A rchive Date
[ 28-08-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Real life, real death, real news
By MARIANNE MEED WARD
Toronto Sun
August 28, 2000
There's something really wrong with this picture: 143 people die in a plane crash and the next day the top story in all four Toronto dailies is ... the winner of a contest. Huh?
Of course, this wasn't just any contest. It was the conclusion of Survivor, the highest rated summer program in history. Richard outlasts the other castaways on the "reality-based" show to collect $1 million. Yawn. That's about all I know. I didn't watch Survivor. Not even once. I consider it a sign of my sanity in an insane world.
But back to that other story. This wasn't just any plane crash. Unlike the Concorde disaster, the plane wasn't filled with wealthy European tourists, Germans mostly. Just Middle Easterners for the most part - Egyptians, Bahrainis, Saudi Arabians, Palestinians. And one Canadian. There also was no sexy First World technology to discuss ad nauseam (and wonder why it failed us). Or lists of celebrities to parade through the pages who prefer to take the Concorde on their afternoon jaunts from New York to Paris.
And so it is that the day after 143 people die in the Persian Gulf, one newspaper doesn't carry it on the front page at all, and the others put it on the front page, but with a tiny headline, barely visible among the huge photos and headlines of the aforementioned Richard.
There are perhaps some practical reasons: the crash occurred at night and the time difference might have made it difficult to squeeze it into that morning's paper. That would explain missing the story, but not underplaying it. If you can fit it on the front page at all, you can fit it where it belongs - above Survivor.
But there are other reasons why the Survivor finale trumped a plane crash. Here are a few insider tips on what makes news. First, local is better than far away. We care more about what's happening in our own backyard than what is happening in places we couldn't find on a map or pronounce if we did.
Here's an old joke I first heard in journalism school that illustrates the point. Question: how would each of the Toronto dailies have covered the sinking of the Titanic? The answers, with some updates and creative liberties taken with the facts:
The Globe and Mail: "Titanic sinks killing 100 Canadians."
The Toronto Star: "Titanic sinks killing two Torontonians."
The National Post: Titanic sinks - Chretien/Martin squabble over condolence message and compensation."
The Toronto Sun: "Swimsuit calendar girl takes final tragic dip."
Besides illustrating that every newspaper has a slant (buxom women in bathing suits, anything embarrassing to the Liberals, all things Torontonian, or all things Canadian), the joke pretty accurately illustrates that no newspaper has much of a foreign slant. Unless, of course, you count celebrity news from Hollywood, which all our papers were full of last week too: Anne and Ellen's split; Woody and Soon Yi's adoption. Whatever.
So on local criteria alone, Survivor is the bigger story.
On the other hand, bad news usually trumps good, but Survivor had a dose of "bad" news: Richard, the manipulative rat scoundrel everyone loved to hate, won. That's what passes for calamity in our pampered society.
Finally, if you've got a photo, you've got a story. Unlike the Concorde crash, the Gulf Air crash didn't have a homemade video showing the plane going down. But there were lots of photos of triumphant Richard and downcast Kelly, Survivor's runner-up.
It was bound to happen, I suppose, that one day "reality TV" would upstage reality, namely a crash. The popularity of Survivor or Big Brother isn't a tribute to reality TV but to one more clever way of packaging unreality. The scenarios are staged and controlled. The only risk is losing the game. If only life were like that.
But real life is sometimes about plane crashes in far away countries. And it deserves better play than a contest winner.
Marianne Meed Ward, a freelance writer with an interest in social and ethical issues, appears Mondays. Her e-mail is: pward@interlog.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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