Tragedy, Race, & The Media

Three days ago, tragedy struck South Asia as a earthquake-induced tsunami rocked Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and other countries. My sympathies go to all of the victims in that region of the world. I write this, however, not in empathy for those who fell victim to these events, although I do express those feelings. I write to criticize the way the media has handled this and other disasters in the past.

Has anybody stopped to see the kind of coverage the events in South Asia are recieving? Case in point: CNN. Here are some headlines and their respective ledes:

Survivors describe tsunami horror

(CNN) -- Peter Heydemann of Chicago was vacationing in Thailand with his family when the tide began to slowly rise early Sunday. He watched from his hotel as the street below became flooded by what he thought was just an unusually high tide. Thinking the worst had passed, he walked down to investigate.

Eyewitnesses recount tsunami terror

Simon Clark, a 29-year-old photographer from London who vacationing in Thailand on Koh Ngai island near Krabi, told Reuters...
...
John Hyde, a Australian state lawmaker vacationing in Thailand, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television...
...
"People were getting swept along still on their motorbikes," Simon Morse, another Australian tourist, told the ABC...
...
Boree Carlsson, a 45-year-old Swede on vacation in Thailand, told Reuters...
...
P. Ramanamurthy, 40, a resident of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, told The Associated Press...
...
Security expert Will Geddes, vacationing in Phuket, told CNN...

American who survived tsunami tells of devastation

(CNN) -- A celebrity interior decorator vacationing in Sri Lanka said Monday that all he could see was "utter devastation" in the wake of a deadly tsunami that slammed the island.

Swedish boy found alone after tsunami reunited with dad

PHUKET, Thailand (AP) -- A Swedish toddler was reunited with his father Wednesday, days after being found alone in the aftermath of the deadly tsunamis that swept Asia.

American diver underwater during catastrophe

(CNN) -- An American woman who was scuba diving with her husband in Thailand as one of Sunday's tsunamis roared overhead said she was oblivious to the disaster until after they surfaced, her mother told CNN on Tuesday.

Tsunamis shatter celebrity holidays

Petra Nemcova -- who appeared on the cover of 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue -- was carried away with her boyfriend, the fashion photographer Simon Atlee, after a huge wave plowed into southern Thailand on Sunday.

Notice a trend? Granted, each of these stories appeal to different interests, but considering that, thus far, 80,000 people have died, I personally think these stories are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, CNN isn't completely at fault here. Legitimate issues, which include a lack of translators on the part of media agencies or even immediate access to European and other Western tourists, could be at play here. But again, thus far, 80,000 people have died!

And I am not alone in my assertion. uggabugga points out:

We were surprised to see on ABC's Good Morning America a segment about the children who have been victims of the tsunami. Total casualties are (currently) estimated to be 60,000. One third are children, or 20,000. The ABC report began with the usual talking head.

It was followed by four stories about affected children. They were all white Europeans. (Swedish, prob Swedish, Swedish, German) The segment ended with pan shots of native kids amongst general destruction, but they were not identified, nor were any details of their trauma reported.

He then posts this picture:

The real story isn't the ordeal that a Czech supermodel had to go through. The real story is the anguish that millions of brown people all over the Pacific Rim and the Indian Ocean are going through right now.

The real story is that a third of the casualties thus far are children; not European or American or Austrailian children, but children that belong to extremely large families because the life expectancy is so low in these countries that these families need to keep having them in order to maintain some semblance of economic stability within the household. That is why it is these areas that suffer so much from overpopulation, which only further lowers their life expectancies because these tropical environments breed diseases that spread to more people as densities increase; just look at the urban nightmare that Bangkok has become.

The real story is the fact that a country like Thailand is going to be hit hard, not because of the destruction to its labor market, or its manufactoring facilities, or its roads, or any other infrastructural aspect that is indicative of strong industry and a stable economic, it's because tourism is Thailand's main contribution to the global economy. Without it, Thailand faces serious hardship, and it's sad that that single industry drives the Thai economy. So, in these countries, I don't feel just for the dead and their families, but I feel for the citizens who will suffer in the years down the road.

I apologize if this seems a bit crass, but I wonder if these tourist destinations weren't victimized by the tsunami, if this event would recieve as much coverage as it is now. Of course, it would recieved some coverage; maybe for a few days or even a week or two. But would it get this much? I mean, how many people remember what happened in the Iranian city of Bam last year? A 6.3 earthquake rocked the city, reducing it to rubble and killing almost a third of the entire population: 30,000 people. Yet, particularly in America, it was a blip on the radar screen.

Africa is no strangler to death and destruction. Transportation problems in Africa alone kill thousands of people every year. Example, here are some headlines I got from a quick search at BBC:

Dozens die in Congo train crash
DR Congo boat tragedy 'kills 200'
Nigeria pile-up kills scores
Twelve dead in Senegalese train crash
Train crash kills 11 in Congo-Brazzaville
Moroccan train crash kills 35
40 die in Zimbabwe train crash
SA train crash kills 11
Hundreds killed in Tanzania train crash
Ugandan bus crash kills 70
Nigerian train crash kills 12
Kenyan train crash kills 32
100 feared dead in fuel explosion
Nigeria pipeline blaze 'kills 26'
30 dead in South African crash
Dozens killed in Lagos fuel blast
Lagos blasts leave 600 dead
Hundreds lost as Senegal ferry sinks
South Africa bus crash kills 22
Zambia bus crashes kill over 100
32 die in Tanzania bus crash
22 drown in Khartoum bus crash
Swaziland bus crash kills 28
Fifty dead in Nigerian bus crash
Kenya bus crash kills seventy
Forty dead in Rwanda crash
Kenyan bus collision kills 100
Forty-five die in Kenya crash

Where is the coverage for this carnage? I should note that all of these articles refer to unique events (check them for yourselvs), and all of them occured only within the last four years. I could have posted many many more of these links, but I got tired of copying and pasting headlines. And these are just events in which body counts were listed within the headline. Many more articles had the body counts in the ledes. We don't even blink when 800,000 people are killed in a period of one-month! My point is, we as a Western society are too willfully ignorant of the plight of the rest of the world. As technology expands and communication becomes easier and easier, making the world smaller and smaller, our apathy towards the rest of the world is going to someday bite us in the ass.

But is this a question about race? I assert that it is. We as a society sympathize with those most like us. As much as we opine about how tragic the earthquake and the tsunami were, we are still detached from it. That's why the tsunami is recieving this kind of coverage; it affected many lives of people that like us (I'm using "us" in a general sense). When When an Elizabeth Smart is kidnapped, it makes national headlines. When an Alexis Patterson is kidnapped, the media doesn't want any part of it. If your name is Laci Peterson or Lori Hacking or Dru Sjodin, millions of people sympathize with your plight. But if your name is Porcha O'Neal, then you are just another blip on the radar screen. Thus is our problem. I implore all of us to be more aware of the world. and to be culturally sensitive and knowledgable. A good place to start is the BBC. When I took my first African history class with Dr. Pamela Scully (who is at Emory University now), I was required to read the Africa section of the BBC every day. I don't check it as frequently as I did in the past, but it gives some global perspective.