A couple weeks ago, a destructive tornado hit the Illinois town of Washington.The tornado covered a lot of ground and damaged more than 2,400 homes. The death toll has risen to 7 and many of the survivors are telling their inspirational stories about how they made it through all their hardships regarding the tornado. It was all over the news. Every time I turned the TV on every news station would be talking about this "disaster". I assumed the extreme amount of coverage was because I live in Illinois and this is an event that has occurred close to home. But I got a call from a friend in Connecticut asking if I was okay and if my house got destroyed. I was surprised to get a call from her because I didn't expect the news coverage to reach other parts of the United States, and if it did I thought it would be minor coverage. She thought it was weird that I was surprised and told me that the news channels made it seem like a horrible disaster had destroyed every one's homes.
Not too long before the tornadoes hit Illinois, a devastating typhoon destroyed the Philippines. The death toll is nearly 4,000 and continues to rise as debris is being cleaned up. Almost twice as many people have already been killed in the Philippines than the number of homes damaged in Washington, IL. Yet, our attention is focused more on those affected in Illinois than those affected in the Philippines. Only 14% of Americans said that they have contributed to relief efforts for the typhoon. When surveyed, less than a third of Americans said they were following the news on the typhoon in the Philippines. This is less than half of the Americans that followed the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Why?
One may argue that we see more people from Illinois in our daily lives. However, an article in the LA Times states that there are 3.4 million Filipinos living in the United States (roughly 1.25X the population of Chicago) and America has strong political ties to the Philippines. Then why are people so uninterested in the disaster in the Philippines? Why is there more news coverage of the tornadoes than there is of the typhoon?
Interesting post, Jacqui! I also believe that is is interesting how the attention is being spread out. Similar to what was talked about in class, not everybody, but many Americans have a mentality of "self-interest," and "how does this impact me?" I think the answer to this issue is simply because the Washington Tornado is domestic, and the Philippines is not. The "self-interest" mentality concerns an individual with what is happening within their own country, and not necessarily that of others. There are obviously hundreds of factors as to why one is more popular, but this may be a potential reason why we are not hearing much about the Philippines.
ReplyDeleteSo interesting Jacqui. This post is very surprising to me because I thought that the news was only being broadcasted so extremely in the midwest. I agree with Niko in the "self interest" aspect but I also think it is because it is so much closer to home. Tornados and natural disasters don't seem to be happening very often in the united states but I feel like I'm constantly hearing about them in tropical places or around the world. Also we expect the technology of housing and safety to be better in the United States so the fact that people are dying is big news. I think that we are hearing more about the Illinois tornado because it is more of a shock.
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