The subjectivity of emotions

Earlier today, there were a series of despicable terrorist bombings in London which has killed (so far) 37 people and injured at least 700 others. There has been non-stop coverage on CNN and other US cable news networks. The mass murder dampened celebrations following the awarding of the 2012 Summer Olympics to the English city.

As a media observer, it underlines the seemingly random nature of television news coverage. What it points out is that, far from being random, coverage is intimately linked to location and specifics.

A 1996 terrorist bombing in Colombo exacted carnage even more bloody than that of London: 53 dead, 1400 injured. Why did that bombing get a different amount of international media coverage? One was in the Sri Lankan capital and the other was in the British capital. One was provoked by a local rebel group and the other is believed to have been provoked by al-Qaeda.

In reality, the blanket coverage is provoked not so much out of sympathy for the victims but because of our own fears. al-Qaeda or some other organization that claims linkage to bin Laden's group is more of a threat to Americans than the Tamil Tigers.

Yet how does that explain blanket coverage of other stories. Did we really need saturation coverage of the Scott Petersen trial? Was it really something of national interest, concern or fear? What about Chandra Levy? What about that white girl from Alabama who disappeared in Aruba?

I think part of it is the exemplifed by Stalin's infamous, but probably accurate, comment: "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."

For example, nearly one million Africans die every year of malaria. That's 38 deaths every 20 minutes.

That means in the time it took me to write this entry, more Africans died of malaria than Londoners in the terrorist attack. And that happens three times every hour, 24 hours a day, 365... well, you get the point.

And that's just from one disease in one continent.

Why do people view it differently? Is it because they're callous? Because they're manipulated by the media? Because they hate Africans?

The snide, cynical response might be yes. But I don't think so. I tend to think that most people are not consciously malicious or malevolent. I think most people want to be empathetic in the face of such human tragedies.

I think the difference is that a terrorist attack might happen here, but malaria won't. A terrorist attack in London might affect someone we know (I have a friend who lives in London and works, or has worked, in the financial district; I haven't heard from him today), while malaria probably won't.

A few years ago, I was talking with a woman I know well about this sort of thing. I wondered why the horror then going on in Kosovo galvanized the western world's attention while the horror then going on in Sierra Leone didn't. I was a little biased, and perturbed, because at the time, I had friends who still lived in Sierra Leone.

The woman sheepishly admitted that yes, the atrocities of Kosovo affected her more than those in Sierra Leone. She explained that when she looked at the pictures, she could identify with the Kosovars more than with the Sierra Leonians. Not because one was white and the other black. But because the Kosovars were lawyers and teachers and engineers, while the Sierra Leonians were subsistence farmers. Some Kosovar towns resembled rural American towns that she knew; Sierra Leonian towns did not.

She knew this distinction was wrong and she seemed almost ashamed to admit what she did. Though through her honesty, I got a much better understanding of how such mental processes work.

This didn't mean that she thought the Sierra Leone atrocities were ok. She was repelled by them too. When faced with the facts, she thought something should be done about them too. Then again, if she hadn't know me, it's unlikely she would've read enough in the media to know what was going on in Sierra Leone.

But while, on an intellectual level, she knew the distinction was wrong, she subconsciously made it anyway. Emotions are not always logical. They are quite often based on connections.

That, not callousness or disinterest, is why Americans are more gut wrenched about the London bombings than by quantatatitvely more devasting events like the war in the Congo or the famine in North Korea. Emotions aren't simply quantatative.