This is a legitimate question and you shouldn't be getting voted down. There's a"phase diagram" that can be used to model and estimate the "newsworthiness" of

This is a legitimate question and you shouldn't be getting voted down. There's a"phase diagram" that can be used to model and estimate the "newsworthiness" of deaths. Roughly speaking: The sum of the value[1] of the individuals dying at one time[2] determines how newsworthy the incident[3] is. [1] You can estimate the value of a person by summing the expected income for their remaining life. This may need some "tweaking" in some circumstances. For example, soldiers are an expense to governments, not a tax revenue stream. Alternatively, pretend their annual salary is interest payments on some asset. At, say, 5% this means multiplying their salary by 20x to estimate their "worth". This is why Israel exchanges hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for dozens of their citizens. This why you've never even heard of most civil wars in Africa, even though they often kill far more than, say, the war in Gaza or Ukraine. [2] "At the same instant" is more newsworthy than a "statistic". One overturned bus killing a bunch of kids makes headlines, the greater number of traffic accidents nation-wide on the same day... not so much. [3] A cause, especially an intelligent one such as murder, war, terrorisms, etc... is more newsworthy than air pollution, traffic, old age, bad diets, etc... People like to tell stories, they want to attribute things to an agent. Non-agentic things feel inevitable, even if they're actually easily fixed.