In the region of Pakistan hit by the earthquake 90% of all homes have been destroyed which is not good ....... but just we just want to see the small coffins of the dead children in Kenya paraded through the streets so we can have a little weep.
How many tears will be shed for the hundreds of poor Pakistanis that have lost their homes/parents/siblings/children/lives.
Our news is picked for us ..... we'll weep when they tell us and at what they show us.

Putin - that is exactly my point. The media decide what is important and what is real, we are just the ignorant viewers, we will respond to what we see, death to Iran they are building nuclear weapon, or are they? How do you know, oh yes you saw it on the telly, it must be true then.

The media gives the people what they want. People are to blame for not expressing an interest in the other stories.

If you don't send a reporter to cover the story how can we show an interest in it. Capitalism in the media distorts the news, we just can't get enough terrorism.
There is a link here between the violent atrocities that are committed and the media coverage they receive. It's a symbiotic partnership.

Capitalism? Huh?

Earthquakes are natural. They happen and nothing we do can change that. Terrorist attacks are not. They are mankind at its most base.

even if a reporter took an interest in a new island being created it would be blocked by the editor. islands are supposed to be disappearing under the current propaganda. now if an island that once existed disappears under water, for any reason, that will be headline news. or it would have been a year or two ago. seems like they are slowly starting to give up on the global warming narrative.

@blankflag - you talk utter nonsense sometimes. How do we know the island has been created? It is recorded by a journalist whose editor didn't pull the story. How does the reality tally with your assertion that "..if a reporter took an interest in a new island being created it would be blocked by the editor."

Guess what? Lots of bad things happen every day that you never hear about. The media covered both the Earthquake and the Kenyan incident. Kenya was covered for longer for several reasons.

Firstly the event lasted for several days instead of several minutes, and it happened somewhere easy to get to. You cannae change the laws of physics, even if you work for the Sun.

Secondly the British media puts a priority on British news, and Brits were involved in Kenya. It is right and proper that we should hear more about it.

Thirdly, as Draug says, we like to think we can do something about the acts of man. Acts of God are largely beyond are control. We don't like hearing about things we can do nothing about.

The media is told to broadcast certain events over others. Everyone knows that. Drone strikes won't get coverage because the Supreme Ruler doesn't wish them to appear on television.

I don't know how the earthquake and the events in Kenya are even comparable though. Both were (are) given coverage all the same.

@ bo

Maybe that's true in Yankyland, but I've heard numerous reports on drone strikes and plenty of discussions about them over the past year or so.

You won't hear them from the United States. Maybe there are a few big media sources in the US (Al Jazeera, occasionally Fox) that will broadcast it but CNN and NBC and others alike will rarely talk about a drone strike, and if they do, the story is that they killed a terrorist, not that 25 others died for no reason and that the terrorist was only suspected and not convicted of anything.

Careful, Bo. You're wadin' into that there un'Murican water.

I love this country so much that I want to fix the fuck-up it's becoming, Draug.

thats because earthquakes arent some jackass's fault

"Secondly the British media puts a priority on British news, and Brits were involved in Kenya. It is right and proper that we should hear more about it. "

Ugh jesus christ octavious will you ever stop being so parochial lol

It's one thing to explain why the press does what they do, quite another to hit up the naturalistic fallacy and say that it's okay

Why doesn't that justify it, Thucy? He's simply stating that Britain has interests and potentially a significant number of people in Kenya. That's not parochial at all.

There's no reason British people should be more concerned with the lives of British people than say Kenyans or French or Pakistanis. To the extent that their media reflects the opposite, it both perpetuates and reflects an unfortunate moral priority.

The only reasons people are interested in earthquakes are that they are directly affected or like the one that caused the tsunami in Japan that took out a nuclear reactor plant it causes other problems.

Kenya and Pakistan were both British colonies.

The world is international, Thucy. Every developed country pays attention to every developed country. The only exception is the USA where people have some unfounded entitlement under their skin and think they can operate without any knowledge of anything going on in the rest of the world.

People like reading about conflict. They like stories with caricatured 'good guys' and 'bad guys' and having someone to blame. This is why people read more about terrorism. They don't care about the people more (they don't care about them all), but it's more like an episode of their favorite tv show than a depressing earthquake.

"There's no reason British people should be more concerned with the lives of British people than say Kenyans or French or Pakistanis."

Get real kid!

Thucy imagine you are the editor of a daily newspaper and you have two stories to choose from, but only room for one more (on the front page at least). Both stories are about terrorist attacks, in the first story happens in Russia and 100 Russians die. The second story occurs just down the road at the local shopping centre and 50 Americans die. Which story will you choose to put on the front page assuming you have only one spot?

Would it be immoral for the editor to choose the second story?
Alternatively imagine another scenario where there are two local newspapers facing the same dilemma. The first newspaper prints the Russian story on the front page. The second prints the American story.
A reader walks into a store and sees the two newspapers side by side. He has only enough change to buy one newspaper. He chooses one with the terrorist attack on Americans. Is his choice immoral?

I'm not saying I don't understand it spyman, I'm just saying that it's wrong and will hopefully one day be a thing of the past.

I'm also not trying to completely discount the concept of local news, lol, don't get me wrong here. What I am mostly railing against is the over-tendency in this direction that begins to imply moral judgment, à la Natalie Holloway.

When one person of your nationality dies in a tragedy where 1000s have died and only that person gets a specialized obituary in a prominent position in your press.... you have a problem, because you are blatantly humanizing them only and comparatively ignoring the human tragedy of the others.

I think you see what I'm getting at, you just like arguing me, which I'm used to at this point from you guys. So I'll just leave it there.

For example the New York Times seemed to think it was okay to publish photos of unidentified black corpses at Westgate while the crisis was still unfolding, which is something they would never ever have done for American victims of violence.

Imagine finding out your loved one had been killed by seeing their unidentified corpse in an NYT slideshow. what the fuck.

"I'm just saying that it's wrong and will hopefully one day be a thing of the past."

Maybe one day the world will no longer have the concept of nationality (maybe in a thousand years). But unless we change the very fundamentals, at a genetic level, of the way human socialize with each other, we are always going to people who are closer to us, who we care more about. That is why you seem to be rallying against - the notion that we feel closer to some people that we do others. Isn't this human nature? That we take more interest in some people than we do other, and are more concerned with some people than others.

"For example the New York Times seemed to think it was okay to publish photos of unidentified black corpses at Westgate while the crisis was still unfolding, which is something they would never ever have done for American victims of violence."

A US newspaper might not choose to publish such photo of US victims because it might be too close to the bone. But another paper who doesn't have an American readership can publish those photos though because there is less risk of upsetting relatives.

It's human nature that can be demonstrably mitigated by the instutitions we create for ourselves.

The fact that I can get in a car and drive 3000 miles west, get out in a town I've never heard of till I stumbled across it, walk into a restaurant, be served a burger kindly, and strike up a conversation about any range of common cultural traits, is nothing short of remarkable.

We have created families we call nations. The effect is even more remarkable when abroad - anyone who has been far from home and meets a rare countryman knows the feeling of kinship.

And yet this is artificial and totally contrary to this "human nature" you describe which would dictate that the stranger has nothing in common with us on a biological level.

There is nothing other than our own culture, which has already changed drastically throughout history, and for the better, stopping us from treating every other person in the world in this way. I personally believe that it will probably take a common adversary, organic or abiotic, to truly cement the common bonds of humanity, but I also think it is also possible, though perhaps harder, to achieve this by creating worldwide institutions that affirm our common humanity explicitly and convincingly.

Again, I am not trying to say that local interest is immoral in itself - of course the residents of New Orleans are those most interested by the after effects of Katrina, for instance. They are the ones that live here.

However what is amazing is that people in Alaska undoubtedly know more about that event that happened thousands of miles away in a completely unrelated biome in a very different culture and demographic zone than their own, whereas residents of the Yucatan, much closer and more similar in many respects, were comparatively less affected.

You see the point under this, as I know you have all along of course - nationality is totally arbitrary and meaningless and should be phased out as a moral concern.

This moral fact does not change the reality that it IS a moral concern to many today (the all important normative/descriptive distinction again), but it also does not change the fact that we should be trying to phase it out.

We are, at present, and that is good, but it is up to us to keep ushering it along. It's a collective action thing, and certainly not inevitable.

"A US newspaper might not choose to publish such photo of US victims because it might be too close to the bone. But another paper who doesn't have an American readership can publish those photos though because there is less risk of upsetting relatives."

That my friend is some ridiculous apologism right there. There is no excusing what NYT did. Those corpses could have been Americans for all they knew, and this is 2013 - anyone can read the New York Times.

"That my friend is some ridiculous apologism right there. "

To be honest I don't really know what is right or wrong about which pictures should or should not be published. Maybe the newspaper was wrong to publish those pictures at this time. Or maybe they were right to because it makes the situation more real.

Should dead bodies ever be photographed and published? What are the rules? (you don't have to answer that as it might take us too far away from your main point. And if you think it was insensitive I'll accept your view point).

Crazy Thucy is back.

I for one am delighted to know that if I, or one of my friends of family, was travelling and some kind of shit happened (taken hostage, say) that the British media would likely report it. That regardless of similar, or worse, events happening to Chinese or Russian citizens in other parts of the world, the journalists in Old Blighty would make a Brit their priority make make sure he was given air time. It is good to know that 60 odd million people back home will be made aware of the situation, that some would feel strongly enough about it to make a fuss, and that the government would take action.

I can't see this as anything other than a good thing, and it is equally good that when a Canadian or Indian citizen is in the same boat their respective nations will do the same for them.

Now, I fully understand Thucy's point of view. His argument is quite seductive from certain ideological perspectives. But the trouble is if some poor sod gets kidnapped and everyone is reported on equally, there is not a chance in hell that he would make the news over the many other disasters happening across the world. No one would know, no one would fight for him, he would be forgotton.

Thucy's idea sounds good, and in a world where unfortunate incidents are much rarer it would be good, but in our reality it would fail. The practical result would be real harm befalling significant numbers of people. As such I am morally opposed to such an idea and, if it ever looked likely of being adopted, would fight tooth and nail to stop it. Fortunately, it never will.