A grim history of the media’s obsession with rescuing people (VOX)

A grim history of the media’s obsession with rescuing people – By Matt Novak (VOX) / June 24, 2023

The search for the Titan captivated the US for nearly a week. Why are we so gripped by people facing death?

Plenty of digital ink has been spilled over the past 24 hours about the media coverage of the Titan, the submersible that went missing on a trip to visit the site of the Titanic. Five people, including the CEO of the submersibles company OceanGate, are now declared dead after days of frequent live updates. Was the media attention overkill? Did many of the comments on platforms like Twitter and TikTok seem callous?

Yes and yes. An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday was typical, describing the coverage of the doomed trek to the Titanic as a “bizarre media feeding frenzy that we have become accustomed to in the 21st century.” The writer went on to characterize the coverage as “exploitative” and lamented the “terror unfolding in real time.” A writer in Australia complained, “Online, people seem to be ignoring that people have died and instead are concentrating on what their deaths and privilege say about modern society.”

We shouldn’t pretend like any of this is new. There’s over a century of mass media events in the US that prove the public’s insatiable thirst for the sensational and using new technology to consume that news. All the better if you have a very tangible countdown to disaster — a detail that became instrumental to the story when we learned the sub was capable of providing oxygen for just 96 hours.

CONTINUE > https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/6/24/23771854/missing-titanic-sub-news-thai-cave-rescue