The lead story has been balloons and aliens since before the derailment.
It doesn’t help that there’s still a war in Ukraine, a earthquake in the Middle East and the Super Bowl just happened.
It’s for these reasons that a “small-town Ohio issue” is further down on the media list of priorities.
Apparently the rail operator lobbied against safety measures that could have mitigated the impact of this disaster. They probably have a decent PR budget... https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule...
The natural state of human affairs is crony corruption, plain and simple; currently we allow multiple corrupt states (local, county, state, each corporation's internal affairs, etc...). We should just admit our natural corruption and observe that only one can be king, and that king already exists: our federal government. The Federal government ought to make it their primary mission, as the ruling top dog in our corrupt society, do destroy all other corrupt operations stealing from them.
We are an immature, petty civilization. Let's admit our immaturity, and perhaps mature a bit as a result.
The national media isn't very good at representing issues outside of major cities. Events like this are largely unimportant to people living in the places they sell their stories to. In a way, you're not asking the media to change, you're asking Americans to care about those areas at all.
The media chases clicks and attention.
News reading Americans rather read about “Is it China or aliens?”, the war in Ukraine, earthquake in Middle East and the Super Bowl than small-town Ohio.
In this instance, the simplest explanation really does seem to be financial conflict of interest.
1. ”China conducts surveillance on US” gets plenty of clicks/attention. Just look at tiktok, and before that huawei/ZTE.
2. In this case specifically it's not just "China conducts surveillance on US", it's also arguably violating the territorial integrity of the US. For americans that's strikes much closer to home than shadowy hackers hacking from china.
Does it? As far as I can tell, the “TikTok spies on people” stories have all been met with “yeah, so does Facebook”. This is across pretty much the entire political spectrum. It seems to me that only the political/media class actually find it significant.
While it’s obviously too early to have non-anecdotal data on this, my instincts tell me very few people actually care or find it surprising that China “violated the territorial integrity of the U.S.” as if we’re not constantly flying drones over other world powers. It’s just standard operating procedure at this point.
Do we know that? We mainly just know they weren’t shot down over one.
It requires attention to detail combined with political will to improve safety.
You're joking right? This crash, and its potential consequences, has been covered by the NYT, WaPo, LAT, Chicago Tribune, NBC News, ABC News, CNN, Fox News, Reuters, AP, USA Today, and WSJ multiple times.
What sort of bubble do people live in that they have somehow managed to avoid all of the media coverage of this accident?
...is the fact that nothing will change, and it is just a matter of time before this happens again, and again, and again.
Our media barely report, and then under report the seriousness. It may as well not exist, except for all the harm that will continue for decades.
But the executives and shareholders have record profits, so everything is fantastic, absolutely no reason to change.