Bayesian tragedy over reported

Who knows their names, ages, their relatives, how much they earned and every detail of their lives? The most coverage they’ll get will say “Three migrants drowned today in the Channel when their dinghy capsized”. That’s it. We don’t get hourly breaking news updates on the BBC for a week. There isn’t countless articles for days about the ins and outs of the situation. People will just say “That’s awful” to themselves and it’ll be forgotten.

It's not exactly comparable with the funny animal story they used to stick on at the end.People are interested and have compassion for human stories, they're still talking about the Titanic for example.
How old are you that you 'took' your news ?🥱

Eurgh another Leftie with a chip on their shoulder thread opener. Pathetic.

It's no accident....

Tragic though that is, an overloaded inflatable in the channel is much riskier than a mega yacht anchored in a harbour.

And that’s before taking into account either a truly bizarre coincidence or a conspiracy.

Everybody has noticed 🙄

I agree OP. Yes, it's obviously very sad for the families but so many boats go down with migrants onboard off the coast of Sicily and those people are completely irrelevant apparently.

Interesting that the yacht owners co-defendant was also killed last week but i imagine a waterspout is hard to organise.

This. Rich folk on yachts are apparently miles more interesting than frightened desperate migrants.

I have never understood why people think that the amount of news coverage an event receives should be proportionate to the level of human tragedy involved.

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic"

I’ve thought similar - not that it shouldn’t be reported, but the sheer scale of it.

By contrast, I was recently on a cruise ship where a young British man was lost overboard in the Adriatic. Tragically, the search was called off after a number of days and yet I’ve seen nothing in the British press. Obviously I recognise that there were more victims on the super yacht, but the levels of coverage are incredibly disproportionate.

Jay Slater received much more coverage across all media and social media for a much longer period and that was one person- mind you, I thought that was madness.

I asked you what your definition is of ‘big news’ because you asked me how is it not big news! But you were the one who said it’s big news, not me.

I think it’s an unfortunate calamity for a rich white man during a slow news week.

It sounds like a freak accident which I wouldn’t wish on anybody but the wall to wall coverage is extreme overkill.

I noticed this. The major news outlets tend to report about the rich and/or famous to excess.

I think they have pretty much covered it every day on bain headline news since it sank. There's obviously no other news worthy news.

On average five people are killed every day on UK roads. If they are teens involved in a single accident that may make the news, otherwise, that death toll is never reported. The people on the yacht weren't even "famous", just rich. A story worth reporting? Yes. Headline story for severaldays? No way.

Whenever we watch the news we despair at the items that aren't news at all, just magazine items, or worse, self promoting. I'm talking about you, BBC.

People love a conspiracy theory. They’ll be on about it for ages

Agree. Nothing like the effort make for normal people in a fishing boat or similar. Big twenty minute segments devoted to this over and over for days now. A little break and back to it. It's crazy.

Slow news week.

You were asking me what the definition of ‘big news’ is as if I get to choose it. We will all have our own definition of big news depending on what matters most to us as individuals. It’s a subjective question.

It's not been a slow news week in the US though, has it? The DNC was this week, with lots of big names speaking and Kamala Harris giving her biggest speech to date. Plus, tornadoes aren't such big news in a country that experiences tornadoes every year, and how many Americans can afford to holiday in the Med every year? It's less relatable for them than it is for Brits, who go in there in droves every summer. News editors run stories that resonate with people and this story resonates far more for a British audience than it does for an American one.

Newsworthy doesn't mean important.

There have been many deaths of migrants attempting to cross the English Channel in small boats. Each of those people is as important as the people who died in the super yacht accident.

But their deaths are predictable because the boats are overcrowded and not always sea worthy. The frequency means that they are no longer regularly reported on national news any more than a fatal car crash would be.

The deaths of migrants are important but unless a journalist is able to find out details about someone who died, get hold of photographs and create a human interest story that will tug at people's heart strings, then it's not newsworthy.

On the other hand, it's very rare for a yacht like that to sink. The weather conditions were unusual. One of the dead had recently been found innocent in a trial in the US (and said that only his wealth enabled him to prove his innocence) and his co-defendent, also found innocent, recently died in a motorbike accident.

Combine those factors and you have a newsworthy story.

I have never understood why people think that the amount of news coverage an event receives should be proportionate to the level of human tragedy involved. Small boats sinking in the English Channel is horrific but it isn’t as rare or intriguing as this sinking. The fact this has more press coverage doesn’t mean it’s worse, same way the deaths of migrants on small boats getting more coverage than the famine in Yemen doesn’t mean that’s worse. It’s news and what the public want to hear about, not a moral judgment on how bad it is relative to other events.

It is a bit different to other deaths at sea, like migrants drowning in dighy boats. As far as the tabloid press are concerned.
I do feel like it's been a bit saturated in the news. It's very tragic what happened of course.
But if it was a boat of similar size but battered up/used for fishing etc/old and ugly looking and the occupants were penniless fishermen for example I doubt it would have the same coverage.

Some of the victims are women.

They need to get Columbo on the case. He'd have had this all wrapped up by lunchtime.