I’m going to make up a stat, but I’m guessing it won’t be too far off the mark. I’m going to claim the mainstream media dedicated 17 times the coverage to the loss of those 5 would-be adventurers in a submersible in the North Atlantic than they did to the drowning of those 500 refugees from that overcrowded trawler off the coast of Greece. We’re told there are no bodies left to be found from the implosion of the Titan, while at least one Greek fisherman has already reported finding a dead baby in his net.
No one denies there’s something obscene about the latter. But what about the asymmetry of the coverage? None of the 500 had faces, let alone names. The 5 had both. All 500 were brown. Mind you, so were 2 of the 5. But to be fair they were also rich.
The mainstream media is a business. It doesn’t pander, it caters. So the obscenity, if obscenity it be, is ours. But the asymmetry also punctuates a point I’ve made elsewhere, but to little avail. The mattering relation requires a to-whom. As, therefore, does Black Lives Matter. Given how little that refugee lives matter to most of us, whether we’re Black or white or brown ourselves, it shouldn’t surprise us how little Black Lives Matter to most of us, whether we’re Black or white or brown ourselves.
Is any of this obscene? People in glass houses … So I try to “Judge not lest …”
Categories: Editorials, Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
The mainstream media is less focused on catering to the selective empathy of their audience (though that plays a role), and more emboldened by the opportunity to make a show. Entertain. Hollywood, mainstream media, it’s all showbiz baby. What made the Titan submersible incident so primed and perfect for obscene coverage is not the billionaires, but rather the perceived ticking time bomb. Will they survive? What are they thinking/doing down there? Will we find them? Will we find them in time? Maybe they are already dead…This is the stuff that inspires media frenzies and oftentimes mediocre thrillers that earn relatively impressive returns. What would the reaction be if the FIRST headlines were “5 billionaires die in catastrophic submersible implosion” rather than “Submersible carrying 5 billionaires is missing”? No one would care. It’s no fun! Remember the missing Thai soccer team? That garnered just as much coverage as the Titan.
The refugee story is insurmountably tragic and horrific. Unfortunately, that doesn’t inspire people to look past its mundanity. And isn’t that even more depressing?
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Yes, I think you nailed it!
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