Who worries someone else's grief

The McLarga Law is such an observation, rather cynical (and attributed to the long -deceased editor of the British newspaper), on how the news is arranged: “1 dead Briton is equal to 5 dead Frenchmen, 20 dead Egyptians, 500 dead Indians and 1000 dead Chinese.” According to this logic, the death of a hundred people from a forest fire somewhere in Central Africa has little chance of being in the first lane.

In 1986, researcher William Adams from the University of George Washington began to check the McLarga Law, sitting with a second -doer in front of the TV screen : he scooped up a time that was given to different natural disasters in television, a thousand minutes. Western Europe - 9.2 minutes. Eastern Europe - 3.6 minutes. Latin America - 1.02 minutes. The Middle East is 0.87 minutes. Asia - 0.76.

For thirty years, something has changed since then. For example, the Republic of Haiti is a poor third world country. But when a destructive earthquake happened there in 2010, the main newspapers of the USA - Washington to him and its consequences Post , New York Times and Chicago Tribune - dedicated to a total of 1494 publications, that is, as many as 25.5 percent of all articles about natural disasters that have published in these newspapers over 10 years.

In 2004, the Typhoon “Winnie” deprived the lives of 1593 people in the Philippines, but you probably did not hear anything about it, because the world media practically did not write about it.

The countingwas made by Kim Bissel from the University of Alabama (USA) and Jan Yang from the University of Uthania (China) for his study, published in the scientific journal Communication Research , where they tried to bring out at least some pattern.

Even among recent disasters, Bissel and Yang write, there are not only underestimated, but also simply invisible to the majority. How about the flood of 2010 in China, which lasted four months, the 230 million people affected to varying degrees (someone lost at home, someone simply evacuated for a while) and killed about four thousand? In 2013, seven thousand were killed in Nepal and India. In 2004, the Typhoon “Winnie” deprived the lives of 1593 people in the Philippines, but you probably did not hear anything about it, because the world media practically did not write about it.

In total, the authors of the study counted in Washington Post , New York Times and Chicago Tribune 5841 publication about 292 natural disasters for the period from 2004 to 2014. Scientists took into account not only the number of articles devoted to everyone, but also, for example, how long the plot appeared in the newspaper: say, about the tsunami in Indonesia wrote all 10 years (3328 days) from the moment it happened, but as many as 24.8 percent of the natural disasters was mentioned only once - the day after the event. On average, the story of a cataclysm with human victims is able to hold out in the news for 30 days.

The authors had been prepared for nine hypotheses that could explain the attention of the media to the cataclysm. How far has he played far from America? Are tourists going there? Will anything united by the affected country import? Or, conversely, export it? Did any American charity organization send humanitarian aid to humanitarian aid? And so on. But, surprisingly, a statistical analysis demonstrated that none of these questions allows us to predict how much newspapers will write about the catastrophe. For example, from how often the country is mentioned in the headings "Economics" and "Politics", which is paid to it in the case of a natural disaster, a little attention depends. Unless the frequent mention in other contexts can be prevented rather: if news comes from the Middle East every day, then for an article about an earthquake in Israel or Iraq, there may simply be no place - because Iraq and Israel are already too much for one newspaper.

If for a hurricane in the USA 20 victims is a common thing, then for flooding is an exceptional case, so they will write about such a flood more often and longer.

In other words, the McLarga Law does not work in the United States anymore - with the exception of the obvious circumstance that emergency situations within the country are illuminated much more in more detail than beyond.

The only pattern that is completely confirmed by statistics is a distorted scale effect. Large disasters receive disproportionately more attention than those following in the ranking behind them, where hundreds or thousands of people also died. The ten main cataclysms were dedicated to 78.7 percent of all articles, the remaining 282 were mentioned on average three times (that is, most often in each of the three newspapers) - and as a result, the victims of them received disproportionately less help. At the same time, the number of victims in itself is not the only criterion. If for a hurricane in the United States 20 victims (and more) is a common thing, then for flooding is an exceptional case, so they will write about such floods more often and longer: the effect of deviation from the norm is triggered.

Natural disasters were not interested in the authors of work on their own - but rather, as a material for understanding the work of the media. It seems that the same distortions that make the “scale effect” or “the effect of deviation from the norm” can also be found in articles about war or lawmaking. It’s simply easier to indicate with numbers in their hands here, because the natural disaster is in a sense the most neutral of the same type of events that can happen far from us. You can’t say that about the news of politics, business or terrorist attacks. If somewhere in Yemen al-Qaeda arranged an explosion in the market-this is, first of all, the same Al-Qaeda, which arranged on September 11. And if in the Chinese provinces, iPhone collectors are thrown out of the windows - this is, first of all, a story about Apple . Earthquakes or eruptions of volcanoes are another matter: they occur without political and economic background.

It’s not that the authors convicted newspapers in lies - they indicate distortions laid down in the optics of the media as our tool for looking at the world. There is no malicious intent here, as does not have it with a telescope, which shows the moon inverted. It’s just that this effect needs to be remembered when we look at the telescope.