[refuse]

I've heard about this, but it is surprising how little coverage it gets compared to other things.

If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda (you'd also have to weigh it against other stories developing at around the same time).

I have to wonder why a story of environmental disaster (and presumably, negligence) making a small town uninhabitable isn't being milked for every drop of sensation that can be mustered. I'd wager they're getting something better than ratings out of this.

[pessimizer]

> If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda

It's not like it's subtle. There have been hundreds of Chinese weather balloon stories in the past week. Have there been hundreds of stories about this? US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen.

There is a man who was shot twice (and grievously injured) in a robbery who is filing suit against the city of Chicago for its policy of breaking off high-speed chases (which have killed plenty of innocents in Chicago), arguing that they would have captured the perpetrator before they shot him if they had chased him during another incident. Local Chicago news is so determined to roll back recent reforms like ending cash bail and high speed chases in the city that we not only get multiple stories every day about the suit, we got multiple stories before the suit was filed about rumors and announcements that the suit was being filed.

[chaps]

A lot of these issues, unfortunately, exist because a huge chunk of Chicago media simply doesn't understand legal processes involved in criminal cases or even where to begin researching. It gets technical, quickly, and many of the reporters I know shy away from anything technically nuanced . That includes court reporters. So much of it has become political arbitrage, and policing/jailing institutions are well aware of the lack of understanding of their systems. It's beyond wild to me that many seasoned reporters out there who've been on these beats for years who don't even know how to answer fundamental questions through FOIA requests. It's understandable to a point because of the low pay in Chicago journalism, but it manifests as legitimate harm all over the place. I'm convinced we'll get there.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Have there been hundreds of stories about this?

Chinese balloons are novel. This is not. It’s tragic. But its most memorable element seems to be the meta-debate around its coverage. That's boring.

[luckylion]

> US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen.

The carrier will lose money. But a news company would make money, wouldn't they? Bad news is good news after all, and environmental disasters are bad news.

[WalterBright]

WA state passed a law that says a cop cannot chase a suspect unless they committed a violent crime. This resulted in a surge of crimes where the suspect driver just flips off the police and drive off. Common crimes resulting from this:

1. catalytic converter thefts

2. thieves steal a car, ram it into a store, loot the store, drive off in another stolen car

[nimbius]

Unsurprising. Even the love canal disaster in the US faced massive disinterest before it was quietly revealed to have been a cataclysmic environmental contamination. It boils down to this:

- rail fired a ton of employees a while ago and is now seeing serious issues due to mismanagement

- government oversight is a moderate Republican masquerading as a liberal democrat and just wants the clout from successful negotiations but the concep of most government oversight in the US is hold music at best.

- this city does not threaten harm or inconvenience elites.

- reporting this issue harms and threatens elites and could see a ripple effect during a recession. Rail is a primium mobile for most of wealths investments at some level.

[TomSwirly]

Quibble: "uninterest". "Disinterest" means "impartiality". Disinterest is good.

I can't quibble with any of the rest of your argument, though.

[kevviiinn]

Also add on that the rail workers tried to strike over the issues and Biden was like "lol nope"

It's just capitalism being capitalism in the end

For all of you who down vote:

https://time.com/6238361/joe-biden-rail-strike-illegal/

[api]

It’s not getting much play because that area is poor.

There have been regions of West Virginia that have had problems with potable tap water for years and it gets no press at all.

If Aspen, CO or East Hampton, NY had this kind of event there would be a national state of emergency and possibly a holiday added to the calendar. Never forget.

[throwawaylinux]

It's because Political-Corporate Environmentalism is not actually about helping the environment, it is about coopting the environmentalist movement to consolidate wealth and power.

Where those two things intersect is coincidental. Reducing greenhouse gas pollution might be a great thing, but the ruling class sure isn't counting on that effort costing them any money. So if they can't see a way to make money or win votes by pushing this train derailment story they won't.

[__MatrixMan__]

I've often wished for something that I'm calling (in my fiction) The Ministry of Indices.

It would be their job to rank things. Things like media coverage. We could turn to the MoI and see that this chemical spill got a 4 and then compare with other events.

Sure, it's subjective all the way down. People will always quibble about the outputs of services like that. But having a number that some expert (statistician?) or organization thereof came up--even if you disagree with them--with would make for more nuanced conversation and decision making around that thing.

[IIAOPSW]

IIRC there's a few articles on 538 that do some crude-but-objective analysis like this.

[anigbrowl]

Last week has been full of horrific earthquake news, with the balloon nonsense as light relief. Couple that with local authorities and the freight hauling corporation saying that everything is fine, and I'm not surprised it flew below most people's radar. I submitted a story about it on Saturday and hardly anyone was interested.

[vel0city]

I don't take the US military getting spooked enough to finally use F-22s to actually shoot something down, and have those somethings be publicly unidentified, as "light relief".

All in all, seems extremely concerning to me.

[ChickenNugger]

>I've heard about this, but it is surprising how little coverage it gets compared to other things.

Probably because the most current, most related story is about how Biden + Congress just recently killed a rail worker strike. And the complicit media isn't going anywhere near that: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/02/1140265413/rail-workers-biden...

They're covering it as "averting a strike" as if that's a good thing to make striking illegal.

[cyanydeez]

Because the guilty party are ad buyers.

[WillPostForFood]

Don't think Norfolk Southern is a big ad buyer.

[bsder]

Because if the media starts covering it hard, way more than half the population of the US will plug their ears and start saying "LA LA LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" really loudly.

If this gets coverage, suddenly lots of inconvenient questions start popping up around monopoly, safety regulations and OSHA, and union workers warning about this 2 months ago.

But, hey, everybody got their Amazon packages by Christmas, so if a piece of shit town in Ohio has to pay the price that's just the way it goes, knowwhatimean?

[nilespotter]

> union workers warning about this 2 months ago

First I've heard that, got a reference?

[everforward]

I think it falls outside what the average viewer understands well, so it's hard to get that visceral emotional response. We're talking chemicals outside the average lexicon, which are then burned and turned into other weird chemicals, which may or may not affect the water table (and the water table itself is not commonly understood or referenced).

I just don't think there's a good hook here. The topic is complicated, the people impacted aren't a minority, so there just isn't a good single-sentence headline to drive outrage.

[irthomasthomas]

If anyone has insider information about this train derailment, and the decision to set it alight, or the political background (or any of the other three train derailments this week), you should contact James O'Keefe at project... oh, er, never mind.

[Accujack]

I wonder about who is pushing narratives about this vs. the balloons in an attempt to distract the public, but I can explain why the derailment isn't much of a story.

It's because it's being handled fairly well. There is a cloud of smoke that's scaring people, but it's "ordinary" smoke. There's no environmental apocalypse that's going to make that town "uninhabitable". There will be after effects from everything associated with an industrial accident, including economic and legal repercussions, but the actual accident is being managed.

People seem very ignorant of the science involved with the situation and very accepting of conspiracy narratives, which is unfortunately no surprise given the last 6 years in this country.

[UtopiaPunk]

There are various reports of animals in the area getting sick or dying in unnatural ways, so that is unsettling. And there's also the incident where a journalist who was trying to cover the incident was arrested. So it doesn't seem like it is being handled well, imo.

Lots of discussion is occurring on Twitter, so people seem interested. The news coverage of it just seems superficial. Like, it's not zero, but they seem to be doing the bare minimum on a story where lots of people want answers. Give us the journalism so we can hold people accountable instead of spinning up conspiracies.

[naasking]

> It's because it's being handled fairly well.

Even if that were true, which is debatable, it should be a huge scandal that this happened at all literally weeks after rail workers tried to strike over safety issues and were forced back to work, and that Obama required train brakes to be upgraded, then softened the requirements after corporate pushback, which Trump then repealed and Biden failed to reverse. There is a lot to say on this topic and no one in the mainstream is saying it.

[mikrotikker]

You must be joking.

[humaniania]

Instead of speculating about what the tally might look like and making assumptions based on your guesses maybe you should get real data to validate your hypothesis?

[mc32]

It is pretty odd. One hopes the story will get picked up and disseminated more widely and create a necessity for authorities to react.

So far we have not heard from the secretary of transportation/

Biden has not bothered to shuffle himself over there to appease the population with platitudes about his deep interest in the safety of the population and worry for the environment and how he's going to hold those at fault "accountable" -che sera sera, as they say.

So far, crickets... but quite disconcerting is the apparent disinterest in the story by environmentalists.

[jahewson]

Imagine you’re a reporter, do you want to rush down to the toxic accident nobody is correctly accessing or containing? Didn’t think so.

[mrzimmerman]

Honest question: how many Norfolk Southern ads have you seen? Even just a ballpark number.

[ramesh31]

>have to wonder why a story of environmental disaster (and presumably, negligence) making a small town uninhabitable isn't being milked for every drop of sensation that can be mustered.

Trains crash. Accidents happen. It's about as newsworthy as a severe thunderstorm. Sad for the people involved, but true nonetheless.

[sebkomianos]

You can't really believe that brain-damaging chemicals in the air (and soil and water) is the same thing with lightnings in a severe thunderstorm!