To wonder why the media have to highlight that xxxx number of Britons are involved in a certain tragedy

[wrinklytum]

I mean surely people are people,regardless of their nationality?It is tragic whether they are British or not.

(Am simultaneously mumsnetting and listening to radio news headlines.)

they just said on rte that 3 irish people on board. so it's just standard practise, each country reporting the death of its own citizens.

Bit of a tangent, but Jose mourinho was walking past in the background clip. I'm sure it was him.

Oh good... had me worried there.

dh has flown that Rio->Paris route with Air France on the equivalent flight to that one, so quite possibly on the same plane. A bit too close to home for comfort.

I think it is just a way to describe the passengers - they have also broken it down into infants, children, adults etc, nationality is another way of analysing the passengers. Perhaps as well in tragedies, the govt. of the countries of all nationalities on board has some responsibility to its citizens? ie would it be anything to do with gordon brown if there were no british people on board as the plane was not going to/from britain?

also, it makes it "domestic" news if british citizens were involved. otherwise it would be world news i suppose. i think it is just categorisation.

Thing is crokky they do that too.

"Terrible disaster somewhere or other, 20 million people dead, early reports say no britains involved".

YANBU at all. It's always the way, it also happens if a tragedy occurs in say the USA that will get reported here but if it was in Indonesia it would be ignored.

It's because the media things we are incapable of empathising with those that are so 'different' from us.

Spam, but 'no Britons on board' or whatever is important information for viewers of TV news here/readers of papers published in Britain.

But yes, the working assumption of newsrooms is it's a bigger story if there are British people affected. Because it's more immediate and we are more likely to be interested.

There used to be a TV sit com that parodied TV news called 'Drop the Dead Donkey'. Original working title was 'Dead Belgians Don't Count' - as in, a story about some Belgians being killed is way down the running order/may be dropped if something more interesting comes up.

It is said that a local newspaper around Aberdeenshire reported on the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 with the headline "Northeast man lost at sea".

I'm sure it happens the world over. It's not about how tragic it is but how relevant and, therefore, interesting it is to us.