Yesterday morning, I turned on CNN, as I have been doing several times a day since Monday morning, to catch the latest press conference from Virginia Tech. As a freshman at a fairly large University in the Northeast, Monday's events have left me more then a little bit shaken, and as the relentless march of the academic calendar heads into final project and exam season, there has been a visible tension on everyone's faces for the last four long days.
Awaiting the start of the press briefing, word came through that at least 60 people were dead in massive bombings in Baghdad. The final death count would prove to be at least 171 according to the Times. The news merited about 20 seconds on CNN, before the network cut to commercial and then back to inane patter and speculation about the VT shootings. Today, Monday's shootings merit 8 above-the-fold stories on CNN.com, while Wednesday's bombings go completely unmentioned anywhere on the homepage. From the Times, the bombings get a small link under the World section below the fold this afternoon.
We have no profiles of the Baghdad bombing victims. We have few harrowing live interviews with survivors. There are no press briefings, and there will be no "after-incident report" on the five bombs that exploded in Baghdad Wednesday. No one will ask why the warning signs weren't properly heeded, whether the police and the military did all that they could.
We maintain this fiction that our world is becoming more and more flat, and yet... Why is a Virginia Tech student's life worth more to me than an Iraqi's? Why is a Virginia Tech student's life worth more to me than a Darfurian's? I don't know, but it is. We keep up this fiction that we live in a flat world, and yet 33 horrific deaths in Blacksburg reverberate, and rightly so, for days while 171 deaths in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Sudan, and countless other deaths from preventable diseases and all the other heartbreaking causes in the world receive just moments of our attention in this round, round world. This world of ours, it's not flat at all.
Posted by zach at April 19, 2007 1:17 PMI don't think it's so much about who's life is worth more than whose, but people dying in Iraq is not particularly new information. There's a war on there; you expect casualties. The Va Tech thing is sort of a surprise, so it's "more newsworthy."
Posted by: Eric Shepherd on April 19, 2007 2:46 PM... and I'm positive there are more people dying on Aids each day in Africa than in VT and Bagdad together.
The news measure importance in death_toll/distance. "Distance" happens to be a fuzzy measure, as 20 American civil workers killed in Bagdad would sure have a different distance to an US audience than 20 Iraqi civilists.
That's tough, but that's how news work.
Posted by: Axel Hecht on April 19, 2007 3:37 PM"Why is a Virginia Tech student's life worth more to me than an Iraqi's?"
It's a little thing called identity. You're an American. Probably a white Christian American. You relate to people like you. It's natural and there's nothing wrong with it.
America is not an idea. It's not a Universal Truth. It's a nation with boundaries and real citizens and a unique culture and common language. It's worth preserving. Especially to those who are of its historical majority heritage. Because when it's gone, it's gone.
Multiculturalism is a liberal lie and it will destroy us. It will destroy the West; Britain has nearly completed its own suicide.
It's not wrong to be white. It's not wrong to be Christian. We need a place too.
Posted by: Ran on April 19, 2007 4:44 PMIraq is in a state of war. Virginia Tech isn't.
BTW, I do remember seeing a (slight) mention of the bombings on CNN's homepage.
Posted by: A on April 20, 2007 8:28 AMAs a guy who used to teach media i could go on and on at length, but will try and keep it short. In part, the media coverage you're seeing is actually more based around the fact of media ownership and the difference between domestic and foreign events.
Not to mention the sensationalism that can be spun out of this. Wait for the next month where some kind of moral panic will ensue: What kind of country do we have where kids can buy guns. At least one xenophobic story will come out etc.
Posted by: gary on April 20, 2007 7:46 PM> Monday's events have left me more then a little bit shaken
Why?
"Why" may seem like a silly question, but how many students died of natural causes and accidents across the USA in the year prior to the shootings? I'd be willing to bet it would be more than 33, but you weren't feeling shaken before.
On the domestic stories getting more coverage thing, there is an american news program called "World News Tonight". I've seen in twice, and I think in both programs combined there was only a single story that wasn't about america or about americans abroad.
Posted by: Ian Thomas on April 21, 2007 10:29 AMI don't think it's a matter of importance, or culture, at least when it comes down to a personal reaction. We can't do much for people all the way around the world, but we can certainly do a hell of a lot for the people that are near us. This becomes less true with charities and the internet, but let's talk about it in a basic human nature sense.
We can't take care of everyone in the world, and even if we could we couldn't do a good job of it. We have to be responsible for the people near us. It's just that so many people seem to use that as an excuse to just not care at all. I think most of those people were raised in fairly unloving environments, surrounded with comments of "life isn't fair" and "if you don't look after yourself, nobody will."
Posted by: Majken on April 30, 2007 5:39 PMWeak and wrong argument; Flat need not mean there are no walls (which again are vertically flat!)
The article reads:
"We maintain this fiction that our world is becoming more and more flat, and yet... Why is a Virginia Tech student's life worth more to me than an Iraqi's?"
Who says so? There were many deaths of innocent Iraqis in Saddam's regime and it was as important as any other deaths and so US went to nail down the murderer & the regime - when the illness is at an extreme stage, operations performed lasts longer and more blood loss does happen;
Correct me if I am wrong.