A great selection of programming on television last night. A few good movies and some other bits and pieces. However SBS stopped broadcasting their normal programmes.
Why would they stop their normal programming on Boxing Day? Because many thousands of people have lost their lives and millions have lost their homes. Perhaps the question should be why didn’t the other stations suspend normal programming.
On September the 11th, 2001, every television station in Australia immediately shut down their normal programming to focus on the horrific events of that day. It was the right thing to do because that act of terrorism killed thousands and had far reaching consequences for the world.
While never wishing to diminish the scale and gravity of that day, I’m wondering why there is not the same concern for the fact that many times the amount of people have lost their lives with the earthquake and the related tidal waves.
This event has devastated populations in many countries and the death toll is sure to go above the current estimate of 12 000.
And what’s with the commercial TV stations here in Australia during their brief news updates being so concerned as whether any Aussies are among the dead? Are we only supposed to grieve this massive loss of life if Australians die?
What is wrong with us when life goes on as normal as an event of this size unfolds around the world? Am I just being cynical in wondering if we are not giving this tragedy the attention it deserves because most of the people touched by the event don’t look like us?
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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Agree Rodney. Its a tradgedy of proportions much greater tha 9/11. We do need to respond – particularly in view of the words we speak and sing at Christmas.
Why is it unlike 9/11 in terms of media coverage?:
1 Because it is a natural disaster not man initiated
2 Because 9/11 was seen as a trigger for a declaration of War
3 The coverage was hardly as spectacular.
Could be really cynical and say that there wasn’t any live pictures of what was happening…
To be more cynical you’d say it wasn’t Westener’s!
Imagine if it’d happened in New York?
The effect is called ‘McClurg’s Law’ and states, roughly, that as far as the media is concerned, one death in your town/city is worth (roughly) 5 in your region, 10 in your country, 25 in the US and Britain , 100 in Europe, 1000 in Asia, and 10000 in the Third World. Or something like that.
Yes, I have often wondered why there is so much emphasis on how many (insert local country here) people have died when the total death toll is many thousand times more?
Reminds me of a Monty Python sketch where the same news item was read a number of times, but each time introduced differently, such as “and now the news for cats” or “and now the news for parrots”. Each time it stated that thousands of people had died, but none of the creatures mentioned in the introduction were injured.