The Enlightenment

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On the 18th of June, 5 people were killed when a shoddily-built submersible imploded after attempting to descend to the depths of the sunken Titanic in the Atlantic.

The deaths are a tragedy, and they were preventable. The owner of the company responsible openly lambasted safety regulations and was warned multiple times that his submersible was unsafe. He was one of the fatalities on June 18th.

But there’s another angle to this story that…irks me.

I was listening to The Humanist Report podcast by Mike Figueredo. He brought up a great point in his episode on the incident:

“…The media has focused on this story, constantly over the course of the last week, and it’s interesting how stories like this occupy our collective consciousness…but when it comes to, just, normal crises affecting the American people…where’s the outrage?” (4:49-5:00, 5:54-6:01)

He has a great point.

First, this incident is an excellent example of the mainstream media lying to you. The media presents certain stories while ignoring others, skewing your perspective by lying by omission.

If the media wishes to highlight the tragedy of the loss of life, why don’t they every have these media blitzes about climate change, which kill at least tens of thousands of people a year?

How about universal healthcare in the United State? 68,000 Americans die every year because our country doesn’t have single-payer healthcare. More Americans will die within 47 minutes of this post going public from lack of healthcare than died in this submersible.

Did you know that 4 days before the Titan submersible sank, a boat carrying 700 migrants capsized off the coast of Greece? There are 82 deaths and 500 missing, yet you’ve never heard of it and the submersible incident has 51 times the searches on the internet.

I understand that the submersible incident is unique. But how does that justify the enormous disparity in coverage between the two stories?

This rolls into my second point: the class aspect. Oceangate, the company that operated the submersible, caters to wealthy clients able to afford such deep-sea excursions.

The truth is accidents happen everyday to non-wealthy people. A lot of workers get killed every day due to the negligence of their bosses. Shoddy mines cave in, factories collapse, fires break out.

Desperate migrants are forced to flee their countries due to deteriorating economic and political conditions, causing them to board a shoddy boat that capsizes.

But there’s no media blitz for those people.

The Oceangate Titan incident is also an example of what we mean when the lives of the wealthy and powerful matter more than the rest.

While the victims of the Titan tragedy receive prayers, news coverage, and mourning, victims with less means are consigned to silent suffering.

The US military has already announced investigations and searches for the crashed submersible. If only the US military had moved so quickly to replace dirty pipes in Flint, Michigan in 2014 after thousands were poisoned due to contaminated water!