CURRENT EVENTS
The Media and the Missing Submersible
Selective sympathy and our biased perspective on tragedy
When I was younger, I had this illusion that what the news media covered was always important. I assumed that the stories that made their way to the TV screens were the ones that people most needed to hear about. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve slowly come to the realization that our news rarely centers around our planet’s most critical issues. Our attention is fleeting, and the reality is that so often our eyes just shift toward what’s most shocking.
The media frenzy that’s surrounded a missing submersible lost within the Atlantic ocean is a prime example of our disparate focus. The round-the-clock media coverage that’s been given to the rescue efforts appears more like an attempt to capitalize on spectacle than an earnest attempt to inform the public.
The thorough and utterly speculative descriptions of what life in the Titan must have been like had grown gratuitous by the third hour of perpetual broadcast. The somber voices and crocodile tears that accompanied nearly every segment on the matter was just part of the media circus. To consider the sheer amount of attention the issue has been given, it’s easily forgotten that the loss experienced was hardly more consequential than a car…
