Provincialism
I’d like to use this morning’s Nikkei to illustrate a point a lot of people seem to have trouble with:
If I weren’t so lazy, I’d PhotoShop it, but the main headline (vertical, in reverse type at top right) says, “津波で邦人10人不明.” That translates to “10 Japanese citizens missing in tsunamis.” The subhead does say, “Over 8600 dead in 8.9 M quake,” and the story naturally makes it clear that the events happened thousands of miles away and killed mostly Southeast Asians, but because this is a Japanese newspaper, the main story is believed by the editors to be how the event affected Japanese people.
My point is that, while people are constantly complaining about how provincial American media are, it never seems to occur to them that if they just spent, literally, a single day of the news cycle in another country, they’d see that the focus on local interest is universal. On 9/11 also, as well I remember, NHK and the other Japanese stations focused at least half of their coverage on the Japanese firms in the WTC complex and on whether all their personnel were accounted for.
It’s been a day and a few hours since the first quake hit. The estimated number of deaths will probably keep climbing for a week or so; the busy winter holiday season has begun, and the resort islands and shores that were slammed were probably close to full. Luckily, on the other hand, there seem to have been a fair number of people who were on the beach, noticed the sea being sucked outward, and knew what was coming. On Phuket–a major, major, major tourist destination in this part of the world–there also seems to have been a convenient ridge behind which people could flee to safety. The awe-inspiringly efficient distribution network we enjoy means that aid is already coming into devastated areas, but it looks as if Colombo, Sri Lanka, is seeing unusually high tides right now; as always happens after an earthquake or tidal wave, people in the affected areas will be on edge for the next week or two.
Added at 13:10: I should probably clarify something here, since this post and the one I put up yesterday may seem to contradict each other. What I was talking about last night was what stories get covered at all; what I’m talking about above is what’s emphasized in stories that do get covered.
Gaia is not your friend
By the way, I first found out about this when I turned on the tv this morning to the international news channel that I get on my cable tv. (That’s the latest post — all the posts are on this page.) They were running a Canadian news story about the d…
Provincialism
I’ve often heard it remarked, usually in sneering tones, that Americans are a very “provincial” people, i.e. we don’t care about or pay attention to the rest of the world. Sean Kinsell notes, however, that
Provincialism
I’ve often heard it remarked, usually in sneering tones, that Americans are a very “provincial” people, i.e. we don’t care about or pay attention to the rest of the world. Sean Kinsell notes, however, that
Provincialism
I’ve often heard it remarked, usually in sneering tones, that Americans are a very “provincial” people, i.e. we don’t care about or pay attention to the rest of the world. Sean Kinsell notes, however, that
Eleven Britons killed in tsunamis.
Indeed, it is universal.
Yup. It reminds me of one of the Far Side comics from way back: there’s a crashed, flaming passenger jet, and in the foreground, a bird newscaster is saying something like, “Initial reports are that the name of the pigeon sucked into the engines was Harold Meeker.”