
How many deaths make a disaster newsworthy? - anigbrowl
https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-deaths-make-a-natural-disaster-newsworthy
======
GuB-42
What is interesting is the Touhoku earthquake and tsunami and the resulting
Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Which one is the best known? In the west, I'd say Fukushima. And yet, the
nuclear disaster caused zero direct fatalities. The consequences, the
evacuation in particular, killed maybe a few hundreds. That's definitely not
insignificant, but to think that it overshadowed an earthquake and tsunami
that killed more than 15000...

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Japan is basically an honorary European nation as far as the West cares. They
kind of earned it. Ever since they realized they were behind in the 1800s
they've done everything the western nations have done (good and bad) and done
them as well or better.

~~~
perfmode
In one sense, this comment...

is holding Japan in a great light

but also looking down on it

as though Europe is in a position to confer honor

a Western point of view

~~~
oculusthrift
whether you like it or not the world still revolves around the west. even if
it is less so than in the past, militarily and economically the world is led
by the west.

~~~
coldtea
> _whether you like it or not the world still revolves around the west_

People in the west like to think that.

After one has lived for a while in an Asian, African, Latin American etc
country, they get to see that billions of people, the 80% of the global
population, could and don't give a fuck about the going's on in the west --
except when they're forced to deal with it (e.g. militarily).

E.g. the Chinese might care for selling to US/Europe -- but that doesn't mean
they also care for our beliefs, history, philosophy, moral outrages, outlook
on life, charts, stars, concerns, or any other such thing that we take as some
kind of "physical law".

~~~
poisonarena
No way.. I have spent the last 6 years living in Mexico, Colombia, and Japan.
Our culture dominates, absolutely. They strive, especially in Mexico and
Colombia, to be like us in the West.

~~~
coldtea
If you mean in trying to make money as well, have luxuries like in the West
and things like that, that has been a global concern since before West and
East were met.

Even so, Mexico is next to the states and has some millions of US immigrants
and wannabe immigrants, and still -- they have their own culture, morals, etc,
and the typical western concerns are not their thing.

So, I was talking more about the cultural and societal aspects. They'll still
watch some popular Hollywood movie or have teenagers listening to Cardie B,
but they live in their own, different, world, as oblivious to the West as a
Oklahoman farmer or a NY gallery owner is oblivious to them and their world.

~~~
poisonarena
You should do some traveling to major cities in Latin America.

------
sigfubar
Is no one else going to say this? Fine.

Most so-called "journalism" is in fact a rush to capture as many eyeballs as
possible for the purpose of displaying advertising. These patterns make a lot
more sense once viewed through the adtech lens: news outlets aren't publishers
or providers of information; they're sellers of an audience to advertisers.
This is their primary mission, fueled in turn by the desire to self-
perpetuate.

~~~
Zanta
How do state broadcasters fit into this theory? The CBC and BBC produce
content in a similar style to the for-profit broadcasters (better, but
definitely similar in more ways than its not), but without the advertising
mission.

~~~
Xeoncross
State broadcasters have a larger surface area offering a more political goal.
After all, it's state-run.

Most people can see this effect more clearly on the state-run news outside
their own country.

~~~
lostlogin
Not always - the BBC was mentioned above and they are far less politicised
than many of the other U.K. news outlets. It is argued that any bias comes
from the demographic of those who want to work there rather than political
pressure from above. A good local news source that is government funded, Radio
New Zealand, would fall into the same catagory in my opinion.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC)

------
lisper
The newsworthiness of disasters has nothing to do with the number of deaths.
It has to do with how dramatic and visually interesting the circumstances were
(volcanoes and earthquakes are more dramatic than droughts and famine) and, at
least for American media, whether the victims were American. Bonus points if
the victims were children.

~~~
muse900
While I partly agree, I remember examples such as the terrorist attacks in
Paris where it was covered on every media for a long period in time, and a few
months later there was a mass killing in Afghanistan with way more deaths and
obviously was done in the same dramatic way but most media didn't even cover
it. I'd say it has to do with how unexpected is that event to happen. Same
applies to people's grief. Everyone had some sort of support for paris up, or
even with the newspaper attack ze suis etc, noone cared about what happened in
Afghanistan. :/

~~~
haydenlee
This is news in general. If it's not "new" it's not "news".

~~~
ahmedalsudani
I don’t think you looked at parent comment closely enough.

------
vinayms
There is obviously good amount of relevance (of all shades, be it political,
regional, communal etc) affecting reporting, and discretion applied that skips
certain events, but I want to say something tangential.

To me, it appears that the modern epidemic of equating live TV coverage where
reporters blabber inconsequrentialities with an event being in the news is the
cause for the feeling that the article espouses. Doesn't a 60 second mention
about an event suffice? The larger point is, how does this 'coverage' really
help the cause? Surely, reporting a disaster, with brief visuals, will alert
the volunteers to do their bit for humanity, but showing private human
emotions for days and days is something I never understood. It can't be
anything but politically motivated propaganda. It also smacks of
commodification of victims for a sort of depraved entertainment value. I often
feel that a disaster that suits a tv station's agenda is a relief to them
because they don't have to worry about programming and can simply milk it till
they get bored.

One could argue, correctly, that when an event is reported only briefly on tv
it doesn't remain in people's memory. This is where I favor newspapers to tv
news. Although there is still a bias here too - an event being reported on
front page, with pics etc, or in the fifth page column 2, or nowhere at all -
it is relatively indelible. The cliched Hollywood character that pins
newspaper clippings to remember an event sort of corroborates what I am
saying.

That said, I must say that I am not a fan of all these award winning gut
wrenching pictures of human tragedies because I refuse to believe that the
photographer is not manipulating. News via visual media is always less
trustworthy to me than news via written word. Atleast with the latter, we can
sense the tone, inclinations, sophistry etc which is extremely hard with
visual medium. For instance, every documentary looks manipulative to me, so I
never value news disseminated via visual medium, except for some events like
Hindenberg disaster, Tsunamis etc which can't be described in words.

~~~
FrozenVoid
Its not the death count, type of disaster or sympathy for similar/popular. Its
novelty of news. A disaster that is unique, novel or unexpected will get the
attention of news readers.

A terrorist attack in a third world will not get the same attention as a
tsunami or mudslide(because the later occur less often) and much less than a
new disease that kills a dozen people. There is a subconscious risk-estimating
going on "is disaster X relevant/close/threat to me", but the novelty of new
information is the key for news coverage and subsequent interest.

An easy way to increase novelty is to add something unique: instead of 20
people died in X, add their names and their occupations, how they died, in-
depth material/interviews - all things that increase engagement and empathy.

A simple news broadcast that searches for scoops and immediate facts is quite
dry and non-appealing, like a weather report for most people. People better
absorb news in format of something similar to opinion piece/entertainment,
regardless of its accuracy/neutrality.

All coverage is building engagement. People relate to the event from more
angles. Emotional connections form, sympathy and sense of relatedness. To some
it might be a soap opera, but it also relieves their personal fears and
problems - in a sort of twisted escapism, like watching disaster movies or
horror films.

~~~
harlanji
Power=Reach x Persuasiveness according to Scott Adams, a change from the old
Power = Money x Willingness to do evil. By this, reach increases as a function
of novelty and existing reach, if we can take fore granted that humans “like”
shiny. Ie. the coverage is rational self interest.

------
colechristensen
What is missing is how relatable the victim of the disaster is.

Self > Family > Neighbor > City > State > Country > Region

... also in a different direction, race, gender, economic status, shared
culture, etc.

Something along the lines of "how much the victim reminds me of myself". In
other words the trolley dilemma.

In some senses it might be morally objectionable to value some people more
than other people, but in other senses it makes sense. Do you care exactly as
much about your child as you do about the other 2 billion children in the
world? Would you forgo feeding your child in order to feed someone else's? Of
course not. It is a difficult subject.

~~~
jobigoud
You can add "species" at the front of your second list.

------
amriksohata
In 1990 around 170,000 Kashmiri Hindus were pushed out of Kashmir, the
eventual number over time became 400,000 but it's estimated over 2000 were
killed by Muslims in Kashmir. This was in the news but hardly made it to
regular headlines like the Rohingyas did, even the aftermath is reported but
hardly in the same way. The reason? Because Hindus are he majority in India,
however in Kashmir they are the minority. My point is that sometimes it's
about preconceptions about the media as to who matters and who doesn't rather
than the number of deaths. There is a value on a human head, sad really.

------
mbfg
i remember hearing somewhere that UNICEF determined that contribution rates
were maximal if they showed a poor little boy in a starving nation, or a poor
little girl, similarly. But if they showed the boy and girl together the
contribution rates went down significantly. A conjecture was the more numbers
of people in despair there is, the less empowered you feel to help.

~~~
meric
What about an alternative conjecture - they can help each other?

------
acmdas
This article seems to either miss the point or deplore the reality that the
news media is an entertainment business, not an important information
dissemination service. What gets "on the news" is what will get eyes on the
commercials/clicks on the ads, in the judgment of the editors.

------
hliyan
I've always dreamt of a news services that serves structured and data driven
news. E.g. each news report contains attributes about the number of
casualties, geographical area affected, estimated economic damages, the period
of time and the type of event (e.g. crime, military operation, statement,
weather, natural disaster, legal, election outcome, public gathering,
trend/speculation etc) and the level of reliability (verified, reported,
alleged etc). The article body is secondary.

~~~
dmichulke
I believe something like this is valuable to insurance agencies and quite
likely also hedge funds and investment banks.

You could even hand out free access to NGOs and have a super-nice landing page
with a world map with circles in different colors and sizes to get an overview
of what's going on.

Finally, I think _I_ would love it, too, though I am not sure whether I'd pay
for it. Also, expect to be censored, so China is probably not a market.

If you manage to do it, I think it's a valid business model.

Also, it'd be a great counter to biased media and, thereby, a service to the
world.

~~~
estsauver
I wonder if there's something amounting to this for a Bloomberg terminal.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
This reminds me of a supposed quote by Joseph Stalin:

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."

~~~
bproven
Or

"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a
conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a God" -Jean Rostand (and Megadeth :))

~~~
quickthrower2
Should be ... "You were a god"

------
tryonqc
> "I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very
> definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when
> something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news --
> car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying." (Bruce
> Schneier)

------
meowface
The ranking looks like it matches the frequency of occurrence pretty closely.
So it's not surprising news outlets report on deaths that happen in uncommon
ways even if a much larger number of people just died from a more common cause
of death.

------
Karishma1234
Deaths per mile is the metric used by many journalists. 1 death in your
neighbourhood matters more than around 10 deaths 100 miles away. I don't think
the relationship is exactly linear.

------
supernova87a
I mean, I guess this is not too surprising. There is that well-referenced
Schneier article about how we react most to risks that are unfamiliar and rare
(overestimating and valuing them), while believing as low risk those things
which are mundane and common but much more likely to kill us day to day.

General hunger is familiar to everyone, even though dying of it now should be
immoral to allow to happen. But being killed by a volcano is new and scary.

Hence the data they observe.

~~~
crispinb
You could say the same about bias on contentious issues: "tribalism is an
evolutionary trait, so such-and-such a news outlet's tendentious coverage
isn't surprising".

Or about poor software design: "Concrete thinking is natural, so it's not
surprising the engineers didn't think through possible surprising codepaths".

Journalism aspires to be, at its best, a profession whose associated skills,
standards, and ethics exist precisely to countermand the kinds of
'unsurprising' traits you mention. As with reducing bias, application of
rational news values is never going to be perfect. But like other skills, it
can be improved.

------
sandrobfc
It's not a question of numbers, but relevancy. I would say that a disaster in
Central Europe and North America will always get to the news, even if it
didn't cause a large number of deaths. If it happens anywhere else in the
World, it takes a lot more to be newsworthy.

I don't agree with this binary view of the world, but that's how it is. As a
European.

~~~
Ma8ee
What do you mean when you use the word "relevancy"?

~~~
nightmunnas
Probably proximity to home country mixed with the number of victims that are
of proximal origin to ones own country/region.

~~~
sandrobfc
Yes, relevancy as proximity to our country/region. I think I would first hear
about a disaster that killed one single person from Portugal (as a Portuguese
myself) anywhere in a world than one that killed fifty from any other
nationality (outside of Europe and North America).

That would be different for people around the world according to their country
and region.

------
Markoff
It's about relatability, these stats just show how is population of these
areas relatable to Americans. Not surprisingly rich Europeans are the most
relatable, followed by poor S and C America, but still mostly same race and
cultural background and then there is big nothing with vast cultural gap,
different race etc. with Asia and Africa. I just don't understand Pacific,
especially if it includes AU/NZ they should be just next to Europe, but maybe
nothing really happening in AU/NZ besides ocasional earthquake and the news
are overshadowed by less interesting unknown countries.

------
npcompl33t
It doesn't even take one death from a volcano, apparently:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hawaii-volcano/hawaii-
rep...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hawaii-volcano/hawaii-reports-
first-serious-injury-from-volcano-idUSKCN1IK0VH)

------
Quarrelsome
its not about the number of deaths, its the nationality of deaths that most
news stations use as a barometer of reporting. The British press gave coverage
of the 2004 Tsunami but that coverage increased as a by-product of the news
channels discovering British nationals being in the affected areas. Then it
suddenly became relevant. Otherwise its "just" another
Syria/Yemen/Darfur/Burma.

------
beardyw
IIRC in The Tin Men by Michael Frayn (1965) the computer used the number dead
divided by the distance away to determine newsworthiness. Using some of the
observations here I am sure we could improve on that.

It is gut wrenchingly sad that every death is not treated equaly ... though
much in the same way, every life.

------
amp108
With regard to famine: the word "news" means "new things". It is literally the
plural of "new". Famines are typically long-term events that have built up
over time. Famine in (parts of) Africa? Old story. Famine in New York? New,
and therefore "news".

------
nurettin
It isn't the number of deaths, rather, it is the imminance of the predicament.
The desperation caused by the situation. Single astronaut dies during space
walk, big news. Epidemic, famine, these are slow processes that don't
immediately invoke the fear reflex or curiosity as much.

~~~
chatmasta
Yeah, I remember reading about this in PSYC 101. The idea is that scale of
tragedy is proportional to people’s perception of how “avoidable” it was.

------
tyingq
Depends on the circumstances. One person dying on a commercial airliner
recently became very newsworthy.

~~~
kingbirdy
Context?

~~~
anoncoward111
i believe they're referencing the southwest airlines flight in which an engine
had an explosive failure and the shrapnel from that explosion went through the
plane's main compartment windows, killing one passenger and maybe injuring a
few more, i cant quite remember

~~~
jolmg
What probably gathered the most attention was that the woman by the window was
being sucked out but other passengers helped her by pulling her. I don't know
if it was she who died. It wasn't mentioned in the article.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16860902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16860902)

EDIT: This makes me think that part of what makes news newsworthy is
describing something in a way that provokes the readers to put themselves in
the story. In this case it's terrifying to consider being in the shoes of that
woman. Also, per GuB-42's comment, I think on average people fear nuclear
fallout more than an earthquake or a tsunami, considering that most of us have
experience with none of those scenarios.

~~~
dsnuh
She was the one that died.
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/17/philadelphi...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/17/philadelphia-
plane-emergency-southwest-landing-engine-explosion-latest)

------
sbhn
What’s important with news headlines is if it makes it feel like it could have
been you.

------
coldtea
It depends. US/European or developing world deaths?

Also, if it concerns developing world deaths, regardless of their number, are
they in an area where US/Europeans have strategic interests, and can they
exploit them to further them?

~~~
senorjazz
is more of a black / white thing sadly. Well white / other really. Probably a
1 to 100 ratio. If not more. 10 white deaths is more news worthy than a 1000
non-whites.

------
shamalinga
It'll be interesting to see man made disasters like a shooting or a terror
attack.

How many people die in the Middle East from a terrorist before it makes news?
Same goes for a shooting in USA.

How many get shot before it makes national headlines.

~~~
13of40
I could totally be wrong about this, but my impression is part of the reason
terrorist attacks in the Middle East are less visible in American media is
they don't fit the narrative of the rest of the news. Classically there are
supposed to be two native groups in the Middle East: Terrorists with a
political agenda and unworldly innocents who just want to raise their olives
and apricots. The terrorists are supposed to be rising up against the worldly
and technologically advanced West, so it doesn't make sense for them to be
blowing up the cafe on the other side of town.

~~~
PeterisP
I'd rather say that it's about the relevance of the conflict to local readers.
Middle Eastern terrorists harming some westerners (no matter if it happens in
the west or to some tourists there) matter because it's part of an "their
tribe vs our tribe" conflict; Middle Eastern terrorists harming a lot of
locals does not matter as much to the local reader because it doesn't involve
"our tribe" at all, it's just their own internal affair or civil war or even
genocide.

News is not about reporting what happens, it's about reporting what's relevant
- the events that can or will influence _us_ in some way, so whether something
is newsworthy depends on the audience. A limited conflict that affects the gas
price is more relevant to local readers than a deadly conflict with little
international influence.

------
boznz
One if your name is Tesla.

~~~
frockington
Elon couldn't keep it together through an earnings call, of course the media
is going to go after him if only just for the reaction

------
MadSudaca
Interesting question. It'd be interesting to train a regression model to
answer this question and help the media decide what to show or not depending
on the predicted impact.

------
hndamien
Tesla made a broken ankle newsworthy. So there is one data point.

~~~
frockington
Tesla also has a CEO that the media knows will react. Musk is the elementary
school child who keeps crying when the bully comes around. What makes Tesla
newsworthy is the guaranteed reaction. Elon can't keep it together for an
earnings call so of course they are going to keep poking him

------
amiga-workbench
Totally depends on the prevailing sociopolitical narrative.

------
MR4D
Only 1 needed if it’s in a Tesla.

------
everdev
1 if it's from a shark

------
roel_v
How valid are the statistics, or rather the conclusions, for some of the
(maybe unspoken) claims on some charts? Take the last one, "How many deaths
does it take for a disaster in different continents to receive newscoverage?".
This suggests that disasters in Europe get reported on much sooner than those
in Asia in Africe; which I believe, I'm just wondering to what extent we can
conclude that from this data. But it also (maybe only in my perception?) seems
to make a moral judgement on that - that that is unfair, biased,
discrimination, or just overall morally objectionable. Many comments in this
thread seem to focus on that point, or just take it as a given.

The op says for this specific chart 'Note: This data is controlled for several
factors, including the number killed and affected, country, year, month, and
type of disaster.'. There are no famines in Europe (ok maybe depending on
definitions and time period, there were some in the 60's and 70's in former
communist countries?), which make the largest number of casualties by far. So
how is it 'controlled for' by disaster type? When you look at 'data' for that
chart, it doesn't even mention 'disaster type' under 'controlled for'! So what
is it?

Furthermore, this chart suggests that every disaster in Europe with at least 1
casualty is reported on. That seems, let's say, rather unlikely. So is this
data normalized with Europe as the base? (I'll admit that I only skimmed the
actual paper). But that would be weird - what is the point of this graph? What
could it show, and what _does_ it show?

Look I'm not saying these people (i.e., the authors of the original paper)
deliberately misrepresented anything, or that they set out to prove a point.
It just looks more like a 'hey we have a cool idea for what we can do with
data, let's make regression models, it'll be fun (and probably at least
somewhat informative to others as well)' than some fundamental inquiry into
the morality of news reporting. And that's fine - much (dare I say most)
published papers have 'only' that level of depth; I've done it myself. But my
problem is the big jump from numerical relations between some 'data' and
broader conclusions (not by the authors, usually, but by people reporting on
it, like the OP).

In this case, the numbers support the intuitions most people would have. I'm
not even doubting the results, or the overall trend or bias. What I'm
wondering is to what extent we can claim that this sort of analysis actually
'proves' those intuitions. Are so-so analyses, and hand-wavy generalizations
made from them, better than having none at all? I used to think 'math is
factual and any data that is not completely bogus is better than none at all',
but nowadays, I'm not so sure any more.

