"Cultural proximity, or how relatable an event is due to audience’s identifying with the protagonists, has been noted in influencing viewer preferences (Straubhaar, 1991) and has been shown to be an important variable in how the media select and frame stories (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Moeller, 2006; Cottle, 2013). Summed rather crudely by a Sky US correspondent, cultural proximity means that, in terms of media value, “one British person equals however many Bangladeshi etcetera” (in Cottle, 2013: 235). The 2004 East Asia tsunami provides the exemplary instance of this in action, with the CARMA report finding 40 percent of all the media’s coverage focused on westerners affected by the disaster, who made up less than one percent of the victims (Franks, 2006)."
Callum Martin, 2015
"The international news calculus is always the same. First, is there a local person in the disaster or on board a plane that has crashed? If so, the local victims get intense focus that simplifies [the] international crisis or conflict for readers. … Overall, there is this concept of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims in the media."
Jack Lule, Lehigh University
- Flooding in 2017, some headlines and excerpts:
"As Storm Harvey threatens Louisiana and leaves heavy floods across parts of Texas, thousands of people affected by disasters in Asia and Africa have also been tweeting and sharing pictures of their experiences.
But news outlets have focussed headlines and bulletins largely on the disaster in the US, prompting accusations from social media users of giving disproportionate attention to stories about wealthier countries."
BBC, August 2017
"Harvey has gathered headlines as the most powerful storm to hit Texas in half a century, but floods have killed many more people in Africa and Asia this year amid extreme weather worldwide."
VOA News, August 2017
"More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal as a result of flooding, with 40 million affected by the devastation."
The Guardian, August 2017
"Houston animals are lost, cold and suffering too"
Newsweek, August 2017
"27 cats, 8 dogs rescued from Houston flooding arrive at MaxFund Denver"
The Denver Post, September 2017
- Ebola
"How the world ignored Africa’s Ebola tragedy
Had the deadly virus started in the West, the response would have been vastly different"
The Daily Telegraph, October 2014
"(...) despite taking thousands of lives in Africa, Ebola did not capture the global spotlight until the first Americans became infected and arrived back in the United States for treatment."
Forbes, February 2016
- Some more examples
"When Nepal was struck with an earthquake, nearly a quarter of all global coverage in the first 24 hours was about the foreign tourists trapped on Mount Everest."
Forbes, February 2016
"(...) the November 2015 Paris attacks garnered more than nine times the global media attention as the April 2015 Kenyan attack, despite the Garissa attack involving the targeted killing of children at school."
Forbes, February 2016
"In the case of Zika, Google Trends shows that interest in the virus did not really begin until this past December and accelerated in January as the first American infection was confirmed and concerns rose over the potential of the Summer Olympics to create a global epidemic."
Forbes, February 2016
"Guatemala experienced one of the worst earthquakes in this century in the Western hemisphere,”
with the official death toll later put at 4,000. “Yet, proportionate to the number of victims, it received one-third of the coverage given the Italian earthquake” that killed nearly 1,000 people that year."
William C. Adams, George Washington University
"As media coverage focused on the Paris terror attacks last week [leaving 17 dead], more than 2000 Nigerians were reported to have been killed by Islamist militants. What makes one massacre more newsworthy than another?"
The Guardian, January 2015
- Finally:
"The majority of what we know about the latest on the Syrian civil war, or reconstruction in Haiti or the spread of the Zika virus is determined by editorial decisions of what is “important” or “relevant” for us to know. As computer algorithms begin to play an ever-growing role in making these decisions for us, we are fast reaching a world where “likes” will become the new arbitrator of what is important in the world and where, in spite of more and more information, we will know less and less."
Forbes, February 2016
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