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Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

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Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you were to tally up how much airtime each news story gets, plotted against the general tone of the coverage, you'd probably come up with something resembling the news room agenda It's not like it's subtle. There have been hundreds of Chinese weather balloon stories in the past week. Have there been hundreds of stories about this? US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose mon…

> US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen. The carrier will lose money. But a news company would make money, wouldn't they? Bad news is good news after all, and environmental disasters are bad news.

I think jingoistic China bashing pays better than putting the spotlight on America's various problems and shortcomings.

They did it in the 1970s and aside from brilliant Hollywood movies it wasn't a good decade for America. The less introspection the better as far as the media and political interests are concerned.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#152

This was posted to reddit the other day: https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/110nlai/... The footage has a lot of NSFW language, so just watch out for that. Within that thread there's some good discussion about some of the compounds that are being released into the air, and it is indeed very grim. Interestingly here in Australia, I've heard about it a lot more in traditional media than my American fri…

This footage is of regular clouds, despite the breathless commentary in the video. Details here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/110nlai/...

The derailment is, no doubt, a serious public health crisis. However, it helps no-one to spread misleading videos and commentary.

The wave of panic in the thread you posted is a stark example of "fake news" in action. A sign of the times, I suppose.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really believe that brain-damaging chemicals in the air (and soil and water) is the same thing with lightnings in a severe thunderstorm!

>You can't really believe that brain-damaging chemicals in the air (and soil and water) is the same thing with lightnings in a severe thunderstorm! To a news cycle it is. There will surely be longform thinkpieces, investigative journalism, and maybe a Peabody or two to come out of this in a year. But as far as national headlines, simply nobody cares about a train wreck with zero casualties somewhere in the midwest.

>>simply nobody

Mmm… I love sociopaths…

Let’s pump more CO2 into the air because simply nobody cares about the global South & it will make me a bit of money I can take a vacation with.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#155

I explained to my sister that this was "Bhopal[1]" level bad and she didn't believe me because "If it was that bad the news would be covering it." Sigh. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

Bhopal was probably an order of magnitude 'worse' than this.

At least two.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> union workers warning about this 2 months ago First I've heard that, got a reference?

Union negotiations shut down by Biden and Congress included safety reforms regarding car length and working hours. Both were factors in this derailment: https://www.rutgers.edu/news/why-did-government-step-prevent...

No, the factor was a broken car axle.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous HN comments were also filled with “the media is not covering this!”. With the HN post linking to the Guardian and the top comment I saw at the time being a link to the NYTimes. There may be legitimate arguments about whether it should get more coverage relative to other news, but it isn’t a conspiracy. It’s simple. People don’t want read/hear about this stuff in the US and US news, unfortunately, is a co…

I searched for this. There are 4 pieces in the NYTimes alone. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/04/us/train-derailment-fire-... https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000008756189/ohio-train-... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/us/ohio-derailment-chemic... https://www.nytimes.com/article/ohio-train-derailment.html?s...

So people keep pointing to NYTimes stories, but I go on the Time's site at least 2-3 times daily, spread throughout the day, and I still have not seen a single story on the Time's main page. I'm not going to call it "front page" now because there are around ~130 stories there. Not one of those 130 stories there currently cover this. Ctr-F "train", "Ohio", "Palestine" etc.

In those 130 articles there are the Wirecutter reviews for kettles, "The Man Who Caught Marilyn Monroe’s Skirt on Film," "Where #VanLife meets #SkiBum," the size of the surf waves, etc etc etc, but nothing on the train derailment.

Have these articles been showing up on the main page and I keep missing them? Or are they permanently buried in the "US News" section where I'm sure only a small fraction of Times digital readers ever turn to?

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#158
post #136
post #20

Frankly getting tired of hearing about how I haven't heard about it, and nobody wants me to hear about it. If you want to write about news, write about it. If you want to point out instances of news media not covering this story where they might have covered other stories go for it, cite instances. All I've been convinced of so far is some people have an axe to grind, and part of their narrative is how the media or t…

Tinfoil hat spin: the “no one is talking about it” angle is being propagated by foreign psy-ops as a distraction from the balloon stories. The “look, we found balloons too” angle floated like a lead aerostat. The general population pays closer attention to the derailment story because a cover-up is intimated by a “grassroots” perspective, and the balloon story floats away into thin air.

Pretty sure this is a way fucking bigger deal than a bunch of balloons.

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#159
post #20

Frankly getting tired of hearing about how I haven't heard about it, and nobody wants me to hear about it. If you want to write about news, write about it. If you want to point out instances of news media not covering this story where they might have covered other stories go for it, cite instances. All I've been convinced of so far is some people have an axe to grind, and part of their narrative is how the media or t…

Then maybe this isn't about you, specifically? How are the mainstream media dealing with it?

> How are the mainstream media dealing with it?

https://abcnews.go.com/US/toxic-chemicals-train-derailed-ohi...

Re: Ohio train derailment: environmental disaster quietly unfolding

#160
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen. The carrier will lose money. But a news company would make money, wouldn't they? Bad news is good news after all, and environmental disasters are bad news.

Trains derail all the time. It’s dog bites man, not man bites dog.

Your dismissal make the ops point. The train derailment is not the news the environmental disaster that is happening because of it is the news. But you only know about the train derailment not much about the environmental disaster which should have been milked for views by the media normally.
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