Posted 3 years, 4 months ago mid-afternoon by oso
They say in the news business that one dead person on your block is worth 3,000 dead in a flood in India. It’s a gruesome, cynical calculation but undoubtedly one streaked with truth.
I have an annoying habit of comparing tragedy. A college student walks onto a college campus with two guns and shoots 32 people. That’s tragic. But is it as tragic as the 120 people who died in an explosion in a marketplace bombing that same day? A mining disaster in China’s Henan province, the death of steel workers in Tieling city? Violent dictatorial oppression in Zimbabwe? Getting acid thrown on your face? The deaths of protesters in Guinea-Conakry? The deaths of Ugandans of Indian descent just because of their ethnicity? Political assassinations in Armenia? Russia’s 260,000 orphans? And the standard forgotten tragedy reference, Darfur? Maybe so, maybe not, I’ve never learned the formula for quantifying calamity.
My other annoying habit is that, based on this meaningless measuring of apples and oranges, I insist that we should base our attention and mourning on consistence rather than personal sorrow.
It’s too easy to claim that Americans only care about American events. Or, more generally, that we all care about what happens in our own country more than some other country. But on Global Voices over the past couple days, I’ve realized that that’s not necessarily true. Everyone, in every country, is writing about the Virginia Tech shootings. This story has had a profound impact on the entire world and I’ve been trying to figure out why. Maybe there is something universally mysterious and intriguing about the archetypical black sheep killer. Or maybe it’s just because America is such a famous country and everything that happens there counts as news for the whole world. Or, it’s because of the nationalities and ethnicities of the victims and the killer: everyone, everywhere has some cousin or friend of a friend who is studying in the US, which makes the story globally tangible.
I think that’s probably all true. But I also think that it’s something else that has the whole world talking about the VT shootings. In this weekend’s NYT Magazine, Duncan Watts describes the hopeless efforts of media executives in their hunt to find the next smash success. The point of the article though is that you can’t predict success because success is based on success. Not until something is judged successful or important by enough people is it in a position to actually become successful or important. When I first saw Borat with Nathan and Rosario (before the movie was officially released, before the hype), I was sure it was going to be a flop. Let’s face it, that movie just isn’t very funny. So how to explain its wild success? What about Madonna? What about Justin Timberlake? Is their music really that much better than everyone else’s? Or do we love them because everyone else does? Because we know that if we put Madonna or Michael Jackson on the stereo at a party, every single person will know the lyrics, everyone will feel included? There are no concerns about taste or leaving someone out. Are Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mocking Bird so widely read because they’re the best or because they are so widely read?
At We Media Miami, I had an interesting conversation with Alberto Ibargüen, a former publisher of countless major newspapers and now President of one of the biggest supporters of citizen media. Ibargüen is clearly a fan of new media, but he admitted to me a certain nostalgia for the days when everyone read the same newspaper and everyone could reference the same stories at the (then-non proverbial) water cooler. These days we depend on so many and so varied sources of information that there is little chance our neighbors … or even our partners … are reading the same stories, listening to the same music, watching the same TV … I mean, YouTube videos. I had to agree with him.
Mexico, at least for those without satellite television, essentially has two channels: TV Azteca and Televisa. Teaching English to business managers in Monterrey, I knew that every day I would be able to reference something that happened on TV the night before and they would know what I was talking about. Nowadays, when my daily servings of information and infotainment come from thousands of different urls, I constantly find myself saying, “I’ll send you the link.” Not exactly a conversation starter is it?
I apologize in advance if this sounds cynical or cold-hearted, but we need stories like the Don Imus controversy and even the VT school shooting because they give us something to talk about. It allows us to form opinions along our worldviews and compare those views with those we agree with and those we don’t. Who knows what the next major story will be. All we can know is that there will be one.
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That’s a fine roundabout way of saying that in the awake of tragedy, the world is pushed together.
One thing that’s missing is the burning questions about Cho Seung-Hui. No one ever wonders what the intentions are of a suicide bomber. This misfit is a product of America, and that’s why (IMHO) it’s getting probed apart.
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What makes this event different is that it happened in a place where it was “unexpected” (I use the quotes because there seems to be a cycle of this happening in the US). When there are 90 murders in Newark in the first two months of this year it isn’t national news because we expect there to be murders there. Moreover, these types of events remind us of our vulnerability (which is what the media cashes in on – we want information to try to reassure ourselves).
Aside: One of the first media comments I heard was that they didn’t believe that thses actions were “terrorist related”. Now who hears about someone going into an American institution shooting people and then immediately thinks, “I wonder if it was terrorists?” That would be like hearing of an airplane bombing and thinking, “I wonder if that was an alienated and mentally ill student?” The comment, however, makes us realize that a terrorist could in fact do this.
As to the global reach of the story, it illustrates the fallibility of the US. These things keep happening and people wonder why.
I am not sure whether we “need” these stories because they give us soemthing to talk about. I believe they emerge because they reveal the imperfections (or the rotting and disintegrating core) of our society. But rather than using them as an opportunity to address the broader social issues, we get lost in the minutiae of the case itself to the point where we get sick of it and move on all together without having done anything at all.
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I have only followed this story in print.
I know the news anchors are not equipped with the appropriate skill set to discuss the impact of the images they are airing. I would prefer to see the video discussed by experts in the field of psychology or psychiatry.
Assembling an expert panel to discuss, the implications of the video and the effect it could have on the Asian community in the U.S. (because we are notorious in terms of ignorant backlash), and the public viewing it would be responsible journalism.
If as Tim Goodman wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle on 4/19 NBC has ushered in a new era of multimedia in news reporting: I hope that the new era will include discussion by the experts, preferably an assembled panel of diverse experts.
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Patri,
I think what I’m asking is why is the world pushed together for certain tragedies and not others. Or, for that matter, why are certain albums and books and movies made so famous while others aren’t? Is it because those tragedies are more tragic and those movies are the best or is there something else?
Xolo,
Isn’t a “tragedy” always unexpected? I’m not talking about the daily murders in X city. I mean the mining story in China, the 29 second grade students who died in a bus crash in Turkey, and the dozens of other unexpected tragedies that never find their way to print or broadcast.
I do think you’re right though, that it’s more than just mourning that has the whole world interested.
Lo,
For all my hating on the amount of media coverage dedicated to the story, I have to admit that I’ve been impressed with some of what I’ve seen and heard. Not by NBC, surprise surprise, but by bloggers and Pacific Time.
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I think the difference is pretty obvious: “That could have been me/my son/daughter”. I’m not going to die in a bombing in Baghdad unless my travel plans for the near future change pretty quick. I don’t think you even have to resort to the cynical calculations of the respective values of American lives and foreign lives – though people undoubtedly make those calculations. It’s simple – that crazy bastard could have shot me; this could happen anywhere at anytime. It’s not a comparison of bodies that makes a story a story or we’d still be talking about the horrificness of the tsunami. But there’s a huge difference between random destruction by nature and the random destructive capacity of humanity. Also, foreign media love to point out American flaws.
Your objectively wrong about Borat, btw. That shit is hilarious. Now return my calls.
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You call it an annoying habit, but it’s one of the reasons I like you. Perspective is important.
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I think U.S. American journalists are only allowed to say “tragedy” when it involves U.S. Americans
(Or possibly if it involves a lot of babies in another country, particularly if they look like they have Western European heritage)
I think the reason one song/artist/film becomes “better” than others is 90% a matter of the advertising budget (aren’t our tastes defined by successes from the past?). The purpose (business model) of mass media is to convey advertisers’ messages. And now that the news media at large (few exceptions like PBS/NPR/GV) are commercial ventures — the LA Times for example — it’s all about ratings affecting advertising dollars and the public eating it up as if the news broadcast was organized by God.
We’re told what to like by the corporate dollar. Which is what is so exciting about this online free-for-all. But again, the channels with the big budgets advertise websites that end up getting all the visits. ‘Round and ’round it goes…
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Keen observation. I still think the old, if-it-bleeds-it-leads maxim works, but interesting that these days there’s plenty of bloodshed around the world to report… yet we talk about the stuff that’s easy for the hens on The View and The Today Show to opine about.
Mainstream media’s still setting the tone and agenda, to be sure.
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In many ways your view sounds like the way a fad starts.
Someone wears funny shoes, because it is hard to gather information on all shoes someone else follows. Soon the shoes are everywhere and no longer funny. Once everyone has those shoes the crowd knows enough about them and some other fad slides in.
Is news just a fad at hyper speed?
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I suspect that the “international” interest in the Virginia Tech incident is far stronger in countries and regions which counted nationals/citizens among the victims. As it happens, these were some of the largest and most vocal regions in the world (South Asia, Middle East). US media penetration is also pretty significant in most parts of the world, so the story would also have been carried on CNN etc, creating a level of “interest” of sorts.
Not that the tiny speck of a country I live in is any example, but as soon as it was confirmed that Cleopatra Borel-Brown, a Trinidadian assistant coach who works at VA Tech, was safe, the story disappeared from the pages of our newspapers, and thoughts turned once again to local and regional concerns. As far as I can remember, the bulk of the blog coverage we’ve seen so far on Global Voices has been primarily from the “affected” regions, plus of course China, because the shooter was initially reported to be Chinese. Nothing so far from Latin America, Africa etc.
Though of course I could be wrong.