General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA plane crash kills 2. Massive coverage. A train derailment incinerates dozens, very little
news coverage by the U.S media. OK, Lac Megantic isn't SF, but it's not in the back of beyond. It's right over the border. Hey, reporters, you can catch a flight to Montreal and rent a car there. This disaster will go down as one of the worst rail disasters in North America in decades and decades.
And I have to say, I don't get the disinterest here on DU either given the real possibility that this could happen in the Northeast U.S. all too easily, and given the implications for the transport of oil and for regulation of rail transport.
And here's why it could happen all too easily in the Northeast: 1) terrible infrastructure. 2) The huge increase in the amount of oil now transported by rail (something like 28,000 times more since 2009) 3.) Tanker cars that are not safe 4) These trains run through dozens of towns and cities.
Skittles
(153,193 posts)it might invoke, you know, REGULATIONS
suffragette
(12,232 posts)And for all the reasons Cali was noting in the OP.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)NoOneMan
(4,795 posts)I thought the Canadian life really rallied on the market up until recently when a big scare cause a massive soul market sell off. It really comes down to where what soul stimulative policies the central breeders are running I guess.
bluedigger
(17,087 posts)NoOneMan
(4,795 posts)I mean, damn man....how sad. They have to fix the runway? Bummer man.
Oh wait, doesn't this imply there isn't an end of the world at the top of the Washington border? There are other countries?
bluedigger
(17,087 posts)Which, when weighed against the possibility of total out of the blue man made disaster, the media has no clue how to deal with it.
noamnety
(20,234 posts)1. Most of us relate to flying more than being near a railroad - and most have had some at least passing nervousness about it. So the media can do its sensationalizing thing, which is what it does best.
and 2. The plane thing doesn't bring up difficult questions. We can point a finger at a faulty mechanic or a faulty pilot, the story gets wrapped up neatly. The transport of hazardous materials, of crude, that's a whole other issue the corporate media doesn't want to debate.
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)... it leads
cali
(114,904 posts)Response to cali (Original post)
Post removed
onethatcares
(16,185 posts)Yesterday.
I caught the blurb in the TampaBayTimes.
The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)I was on a plane less than 24 hours after the crash.
I spent lunch at SLC airport watching coverage of the crash.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Well, maybe ....
Scuba
(53,475 posts)I'm sure many Canadians agree.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)"We don't have the massive budgets we once had, and so we are forced to cover news that happens within a major media outlet, so those "news feeds" can be routed over to the local audience." In this case, San Francisco NBC can have its reporters do coverage, and their coverage will get sent on to Omaha, and Denver and Chicago, etc.)
The Sacramento news station that we get in our area, they were covering a small fire that was burning up 200 acres. Meanwhile, a fire in my area had burned up more than 6,000 acres. Not a mention.
I kept placing calls, and they finally did a five minute piece on the larger fire. The story was told from the results of a phone call with one of the National Forestry agency people. they still didn't send out crews or anything.
laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)Just goes to show we're not really getting 'real' news anymore - just 'convenient and cheap' news.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)My household has basically quit watching the news, except for more extraordinary situations. (Massive earthquakes, fires that affect us or family and friends, a major political scandal.) the news we see advertised while we watch a few TV shows is such nonsense as (And I wish I could say I am making it up), "Tonight at 11Pm. Learn from our reporters whether the iPod or Drone have more advantages for you."
democrank
(11,104 posts)laundry_queen
(8,646 posts)I don't get it. This is by far a greater disaster with regards to human life.
octoberlib
(14,971 posts)Agree completely.
malaise
(269,157 posts)all of Canada is in the back of beyond.
A plane crash also killed ten people in Alaska - have you seen coverage?
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)I've lived close to the Canadian border most of my life and I often wondered why we'd get very little news from Vancouver or Canada as a whole. It was like it or Canada wasnt there or something. I think they want to keep us isolationist and ignorant flag wavers.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)burnodo
(2,017 posts)because this is the only place I've seen anything about it
Don't watch tv, so can't help you there.
burnodo
(2,017 posts)but usually if a story is making the rounds, I'll hear about it here and there. The SF crash was all over everywhere like it was the Second Coming. This train crash? Not so much.
TheMadMonk
(6,187 posts)What you're really saying, is that the local news services aren't packaging it up into the same convenient little bites as the Kardashian's latest heels in the air adventure.
MH1
(17,600 posts)I heard about it on the radio today. I saw a thread here and commented.
But I also agree with the first comment. I think the corporate media is less interested in covering a story that puts a bad light on fossil fuels and how they're transported. But it's not right to say it hasn't been covered at all in the mainstream media - I've seen lots of stories. Just not as much as the SF crash.
burnodo
(2,017 posts)Oil companies: "Hey, NBC, CBS, ABC...want our ad dollars? Don't report oil spills. Mum's the word!!"
gopiscrap
(23,765 posts)my mom warned me about the attitudes in the US before we immigrated.
Igel
(35,356 posts)Lots of people have flown through San Fran. Few have been through Lac Megantic. More people fly than ride on freight trains. So familiarity doesn't cut it.
Lots of people want gasoline and oil products but don't want pipelines. Pipelines, bad, nasty, evil. So the stuff gets shipped by rail? That's no good. If railroads are dangerous, pipelines ... okay? Oops. Back off, there. Got no huge eco angle.
Ah, let's blame lack of regulations. We need more regulations in this country to make railways safe ... for going from one place in Canada to another? No, no soapbox, no Big Story. Most Americans think of Canada as paradise for regulations.
The hotshot deaths. Forest fires, clean-cut young men with young families, nice human interest angle. Lac Megantic's downtown was trashed, but most of the dead seem to have been at a bar. Who were they? Uh, not identified. Do we have an emotional hook into them for MSM's viewship? Nuh-uh. A day or two later, and we still don't have a personal interest angle going.
What's the hook? Why should we care? Bad things happen everywhere. This might be important to people that live up in the frozen NE, near the Canadian border. What--all 28 of them? Even the Bangladesh factory collapse was a heinous disaster with an important hook: American brand-name label merchandise was made there, so we Americans are in some sense responsible. But a shipment of oil and natural gas on its way to Nova Scotia?
They got nothing. It's like many scores of horrible things that happen daily. Unless there's a hook--even something like a meteorite has more of a hook--there's no reason for viewers to care, no reason for the networks to pick up the story and do much with it. Why are the Canadians more important than Iraqis or Chinese or Zambians?
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)It hasn't left the top three BBC stories since it happened, for instance. Canadian events generally get less coverage in the US - someone could light off a nuke over Toronto and I doubt it would preempt any other coverage - but I've seen mention of what's going on in Quebec in various US media as well. It's not a blaring headline, but it's been consistently at the top of the 'other stories' lists on various sites after their top two or three stories.
Coverage style matters some too - most of the media here dosen't have the same "relentlessly hammer the victims" mentality that happens south of the border - which would give some of the more ghoulish reporters a lot less material to work with.
I'm not too surprised (or even too upset) at the plane crash getting a lot of coverage though. It's getting a lot of coverage up here as well, usually at about the level the train wreck's getting in foreign news. I find it wholly understandable that it's getting a lot of attention too - a large plane crashing and most of the people on board walking away from the wreck is extraordinary news, and is the sort of thing people would understandably take an interest in. Lac Megantic getting wrecked is the more important event, I agree, but it's still not completely swept under the rug of the US media and for the most part I can understand why the coverage between this and the plane crash is skewed the way it is.
mainer
(12,029 posts)Ane when it's a big commercial jet, we all shudder. So it gets the front-page treatment. Ditto, shark attacks. There could be a thousand cars crashing in a day, but one kid gets eaten by a shark, and it'll be big news.