How typical of the media

Which of the following is more noteworthy?

1. 5 total dead, 184 injuries, blown out windows, and no structural damage
2. At least 14 deaths (probably more), at least 200 injuries, 50-80 homes and an apartment building destroyed, 50-75 homes and a school damaged

The numbers for the second incident are a little trickier. A wider area was devastated, and I am seeing variable reports.

There’s no point in making this a guessing game. I’m sure that everyone knows that I’m comparing the Boston marathon bombing to the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, and we all know that the media is obsessed with the Boston bombings.

Do you want to know something pathetic. The moment I heard about the fertilizer plant explosion, I immediately told someone what I expected to happen. Although I view the Texas explosion as a more significant event, I didn’t hesitate to say that the media would downplay it in favor of the marathon bombings.

Why was I expecting the media to provide more coverage to the less significant event? There were two primary reasons. First of all, we are comparing Boston, a large northeastern city, to a smaller city in the southern end of the central time zone. Although Texas isn’t exactly West, I always expected east coast bias to play a role.

The other reason was fear mongering. The Boston marathon bombing could be viewed as a terrorist attack, and the media can use that to talk about how we will all be blown up if we don’t assume that every bag on this planet contains a bomb. More importantly, without the media telling us what today’s risk is and how to live our lives, we are supposedly risking our lives. Sure enough, there were reports of paranoia following the Boston marathon.

Despite knowing how the media would act, I am still disgusted by the behavior. I have a local website up right now. The bombings in Boston are listed for breaking news, it’s their top story below that, 3 additional Boston stories are placed in their lead section, a local connection to the Boston Bombings is listed further down, and several of the articles are repeated in their most popular section. By comparison, the only Texas explosion article was a single article in the most popular section.

While I’m at it, I should point out that Iran was hit by its largest earthquake in 40 years. From what I have read, 35 are dead and 117 injured (mostly in neighboring Pakistan) although I am not entirely confident in those numbers. Most news sources didn’t even mention it. I’m not saying that this should be as big as Boston or West in this country, but it is still newsworthy.

On one final note, I would like to say that I feel bad for victims in Boston and West, but I want to emphasize that I really feel bad for the people of West. Not only are they going through a bigger tragedy, but the media conveniently treats them like they don’t matter. I don’t care what the media tells me. West does matter.