If This Were a Movie, Nobody Would Believe It

This was a "The Whirling Dervish" piece originally published October 17, 2005.  One thing I noticed: I really was against "Laguna Beach."

Southeast Asia found itself on the receiving end of yet another natural disaster last week as a 7.6 magnitude earthquake shook Kashmir. The death toll has climbed past 35,000 and as many as 40,000 Pakistanis may have been killed. The sick joke here is that this is a pittance when compared to last year’s tsunami; we may never know how many lives that disaster claimed.

Compounding the problem is the mountainous terrain of the area, making it hard for aid to arrive. Drinking water has become polluted, causing a Turkish newspaper to declare the area a “ Web of Disease.”
The troubling part is how many people are finding out about this for the first time right now.

A wildfire in California that burns 10 homes or so down grabs national headlines and keeps CNN relaying a live feed of smoke all day. It’s news. People talk about it.  But how many times have I heard mention of the Asia quake? How often does someone bring this up in conversation? It hasn’t happened yet to me, and I like to think I run in circles with people that know what’s going on.

And it’s far from being a trend. It’s learned behavior at this point.

One of the first things a young, eager journalism student learns is what makes a story worthy of publishing. In other words, what is going to make people want to read it? One of these criteria is proximity. In other words, if you’re at a paper in Oregon, is anyone going to read about what might be big news in Delaware? It’s a good guide, otherwise, you might be reading about intramural championships at Arizona State on this Web site.

But I always thought there was a critical flaw in the principle. American newspapers pay little more than lip service to international news. An unwritten rule has been the more bodies, the bigger the headline. Take the California example: because it’s closer, three people dying might be enough to make the front page of national newspapers. But 2,000 people dying in Thailand might get little more than a mention on page 3 of the international section. I thought that these papers weren’t doing these events justice.

Of course, being a little older and a little wiser, I’ve realized why this is the case.  Americans don’t care.
There’s no other reason to explain it.  It’s easy for us to put the strife of faraway lands aside and we do.  Why? It’s unpleasant. We don’t like to think about it. We usually live in a place that’s wealthy, safe, and free from devastating natural events. Katrina was the biggest news story of the year. But had a storm of that magnitude swept through some parts of the world, and only killed 2,000, people would have been on their knees in thanks.

It’s much easier for us to think about the vapid kids on “Laguna Beach,” isn’t it? Nobody really gets hurt. It’s a nice little escape. But pause for a moment and think about what a mother who lost her children in the quake would think if someone told her we’d rather hear about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ engagement.
 
That can’t be it, can it?  We care, right?  After all, our nation did come together as one national consciousness when Katrina and Rita unleashed themselves on the Gulf coast.  But why do we turn a blind eye to other places?  Well, we don’t, do we?  When terrorists blew up some trains in London, we cared. We cared when the Madrid bombing killed 50.

There’s a disconnect somewhere. It could be that we paid more attention because it was people killing people, not Mother Nature killing people. And while Katrina devastated a major city in a way I thought I would never see, we’re going to rebuild it. We have the money and the resources.

What about Pakistan? What money do they have? How are they going to rebuild?  Many of the 2,500,000 that lost their homes will never get another. There is no such thing as rebuilding or recovery for them.

Shouldn’t we care? Do we have a deep, dark place inside we don’t like to talk about where we put the problems of these poor, distant people away so they don’t trouble us?

There’s an answer somewhere. But I think we’re afraid to find it.