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I see a lot of these responses starting with "The reason." I don't see many people talking about institutional bias. I don't see a lot of people talking about t
by Julesman 4y ago
I see a lot of these responses starting with "The reason." I don't see many people talking about institutional bias. I don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage while the media is stuck on shooting down balloons. I don't see many people talking about the fact that if this was anywhere close to wealthy people that it would have been headline news. I don't see many talking about the absolutely soulless response of everyone responsible. I don't see many talking about historical precedents that paint a clear picture of what is likely happening. I don't see many talking about how the best coverage of the event has been on Tiktok and that people on the ground might have something valuable to report.
This is NOT s trivial thing in any way. This is not a wait and see thing. This is a total disaster that will impact the health of people in the area for generations. And without any pushback the terrible people responsible well likely just get away with it.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage Oh my god this is the only thing people are talking about. Please don’t do this. Let’s talk about the actual disaster instead of spinning up another useless whirlpool of meta-debate.
- johndevor 4y agoThe NYT does not have this barely at all. There should be a giant picture of the mushroom cloud on their front page to reflect the severity (potential or real) of the situation. It's shameful.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> should be a giant picture of the mushroom cloud on their front page to reflect the severity (potential or real) of the situation It was front page on Bloomberg. I admit I didn’t click on it. To the degree this is of urgent national concern, it’s in a rail safety bill we have months to debate.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoNot sure when you checked, but right now it's literally nowhere to be found on Bloomberg. I count three stories on shooting down UFOs, though, and one on comedians finding side hustles as babysitters.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> when you checked, but right now it's literally nowhere to be found When this happened. Nobody clicked on it so it fell off. (I’m still failing to see why this is a national tragedy requiring minute to minute updates.)
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoThis is going to give a whole lot of Americans cancer. I’ve heard this described, by an extremely level headed commentator I trust, as “we just nuked an American town”. This story is way bigger than some balloon.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoI’m not sure how to reconcile “this is the only thing people are talking about” with “these stories have fallen off all the top news sites because nobody is clicking on them”.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoThis story should get more traction. It isn’t because it isn’t of general interest. Not because of a conspiracy.
- t-writescode 4y agoThis is not reflective of modern news practices. There isn’t interest because that interest hasn’t been spun up. When all attention has been pulled to manufactured stories, it’s reporters’ jobs to pull and manufacture interest into things that matter.
- ng12 4y agoI cancelled my NYT sub over the pandemic. I felt dirty supporting them even for just the word games.
- xhrpost 4y agoWow you're right, only mention is way at the bottom of the main page, just a title "A Train Carrying Toxic Chemicals Derailed in Ohio. Here’s What to Know." No picture, not even a mini-summary like some of the other links.
- prof-dr-ir 4y agoI think that it is the NYT's policy to not put giant pictures of potential disasters on their front page to avoid being sensationalist. I would not fault you for disagreeing with that style. Most importantly I think that it risks missing important events: at first they are either not verified (or not verified to be important, like here) and a few days later they are no longer newsworthy. But at least it seems that there is some logic to it.
- pphysch 4y agoavoid being sensationalist? The Chinese spy-on-the-weather balloon debacle is the textbook definition of sensational yellow journalism. NYT has had constant front-page coverage of it.
- legitster 4y agoBecause this is a regional story being amplified by Chinese state media. The NYT not running shock headlines based on trendy internet topics probably has more to do with their editorial scrutiny.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoNo it’s not? There’s one measly story way down past the fold on the NYT homepage. It’s nowhere on the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal or USA Today homepages (I cmd+F’d). There’s a tiny clip on the left of the Fox News homepage that’s tangentially about it but really about Tomi Lahren bashing Pete Buttigieg. The most prominent is the New York Post, which has a headline about it being “worse than feared” after a bunch of scrolling past stories about Kathy Hochul banning gas stoves and Emily Ratajkowski hanging out with Eric André.
- Spooky23 4y agoIt’s since moved further down. Mike Pompeo is angry about balloons, which is clearly more important. There’s probably some political issue around the incident.
- mike50 4y agoYour comment would have credibility if three of the sources you cite weren't Murdoch mouthpieces. Also USA today is literally a printer and the AP wire service rewritten to a 5th grade level and with even more less information then the AP stories that are copy pasted.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoI’m not really making any claim as to their credibility; we’re talking about what the news is publishing and these are the most popular newspapers.
- Julesman 4y agoI know it could seem this way. And now that's true. But when it first happened big media largely ignored it or parroted available talking points without any real attempt to do meaningful reporting. But I agree that the impact on people is more important than the media critique.
- gowings97 4y agoCorrect - there has been a total lack of coverage after the first day or two; it's completely dropped off most front pages, barely getting a blurb at this point. Far away from the header news sections/now relegated to back pages. The EPA should be providing daily updates, and the major news outlets should be syndicating these daily updates. This is the largest land-based environmental disaster since Three Mile Island. I just checked US News & World Report and CNN front pages - not even listed.
- mike50 4y agoYes because nuclear incident = more disaster then the anfo plant that blew up in Texas, numerous refinery explosions the BP oil rig explosion etc.
- kolanos 4y ago> Oh my god this is the only thing people are talking about. Please don’t do this. Let’s talk about the actual disaster instead of spinning up another useless whirlpool of meta-debate. This may be true in your circles. But almost no one in mine even know this happened. It has not been a top headline in any of the mainstream news sites, I only learned about it by visiting alternative news. It's pretty disturbing how hard the news is trying to bury this story.
- distrill 4y agoi feel similarly to you but i'm finding that people who are less online than i am have no idea that anything even happened in ohio. my media is full of coverage and lots of people pulling their hair out about the lack of coverage, which seems totally inaccurate. but my family who watch tv news and spend no time on reddit or hn or tiktok basically still haven't heard about this yet.
- anigbrowl 4y agoI generally agree with you, and I also agree about the uselessness of meta-commentary. But this story has been ranking quite low on news sites, eg on the default) Google News it's not on the homepage at all and is 7th in the US news section which usually displays 3 stories per 'page' requiring scrolling. PBS Newshour, which normally covers environmental stories in detail - especially the kind involving long term problems like cancer cluster - only addressed it yesterday and then very briefly. We need a better way to quantify media coverage to assess whether stories are under- or over-reported relative to others of the same type, but absent that people-talking-about-it is what we've got. I sometimes think HN could use meta-headings to cluster exceedingly obvious topic subthreads, because the top-to-bottom linear format is not ideal for multi-lateral discourse.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago> I don't see a lot of people talking about this disaster getting no coverage while the media is stuck on shooting down balloons. I’ve seen hundreds of comments and posts with this sentiment on Reddit, including some that made it to the top of r/all. Usually they say something like “why aren’t major media outlets covering this?” while linking to CNN or CBS or some other major media outlet that is in fact covering the event.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoIt was the better part of a week before it got any coverage beyond local news. That's what people are pissed off about. It probably wouldn't have gotten the coverage it did as quick as it did if some uppity cop didn't rough up some uppity reporter giving the media an axe to grind.
- mminer237 4y agoIt had articles on Reuters[1] and CNN[2] within a day. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/train-derailment-causes-massive-fire-ohio-local-media-2023-02-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/train-derailment-causes-mas... [2]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/04/us/east-palestine-ohio-train-derailment-fire/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/04/us/east-palestine-ohio-train-...
- nyjah 4y agoI don't see many people talking about the fact that if this was anywhere close to wealthy people They don't put wealthy neighborhoods near railroads carrying toxic chemicals. Or rarely do they. Meanwhile, lower end neighborhoods will have the train tracks and some even a garbage dump within view.
- strix_varius 4y ago> They don't put wealthy neighborhoods near railroads carrying toxic chemicals. Usually the causality is reversed... Railroads carrying toxic chemicals exist, and wealthy people are able to opt to invest in properties not near these undesirable things. I know that sounds pedantic, but it's important to note that "they" didn't "put" neighborhoods with preordained social classes somewhere... They zoned neighborhoods and if they'd said you weren't allowed to build houses there, they'd have been accused of nimbyism, not building enough housing to keep up with demand, etc.
- nyjah 4y agoThat's a fair and great point.
- shadowgovt 4y ago> This is a total disaster that will impact the health of people in the area for generations. [citation needed]. Vinyl chloride breaks down quickly (especially when it's all set on fire) and doesn't bio-accumulate. That's why the OSHA standards for it are for career-long exposure. Its byproducts are also pretty volatile and should burn through biology and dilute quickly. There's no 4-alarms here because it's not a 4-alarm situation. It's a disaster, but one of the more well-understood and easier-to-contain ones.
- xxpor 4y agoRight. It's essentially impossible to be both highly reactive and build up persistently in the environment. It'd just react!
- toiletfuneral 4y ago[dead]