>You can't really believe that brain-damaging chemicals in the air (and soil and water) is the same thing with lightnings in a severe thunderstorm!
To a news cycle it is. There will surely be longform thinkpieces, investigative journalism, and maybe a Peabody or two to come out of this in a year. But as far as national headlines, simply nobody cares about a train wreck with zero casualties somewhere in the midwest.
I'll preface my answer by saying that "world media" (as mentioned in the parent post) and US Media are different things. If the goal is internal political pressure and accountability then sure US Media attention has some value. World media maybe not so much.
1) alas, in the US context its not really "special". There seems to be an article every 5 minutes about some business prioritising profit over the environment. I agree that its terrible, but unfortunately not special.
2) probably not. But media attention won't change their danger status.
3) absolutely not. Environmentalism, climate change, the ills of profits before environment are well documented and we'll understood. Politically the nation seems divided on thus topic. In an absurd way this event adds very little to the conversation. I think that's bonkers, but I don't think this event will change too many minds.
4) working conditions are already regulated. There are people in favour of more regulation, and some in favour of less. The US has some of the weakest labour regulation in the world (in some respects.) So yes, I think better regulation would be a desirable outcome. Then again that fire is already burning well. This event does little to fan the flames.
5) short answer is, unfortunately no. The root cause of this is profit over environment, profit over people. That's a particular US condition and it is intrinsic to the American psyche. Media attention of this event won't change that, and there's certainly no shortage of upcoming preventable ecological or human disasters waiting to happen.
I'm not saying I'm happy with the status quo, but it's not like this is surprising, or frankly even newsworthy.
It's life-changing to those folk affected, but the rest of the country don't really care. Which is whacked.
Explain how media sensationalism helps 1-5. The people are already very aware, authorities are already aware, you're already aware. so we can't use the awareness angle.
We have a very different view of how media ends up affecting outcomes. I haven't seen many positive outcomes from media involvement, the cycle is too quick and the viewpoints heavily biased.
Apparently CNN reported on this 8 days ago[0] (when it happened). Fox is running coverage live as we speak[1]. If there is any evidence of a cover-up, it has yet to be presented.
It's more likely that nobody really cared about this until it went viral on Twitter and TikTok, when people felt a social obligation to show support. It's not bad to recognize the issue, but our willingness to shoot the messenger has prevented us from being able to learn anything in the first place. How many people would have learned about this sooner if they watched the "mainstream media" they so vehemently claim is covering it up?
I don't really care either way, it's just food for thought.
My take is that the world is a massive place with countless atrocities and bad things happening. It is impossible for a single human to actually "care" for all these issues besides sweet nothings "thoughts and prayers" and maybe a donation of a 100$.
Instead, I orient myself to my local circle, strata, whatever you want to call it to something I can care for and manage. I recently funded a few tickets for my local highschool for a science trip for instance. I give money to a local shelter I like to stop by and say hey to. I do a lot of things for a circle I've deemed mine to care about.
So it sounds mean or rude not to care, but it's what everyone is doing. No one just wants to admit it. Champion a few causes that you can handle and let your taxes take care of what you can't.
Mostly because of the Flint thing in my other comment, but also because I spent an inordinate amount of my childhood on 4chan listening to people peddle their own coverup theories.
Other apathetic here. There's a certain amount of background cosmic dice rolls and related instances of suffering all the time. Plane crashes, house fires, robberies, lottery winners etc. Its all just noise. Like a log of lightening strikes. There's nothing interesting to be learned looking at individual instances, and those instances don't really affect your life. The next illogical step in the process is to figure out who or what to blame, but why? You think if they nailed this derailment down to a single thing that went wrong this time, there would never be any more derailment accidents? If the answer is no, then why care so much about where to pin blame?
Derailments of this type have been increasing a lot over the past few years due to premature automation of rail lines and increased length of freight trains. Ultimately this is a story about cutting costs at the expense of lives and the environment.
