11 ms·

I've heard about this, but it is surprising how little coverage it gets compared to other things. If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets

• cyanydeez 4y ago
  Because the guilty party are ad buyers.
  • WillPostForFood 4y ago
    Don't think Norfolk Southern is a big ad buyer.
    • DaniloDias 4y ago
      [dead]
    • blockwriter 4y ago
      Berkshire Hathaway owns 14%, and BH definitely buys ads.
    • 7speter 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure the only way I know their name is from their commercials on CNN, tbh
• bsder 4y ago
  Because if the media starts covering it hard, way more than half the population of the US will plug their ears and start saying "LA LA LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" really loudly. If this gets coverage, suddenly lots of inconvenient questions start popping up around monopoly, safety regulations and OSHA, and union workers warning about this 2 months ago. But, hey, everybody got their Amazon packages by Christmas, so if a piece of shit town in Ohio has to pay the price that's just the way it goes, knowwhatimean?
  • nilespotter 4y ago
    > union workers warning about this 2 months ago First I've heard that, got a reference?
    • r85804306610 4y ago
      from another thread, https://time.com/6238361/joe-biden-rail-strike-illegal/ https://time.com/6238361/joe-biden-rail-strike-illegal/
      • SilasX 4y ago
        Can you quote the part where union leaders are warning about something in the way the grandparent describes? I’m not seeing it.
        • r85804306610 4y ago
          you're right, the other comment led me astray and i didn't check. it's just partisan trash. so to make up for it, Wp starts its `background` analysis <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute#Background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_...> with `The rise of precision scheduled railroading has resulted in resource and staffing cuts; to compensate railroad companies have enacted strict attendance policies for employees. These policies eliminate any free time which workers have, requiring them to be effectively on-call for weeks at a time. Workers have complained of increased levels of stress and fatigue.` The bulk of the argument is supported by this vice article <https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkp9m8/what-choice-do-i-have-freight-train-conductors-are-forced-to-work-tired-sick-and-stressed https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkp9m8/what-choice-do-i-have...> which is frankly horrifying. It's a bunch of quotes from train conductors talking about falling asleep, being tired, taking caffeine pills, etc. It ends with a 2020 derailment. "A BNSF TRAIN CARRYING OIL TANKERS DERAILED IN WASHINGTON STATE IN 2020. WORKERS ARE WORRIED MORE CRASHES LIKE THIS WILL OCCUR UNDER THE NEW ATTENDANCE POLICY." Wp again "Unions representing about 17,000 workers threatened to strike over the points system, but BNSF Railway sued and won a restraining order to prevent the unions from striking. The Railway Labor Act grants Congress the authority to intervene in any railway or airline strike. Under this authority, the National Mediation Board has mediated negotiations between multiple freight railroads and unions starting in June 2021." and there's your crux. then a bunch of back and forth happens, and then it ends with biden/congress/senate doing their thing. it seems like the gist of the forced solution was to raise salaries and some sick leave, but no other mitigations. wp again, "Writing for Jacobin, Barry Eidlin, associate professor of sociology at McGill University, said the message sent to the rail workers by the president and Congress was "shut up and get back to work." The Biden administration's intervention in the dispute was condemned by over 500 labor historians in an open letter to Joe Biden and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh."
• nobaddays 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • mrzimmerman 4y ago
    Honest question: how many Norfolk Southern ads have you seen? Even just a ballpark number.
    • r85804306610 4y ago
      top institutional ownership for nsc.n is vanguard, jp morgan and blackrock
      • mikrotikker 4y ago
        Their subsideries will buy a hell of a lot of ads.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• mc32 4y ago
  It is pretty odd. One hopes the story will get picked up and disseminated more widely and create a necessity for authorities to react. So far we have not heard from the secretary of transportation/ Biden has not bothered to shuffle himself over there to appease the population with platitudes about his deep interest in the safety of the population and worry for the environment and how he's going to hold those at fault "accountable" -che sera sera, as they say. So far, crickets... but quite disconcerting is the apparent disinterest in the story by environmentalists.
• pessimizer 4y ago
  > If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda It's not like it's subtle. There have been hundreds of Chinese weather balloon stories in the past week. Have there been hundreds of stories about this? US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen. There is a man who was shot twice (and grievously injured) in a robbery who is filing suit against the city of Chicago for its policy of breaking off high-speed chases (which have killed plenty of innocents in Chicago), arguing that they would have captured the perpetrator before they shot him if they had chased him during another incident. Local Chicago news is so determined to roll back recent reforms like ending cash bail and high speed chases in the city that we not only get multiple stories every day about the suit, we got multiple stories before the suit was filed about rumors and announcements that the suit was being filed.
  • luckylion 4y ago
    > US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen. The carrier will lose money. But a news company would make money, wouldn't they? Bad news is good news after all, and environmental disasters are bad news.
    • freen 4y ago
      Likely there is considerable overlap in ownership between the handful of railway companies that dominate the market and handful of media companies that dominate the market.
      • whatshisface 4y ago
        Plus advertisers (which could include chemical plants etc) are their clients.
        • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  Last week has been full of horrific earthquake news, with the balloon nonsense as light relief. Couple that with local authorities and the freight hauling corporation saying that everything is fine, and I'm not surprised it flew below most people's radar. I submitted a story about it on Saturday and hardly anyone was interested.
  • vel0city 4y ago
    I don't take the US military getting spooked enough to finally use F-22s to actually shoot something down, and have those somethings be publicly unidentified, as "light relief". All in all, seems extremely concerning to me.
    • pers0n 4y ago
      I think it was political pressure at the end
• ramesh31 4y ago
  >have to wonder why a story of environmental disaster (and presumably, negligence) making a small town uninhabitable isn't being milked for every drop of sensation that can be mustered. Trains crash. Accidents happen. It's about as newsworthy as a severe thunderstorm. Sad for the people involved, but true nonetheless.
  • sebkomianos 4y ago
    You can't really believe that brain-damaging chemicals in the air (and soil and water) is the same thing with lightnings in a severe thunderstorm!
    • ramesh31 4y ago
      >You can't really believe that brain-damaging chemicals in the air (and soil and water) is the same thing with lightnings in a severe thunderstorm! To a news cycle it is. There will surely be longform thinkpieces, investigative journalism, and maybe a Peabody or two to come out of this in a year. But as far as national headlines, simply nobody cares about a train wreck with zero casualties somewhere in the midwest.
      • s5300 4y ago
        >>simply nobody Mmm… I love sociopaths… Let’s pump more CO2 into the air because simply nobody cares about the global South & it will make me a bit of money I can take a vacation with.
• api 4y ago
  It’s not getting much play because that area is poor. There have been regions of West Virginia that have had problems with potable tap water for years and it gets no press at all. If Aspen, CO or East Hampton, NY had this kind of event there would be a national state of emergency and possibly a holiday added to the calendar. Never forget.
• throwawaylinux 4y ago
  It's because Political-Corporate Environmentalism is not actually about helping the environment, it is about coopting the environmentalist movement to consolidate wealth and power. Where those two things intersect is coincidental. Reducing greenhouse gas pollution might be a great thing, but the ruling class sure isn't counting on that effort costing them any money. So if they can't see a way to make money or win votes by pushing this train derailment story they won't.
• nimbius 4y ago
  Unsurprising. Even the love canal disaster in the US faced massive disinterest before it was quietly revealed to have been a cataclysmic environmental contamination. It boils down to this: - rail fired a ton of employees a while ago and is now seeing serious issues due to mismanagement - government oversight is a moderate Republican masquerading as a liberal democrat and just wants the clout from successful negotiations but the concep of most government oversight in the US is hold music at best. - this city does not threaten harm or inconvenience elites. - reporting this issue harms and threatens elites and could see a ripple effect during a recession. Rail is a primium mobile for most of wealths investments at some level.
  • kevviiinn 4y ago
    Also add on that the rail workers tried to strike over the issues and Biden was like "lol nope" It's just capitalism being capitalism in the end For all of you who down vote: https://time.com/6238361/joe-biden-rail-strike-illegal/ https://time.com/6238361/joe-biden-rail-strike-illegal/
    • Izkata 4y ago
      > Biden decided the broader economy was a bigger priority than 100,000 freight rail workers having any paid sick leave in their next contract. After campaigning as the most pro-union presidential candidate in history, Biden signed into law a measure that makes a rail strike illegal. Forcing it like that is not capitalism.
      • salawat 4y ago
        ...Sounds like a great opportunity for everyone to resign simultaneously. Sure be a pity if you couldn't find enough people to hire to do all that train work needing to be done. Not a strike if everyone just says "Fuck it" and leaves.
        • mikrotikker 4y ago
          It would be catharthic but they might have children and mortgages
• __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  I've often wished for something that I'm calling (in my fiction) The Ministry of Indices. It would be their job to rank things. Things like media coverage. We could turn to the MoI and see that this chemical spill got a 4 and then compare with other events. Sure, it's subjective all the way down. People will always quibble about the outputs of services like that. But having a number that some expert (statistician?) or organization thereof came up--even if you disagree with them--with would make for more nuanced conversation and decision making around that thing.
  • IIAOPSW 4y ago
    IIRC there's a few articles on 538 that do some crude-but-objective analysis like this.
  • lolbert3 4y ago
    [dead]
• Accujack 4y ago
  I wonder about who is pushing narratives about this vs. the balloons in an attempt to distract the public, but I can explain why the derailment isn't much of a story. It's because it's being handled fairly well. There is a cloud of smoke that's scaring people, but it's "ordinary" smoke. There's no environmental apocalypse that's going to make that town "uninhabitable". There will be after effects from everything associated with an industrial accident, including economic and legal repercussions, but the actual accident is being managed. People seem very ignorant of the science involved with the situation and very accepting of conspiracy narratives, which is unfortunately no surprise given the last 6 years in this country.
  • UtopiaPunk 4y ago
    There are various reports of animals in the area getting sick or dying in unnatural ways, so that is unsettling. And there's also the incident where a journalist who was trying to cover the incident was arrested. So it doesn't seem like it is being handled well, imo. Lots of discussion is occurring on Twitter, so people seem interested. The news coverage of it just seems superficial. Like, it's not zero, but they seem to be doing the bare minimum on a story where lots of people want answers. Give us the journalism so we can hold people accountable instead of spinning up conspiracies.
    • mikrotikker 4y ago
      The conspiracies serve to help the parties at fault.
  • mikrotikker 4y ago
    You must be joking.
  • naasking 4y ago
    > It's because it's being handled fairly well. Even if that were true, which is debatable, it should be a huge scandal that this happened at all literally weeks after rail workers tried to strike over safety issues and were forced back to work, and that Obama required train brakes to be upgraded, then softened the requirements after corporate pushback, which Trump then repealed and Biden failed to reverse. There is a lot to say on this topic and no one in the mainstream is saying it.
• ChickenNugger 4y ago
  >I've heard about this, but it is surprising how little coverage it gets compared to other things. Probably because the most current, most related story is about how Biden + Congress just recently killed a rail worker strike. And the complicit media isn't going anywhere near that: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/02/1140265413/rail-workers-biden-unions-freight-railroads-averted-strike https://www.npr.org/2022/12/02/1140265413/rail-workers-biden... They're covering it as "averting a strike" as if that's a good thing to make striking illegal.
• jahewson 4y ago
  Imagine you’re a reporter, do you want to rush down to the toxic accident nobody is correctly accessing or containing? Didn’t think so.
• humaniania 4y ago
  Instead of speculating about what the tally might look like and making assumptions based on your guesses maybe you should get real data to validate your hypothesis?
• irthomasthomas 4y ago
  If anyone has insider information about this train derailment, and the decision to set it alight, or the political background (or any of the other three train derailments this week), you should contact James O'Keefe at project... oh, er, never mind.
• everforward 4y ago
  I think it falls outside what the average viewer understands well, so it's hard to get that visceral emotional response. We're talking chemicals outside the average lexicon, which are then burned and turned into other weird chemicals, which may or may not affect the water table (and the water table itself is not commonly understood or referenced). I just don't think there's a good hook here. The topic is complicated, the people impacted aren't a minority, so there just isn't a good single-sentence headline to drive outrage.