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| Death in Bangladesh doesn’t draw a crowd like Melania | Death in Bangladesh doesn’t draw a crowd like Melania |
| (6 days later) | |
| One foreign reporting job from long ago lives with me still. The great Bhola cyclone of 1970, pounding the shores of East Pakistan (soon to be Bangladesh) and West Bengal. Some 500,000 people reported dead. Delta islands swamped, desolate. And I was there, moving by rescue helicopter from one scene of horror to another across a vista of grey mud, flattened villages – and bodies, bodies everywhere. Bloated cows, huddled humans. | One foreign reporting job from long ago lives with me still. The great Bhola cyclone of 1970, pounding the shores of East Pakistan (soon to be Bangladesh) and West Bengal. Some 500,000 people reported dead. Delta islands swamped, desolate. And I was there, moving by rescue helicopter from one scene of horror to another across a vista of grey mud, flattened villages – and bodies, bodies everywhere. Bloated cows, huddled humans. |
| It keeps happening. Only last week the monsoon rains – dumping walls of water on Nepal and east India – flooded one-third of Bangladesh. “Farmers are left with nothing, not even with clean drinking water,” said Red Cross and Crescent leaders on the sodden ground. Count more than 1,200 more dead. | It keeps happening. Only last week the monsoon rains – dumping walls of water on Nepal and east India – flooded one-third of Bangladesh. “Farmers are left with nothing, not even with clean drinking water,” said Red Cross and Crescent leaders on the sodden ground. Count more than 1,200 more dead. |
| Perhaps, though, you didn’t quite register the full horror of that deluge. Perhaps you were more enthralled by Harvey and Houston, where the Red Cross reported 40,000 living in shelters and maybe four dozen dead in a landscape suddenly strewn with TV reporters. The waters rise; more houses and lives covered in filth and misery. But look! Here’s President Trump, citing “epic” challenges, and Melania, wearing her Disaster Barbie kit with four-inch heels for the cameras. And look again! Now she’s changed into a simple shirt and slacks. | Perhaps, though, you didn’t quite register the full horror of that deluge. Perhaps you were more enthralled by Harvey and Houston, where the Red Cross reported 40,000 living in shelters and maybe four dozen dead in a landscape suddenly strewn with TV reporters. The waters rise; more houses and lives covered in filth and misery. But look! Here’s President Trump, citing “epic” challenges, and Melania, wearing her Disaster Barbie kit with four-inch heels for the cameras. And look again! Now she’s changed into a simple shirt and slacks. |
| Of course the renewed misery of Bangladesh received more than fleeting coverage in the west, with solid reports from the BBC on Saturday. Of course Harvey’s havoc over Texas and Louisiana is a tragic story of natural devastation, with climate-change dimensions – and added Trump. Of course there are no glib equivalencies here. | Of course the renewed misery of Bangladesh received more than fleeting coverage in the west, with solid reports from the BBC on Saturday. Of course Harvey’s havoc over Texas and Louisiana is a tragic story of natural devastation, with climate-change dimensions – and added Trump. Of course there are no glib equivalencies here. |
| But there are fresh questions to pose in the continuing arguments about newsroom quotas, about the mechanics of fairness and balance. | But there are fresh questions to pose in the continuing arguments about newsroom quotas, about the mechanics of fairness and balance. |
| I got into trouble with readers here last week for maintaining that journalism – however much it needed diversity in recruitment – was an outward-looking job that demanded professional reporting from all concerned, whatever their backgrounds. No, critics said, the constructs of race, gender and class mattered much more. (Think BBC news divisions and the embrace of targets and sanctions.) | I got into trouble with readers here last week for maintaining that journalism – however much it needed diversity in recruitment – was an outward-looking job that demanded professional reporting from all concerned, whatever their backgrounds. No, critics said, the constructs of race, gender and class mattered much more. (Think BBC news divisions and the embrace of targets and sanctions.) |
| But here’s a factor that debate leaves out: simply you, en masse; you the audience. This is the age of algorithms, an age where every flicker of reader interest tweaks news provision up and down the land. This is the era of supply and demand, the call of the Facebook wild. | But here’s a factor that debate leaves out: simply you, en masse; you the audience. This is the age of algorithms, an age where every flicker of reader interest tweaks news provision up and down the land. This is the era of supply and demand, the call of the Facebook wild. |
| Which means that, together, we are wriggling on the same spot. We may want certain proportions of background and experience in our office environments. We may set ourselves ever tighter quotas. We want to do the right thing. But do we, in the coverage we embrace, reckon that one Texan flood victim is worth 12 Bangladesh dead? How do we equate the homeless of Houston with 5.7 million flood-blighted Bangladeshis? | Which means that, together, we are wriggling on the same spot. We may want certain proportions of background and experience in our office environments. We may set ourselves ever tighter quotas. We want to do the right thing. But do we, in the coverage we embrace, reckon that one Texan flood victim is worth 12 Bangladesh dead? How do we equate the homeless of Houston with 5.7 million flood-blighted Bangladeshis? |
| The answer is that we don’t and can’t. Our world isn’t some imposed newsroom structure. The answer lies in how easily humanity and human interest go their separate ways. I’ll never forget the bleakness of that swamped Ganges delta long ago, an abiding lesson in the awful destructiveness that comes from sea and sky. But see how quickly you forget such horrors, impaled on a four-inch heel. | The answer is that we don’t and can’t. Our world isn’t some imposed newsroom structure. The answer lies in how easily humanity and human interest go their separate ways. I’ll never forget the bleakness of that swamped Ganges delta long ago, an abiding lesson in the awful destructiveness that comes from sea and sky. But see how quickly you forget such horrors, impaled on a four-inch heel. |