Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward to write about a subject – topical or not. Sometimes the words leap off the keyboard. This isn’t one of those times.
Death, destruction and demonstration – all of it happened this week and within a single, 24-hour period. Uppermost in the news was the horrific loss of life and injury during the Boston Marathon. Close behind was the coverage of the funeral arrangements and service for the late Baroness Thatcher at St Paul’s. And a long way down the page – or screen – came the news of the massive earthquake in South Eastern Iran, registering at least 7.5 on the Richter scale. Each story was projected at us, the consuming public, and in full technicolour, almost as it was taking place.
By Tuesday afternoon this week and well under a day since the moment that three people were killed and many more dreadfully injured, the bomb blasts in Boston had been condemned as terrorist attacks. The finger was almost instantly pointed in the direction of Al-Qaeda, or sympathisers with it, but nobody has yet claimed responsibility for their actions – they may have done so by the time you read this. As the FBI continued its deliberations, the conspiracy theorists began to circulate fuzzy pictures of a figure on the roof of a nearby building. Wild and unsubstantiated rumours then followed. The United States has had more than a few home-grown attacks on its own citizens – this could be another. Point the finger at someone and you end up with three pointing back at yourself.
The funeral arrangements of the late Baroness Thatcher were so widely reported in the week before yesterday’s service in London that anyone bent on causing mischief, disruption or real distress must have had an excellent briefing of exactly where – and with minute by minute precision – when to cause it. I have immense respect for our security and armed forces and am certain that their quiet, protective work was made all the more difficult by the amount of detail which found its way into the media. Alongside this has been the procession of commentators –political and otherwise – who have collectively ensured that the event was pretty much a three-ringed circus from start to finish. Regardless of her policies and past, what spoke volumes to me was the image that emerged of a frail, old lady from a past time, living out her last days in a hotel, alone, surrounded by unknown “carers”. It shouldn’t have been that way, however plush the hotel in question.
And the earthquake in South Eastern Iran? Hundreds killed, many more injured and thousands made destitute in an instant. This wasn’t the work of man – instead the immeasurably more powerful hand of Mother Nature, proved how insignificant we truly are. In terms of the numeric loss of life this was by far the biggest story of a single day on planet earth – why then did it rank so low on the pages of most of the national media here? The loss of any human life is a tragedy – for certain media it seems that some lives bring more weight of tragedy to bear than others, depending on where they come from. It shouldn’t be that way either.
There is, of course, an absolute need for us to be informed about the world in which we live. In no way should we be fed a diluted, sugar-coated version of events through the media. But with the way in which stories are packaged for our “infotainment” in the modern world, I wonder if the current balance is quite right.