I'm sure most of you are glued to your TVs for news of what happened to Air France flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic yesterday while en route from Some of you reading this may have friends or family among the 228 people on the flight, which makes this a personal tragedy for a lot of people. But if you listen to the news media, it seems like most of the people who have been potentially lost on the flight aren't such a big deal. After all, "there were two Americans" on that flight, you see, and, as far as the U.S. media is concerned, their loss is more of a tragedy than the loss of any of the others.
This happens in the news any time a major disaster occurs overseas: they enumerate the dead, then include the modifier, "including xx Americans." The fact that they always seem to do that has never sat well with me.
Why highlight the Americans over everyone else? Does the fact that most of the people on that Air France flight, for instance, were probably either Europeans or Brazilians make Americans feel better? Does it give us that amount of distance to make it feel like it couldn't have been one of us on that plane / caught in that tsunami / blown up in that terrorist attack?
It just smacks of xenophobia, which is odd when a fair number of our residents are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. People in this country have families living all over the world; any tragedy anywhere has the potential to affect a large amount of American families even if the victims themselves aren't Americans. In addition, we're in a global economy where people move and travel overseas all the time, so it doesn't seem that shocking anymore when an American is caught in a disaster in even the most remote corners of the planet.
But I guess in a lot of ways, news broadcasts still need to connect with an audience, and instead of adapting for the times, news writers fall back on the same old tropes they've relied on for decades. If they continue to think that saying "and there were xx Americans" is a way to liven their copy, they're going to keep doing it. I just wish most of them entered the 21st century and realized that a loss is a loss, and it's a sad occurrence no matter where the victims come from.
What do you folks think? Let me know in the comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
6-02-2009 @ 3:41PM
Joseph said...
I agree completely - and I'd go a step further and add the Iraq war... For example, a few years ago, a hundred and fifty people were killed in one bombing, along with one U.S. Soldier, and that was something they kept saying.
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6-02-2009 @ 3:43PM
Zachary said...
Yes, it is unsettling, but it doesn't really fit as a thing to hate about TV. That article you linked to was not a cable or local news story. Print journalists do it too.
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6-02-2009 @ 3:45PM
Joel Keller said...
Everyone does it, sure, but TV is where it's the most evident and visible. They should be the ones to break the cycle.
6-02-2009 @ 8:27PM
bruce said...
I always assumed it's just the American media that says how many Americans died in some foreign incident, while the BBC says how many British people died in the incident, the Chinese media says how many Chinese people died in the incident, Pravda says how many Russians died in the incident, and so on.
Assuming that's the way it works, I don't have a problem with that. It's not unreasonable for Americans to wonder if Americans died in some foreign incident - especially if terrorism is a possibility. I'll never complain about getting too much information (unless it's about reality shows).
6-02-2009 @ 3:48PM
Vijay said...
A US-centric approach to news is logical in the US, but the extreme to which it's taken is frustrating. Our news is done to the exclusion of news about the rest of the world, and the 96% of humanity outside the US.
I was equally frustrated that not much time was spent covering the death of South Korea's former president.
Why do we know more about the President's date night than we do about about the position he takes with respect to, say, Israel?
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6-02-2009 @ 3:52PM
James said...
I think you are projecting a little too much onto this tendency, which has been with us for decades. It's not so much belittling the suffering of others as trying to punch up the copy to make it relevant to the viewing/reading audience.
When there's a tragedy on the opposite coast of the US, it makes the local news (TV, radio, print), but if a local resident was affected, it always gets separate play that is disproportionate to the resident's role in things. This is not xenophobia so much as an audience hook: "putting a human face on a tragedy" that the audience will immediately identify with.
Abstractly, it does give little credit to the audience's ability to empathize with the suffering of others, but the media is famous for its "insights" into what its audience cares about.
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6-02-2009 @ 3:55PM
Chess said...
It's not just an American thing (this time)
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090602/NATIONAL/906029984/1001/ART)
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2905635
http://www.budapesttimes.hu/content/view/12147/219/
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6-02-2009 @ 4:07PM
Dave said...
It's the same here in the UK. 5 people from the UK were on board, with several from my city.
Both the national and local news outlets (print and TV) put that prominently.
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6-02-2009 @ 4:09PM
T said...
Grow up.
No one is diminishing the sadness and tragedy of this disaster.
It is the job of every journalist to connect their readers or listeners to any news event.
That often means highlighting how international stories affect us locally.
I guarantee that the Australian press is focused on the Australian passengers, the Belgian press on the Belgian passengers, and so on. As they should be.
Our countrymen were on that flight. Locally, we should be rallying behind their families and loved ones - just as other nations are supporting theirs.
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6-02-2009 @ 4:19PM
Ian said...
Well said. Each country's media has a duty to explain the whole situation and the number of its citizens on the plane. I've read many international reports and they all report the same way. It's logical.
You can tell that Joel, despite his views, does not spend much time reading international newspapers and news sites!
6-02-2009 @ 4:25PM
Zachary said...
You have a wide interpretation of the word "locally". How are you going to rally behind the families? A ribbon? That always works.
6-02-2009 @ 4:57PM
Joseph said...
You don't have to insult the man. Maybe you should grow up.
Also, it's the fault of Americans that we don't really know or care anything about other cultures. I guarantee you every country in the world knows more about us than we know about them.
That's not because we're the "greatest" either. Actually, to be honest, It's mostly because of TV.
6-02-2009 @ 4:20PM
Max said...
It's just a way to give people a heads-up that there might be neighbors or friends affected. Lighten up with the US-bashing. Not everything is an imperialist conspiracy.
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6-02-2009 @ 4:36PM
The Deej said...
What I dislike is with any tragedy they always have to point out how many children died. It's as if they consider their deaths more important than the rest. Every death is important, child or adult
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6-02-2009 @ 4:54PM
Bob Jones said...
Every other country does it. It only be wrong if they reported only about their nationality, and not the hundreds of other peopel who died also.
I think it's relevant to the people who are served by the TV Station.
The U.K. is doing it, the Irish, the French will no doubt be reporting prominently the number of French people who died. It's what a nation's media is supposed to do.
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6-02-2009 @ 4:56PM
Element said...
This happens at the local level as well, but it's usually more tenuous and occasionally funny.
"A cheesecake factory in Bombay, India exploded. We now go live to Tim Johnson who is interviewing some shmuck who visited a different cheesecake factory in Topeka, Kansas six months ago."
"I just can't believe it. I keep thinking how it could have happened to me!"
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6-02-2009 @ 4:58PM
jordancda said...
Overreaction. They are American news organizations. They report both the total number and then let us know how many of them were our own. I don't see a problem here.
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6-02-2009 @ 5:05PM
Dan Chichian said...
In a video with France's President he was pointedly asked how many french citizens were on the plane. I am sure as others have already said, that this is the same no matter what country is dong the reporting.
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6-02-2009 @ 5:05PM
winterbear said...
this is really dumb.
For american broadcasters the number of americans on the plane is a legitimate news item.
Nothing to see here... move along.
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6-02-2009 @ 5:10PM
Crazy Jew said...
Actually the flight was en route from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) to Paris (France). Buenos Aires is a city in Argentina which is another country, nothing similar to Brazil. What I hate more is when american journalists are to lazy to check the facts of their story or don't know their geography.
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