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This article focuses on the depiction of sufferers and their helpers in newspaper reports of disasters, to examine the extent to which they are depicted as active or passive agents. The implications of the ways they are depicted are considered in the light of theoretical discussions on audiences' moral distance from sufferers and in the light of previous empirical research. A content analysis of UK press coverage of the South Asia earthquake in October 2005 and the July 2005 London bombings, provides the basis for a comparative study of how agency is depicted by the media. The results indicate that the agency of sufferers was depicted more frequently in the former than in the latter case. The results are discussed in the light of the importance attributed in the literature to the depiction of agency in constructing sufferers as humane and, on the basis of this empirical research, show that it may not be as significant as has been suggested. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]