So Near Yet So Far

Explosions in Lac-Megantic, Quebec

This past weekend, American cable news networks ran wall to wall coverage of the plane crash of a Korean airliner at San Francisco airport.    That type of breaking news coverage is most certainly warranted.     Meanwhile, in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, a runaway train loaded with oil derailed and produced explosions and fires large enough to devastate the center of this small lakeside town.    Over 2,000 people in the town of 6,000 were evacuated, at least a dozen were killed with dozens more missing.    If you were watching most television news over the weekend, you probably had little or no idea about the Quebec disaster unless you saw a sentence in a crawler at the bottom of your screen as the San Francisco crash aftermath played out in great detail.    Why was one story that much more important than the other?    Lac-Megantic is ten miles from Maine.   The train involved was owned by an American company.   Maine lent firefighting assistance.   Many New England families have deep French Canadian roots.    Does a plane crash at the doorstep of a major U.S. market mean better ratings?    Don't American news networks have coverage arrangements with their Canadian media counterparts?    For a "foreign" news story, it can't get closer to home than this.    I may have Canada on my radar than most Americans, but I can't help but think that CNN, Fox, MSNBC and even New England Cable News executives feel viewers on this side of the border care that little about what goes on over there.    Ignorance about the rest of our world is very dangerous.