It was quite a week for attention-consuming headlines, especially for news junkies, ranging from low global impact to international crisis on the importance spectrum.
The fate of the submersible craft the Titan and its handful of occupants held the world in an obsessive grip for days, despite the constant spoiler alerts about the unlikely prospect of survival. It was a “tragic” event, as we were told over and over again. That it directly affected only a few privileged people seemed not to matter, as millions followed the coverage like it was a live-time reality show. Which it kind of was, although not as scripted.
Meanwhile, in Russia, Vladimir Putin, stable genius that he is, learned that his renegade hired mercenaries might be able to defeat his Russian army and seize control of Moscow and more. But the Wagner Group mercenaries halted their assault short of the capital. Rather than press charges, Putin banished Wagner Group commander Yevgeny Prigozhin to Belarus, a fate that is difficult to assess as a quality outcome for him. The Wagner soldiers, who raced up the roads north towards Moscow essentially unimpeded, also were forgiven. Most apparently went back to Ukraine, where they are facing newly emboldened armed forces.
All the big news outlets covered both developments relentlessly, with continuous updates seasoned by punditry and augmented with appropriate “sidebar” stories. Was the Titan unsafe all along? How would a rescue work? Was this a serious threat to Putin’s stranglehold on Russia? What were its implications for the war in Ukraine? Fair questions and thoroughly reported by actual journalists doing their jobs — as opposed to the swill you could find over in the social media swampland and conspiracy theorist insanity silos. (Everything is Biden’s fault!)
I observed the coverage both as a consumer of news and as a professional journalist with 50-plus years of experience, including time as the editor of a daily newspaper. Like some of my colleagues, I was a little taken aback by the sheer volume of Titan coverage — even as I, too, was gripped. It seemed like another example of what I call the little-girl-falls-down-a-well, miners-trapped-underground or climbers-swept-away-by-avalanche syndrome. We are fascinated by people-in-peril stories, especially if there is an element of survival drama — and if it involves people we can at least somewhat identify with.
That said, there was a genuine tragedy playing out in the Mediterranean Sea, where hundreds of migrants on a boat headed for Greece were presumed drowned when the vessel sank. According to news coverage, the passengers included women and children who were trapped in the boat’s hold. The passengers were from several countries and had paid smugglers thousands of dollars each for the transportation. Officials in Greece came under fire for not rendering more assistance. Of course, neither did anyone else overextend themselves. But the migrants were not people most Westerners generally identify with.
Meanwhile, what was surely millions of dollars’ worth of resources were poured into the search for five people who were basically on a tourism jaunt and, in turns out, likely perished shortly after contact with the vessel was lost.
The implosion of the Titan is, without question, a sad and moving story, and involves the added element of being associated with the sinking of the Titanic, which we remain fascinated by more than a century later, in part because technology has allowed us extraordinary access to the wreckage site. Like the migrants on the boat in the Mediterranean, the Titan adventurers were aware of the risks. I don’t know that you can compare the human losses, but you can certainly gauge the difference in response and intensive coverage of the two events.
As for the drama in Russia, it was a story with possibly monumental consequences for the rest of the world, which made it compelling, and seemed to be mutating hourly: They were on the move, then they weren’t, Putin was in dire trouble, then he wasn’t.
In either case, however we feel about the resources brought to bear, each story was an example of how large, legitimate news organizations can provide exhaustive event-driven coverage when they choose to. Whether they always make the best choices is open to discussion. We’ll be seeing many follow-up stories. Are ratings and circulation motivational? Sure, but not in the way media critics think. When someone says to me, “you’re just doing that to sell newspapers,” my response is, “you bet we are. That’s our business.”
But we’re primarily doing it to make sure the news is covered. That’s the lasting value of real journalism.
