#the Chilean mining disaster also fits this model except it was the result of institutional failings

[ferventfox]

The lost submersible story is so big in the news for the same reason Baby Jessica and Floyd Collins and that Thai Boys Soccer Team were big news stories.

Accident with no obvious institutional cause happens; people are stuck. Now there’s an uncertain ticking clock element to rescue these people before its too late and the audience gets to watch this unfold as its happening and a bunch of “news” can be produced via updates of rescue efforts and speculation about how long these people might have. 

It’s really that simple; you’re hearing about it because its “good news”. It’s a tried and tested formula for a big new story except with added novelty because this time Baby Jessica is underwater.

 It’s not because these people a rich or whatever; many of the subjects of these stories are not rich.If they had found evidence earlier on that submersible imploded and these people died instantly, I imagine it wouldn’t have gotten the attention it ended up getting.  But every second we had to entertain the idea that people were stuck down there waiting to be rescued, the bigger the story became. The news not giving a lot of coverage to the boat full of migrants sinking off the coast of Greece just seems like a case of the news failing to report on the same old things they usually fail to report on. Larger scale tragedies that we’re not surprised by because we already know the mechanisms that caused them are fucked up aren’t “sexy” enough to warrant a bunch of real estate in the news cycle.