An interesting question raised on AskMe earlier today: why, when there is an event like the Boston Marathon bombing, do some people (people from the UK are particularly noted) make a point of pointing out that similar, indeed much worse, events are happening every day in other parts of the world with hardly a register on news media in “the West”.
Certainly such thoughts have occurred to me, though I find it rather crass to express them at a time such as this. Why do I feel this way, and why might others? Certainly not for the “anit-Americanism” being suggested in some of the responses; my impression is that most people who have commented upon the bombing in that way are not saying that the Boston events should not be reported, but asking why it is reported in that way relative to, say, the low-key reporting of 24 people being killed in incidents in Afghanistan a couple of days later (there may be an exception to this in the smaller number of people who are saying things like “America has perpetrated worst incidents”, which has the dangerous and illogical implication that events such as this are somehow “deserved”).
Nor do such thoughts give rise to the “moral superiority” discussed by other commenters. I wouldn’t want to point out these inequities just to feel smug about doing so—the idea that people would think that I’m getting my moral rocks off by having such a thought seems disgusting.
I think the reason that these thoughts come to mind to me is more to do with a background sense of what I feel ideal news reporting should be like; my “news utopia” reports on things because of the importance of the topic, not because of the nationality or race of the participants. When something so clearly works against this I feel a genuine emotional sense of unsettledness.
It seems weird to me that some people think that the only reason someone could want to be critical is to come out as superior or biased in some way; I feel that the main role of criticism is to bring us collectively towards something better and more equitable.
I used to think that everyone went around with a set of “utopias” like this in their heads; some sense of what, if we could sort out all the pesky details, we could get to that would be better than what we currently have. But, it surprises me how little this mode of thinking exists.
One of my favourite management techniques is the “queen for a day” thought exercise. If you are in a situation, what would you do if you were “queen for the day” and could just make everything work right (in an unmagical way; no defying the laws of physics or having billions of pounds to throw at the problem). This is really useful to act as an anchor point; once you have determined peoples’ ideals, then you can work back from them to find a good solution that goes pragmatically somewhere towards them all. But, it surprises me how often I ask this question and people haven’t given it a thought at all before I mention it; by contrast, I usually have a (contestable, changeable, incomplete) idea of the “ideal” in a particular situation as part of my day-to-day thinking toolbox about the situation.
