.

Most analysis of media coverage of disaster has a normative edge. This paper outlines a philosophical basis for establishing normative standards for news coverage of natural hazards and human-based risk. It begins with a top-down, or system-oriented, epistemological approach to disasters and risk. By employing this epistemology, a new professional standard of excellence, the journalist as mitigation watchdog, emerges. Focusing on mitigation promotes narratives that acknowledge the shadow of the future and report on human emergent cooperative behavior. Both are linked to human flourishing through Nussbaum's theory of capabilities. The goal is to provide a framework that specifies how professional performance might be improved and explains why some news reports are exemplary and others deserve professional censure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]