Titan coverage a reminder of media’s shallow interests

If a tree falls in the wilderness and no one is there to witness, the tree may have fallen, but the topic will not be dissected on Twitter.

That axiom was proven most recently when a submersible vessel full of passengers who paid $250,000 apiece to dive to the wreckage of the fabled doomed ship, Titanic, imploded, killing everyone onboard. That tree did not fall in secret. In fact, it was impossible to escape the details of the voyage and the lives of the passengers, and that is how framing works in the media. When the media focuses on a particular event — the former president's multiple and multi-colored legal problems, or Hunter Biden's tax evasion — they steer public conversations. When the media pays attention to, say, George Santos' penchant for lying, then even in our bifurcated world, Santos becomes the topic of the day.

Since the media moves like a school of fish, that means many topics go unremarked upon while other topics receive slavish and unmerited attention from multiple news organizations. Think about how often the media explores the root causes poverty — very little, as it turns out, which means public conversation rarely addresses that topic.

But the disappearance and subsequent deaths of five wealthy people? Now that’s worth exploring.

In a sense, the Titan story was Missing White Woman Syndrome (MWWS) writ large, though there were no women aboard. The phrase, coined by academic Sheri Parks, and popularized by legendary journalist Gwen Ifill, refers to the media's devotion to reporting stories about white victims, particularly white women. The heat is turned up even more if the victims are wealthy, because that kind of event counters our belief that money armors us against bad things.

Prior to the Titan's implosion, we saw MWWS at work in the coverage of the last days of Gabby Petito, a popular vlogger who disappeared in August 2021, and whose remains were eventually found in Wyoming. The FBI said the prime suspect, Petito's fiancé, claimed responsibility for her death, and his remains were found in Florida. Petito was white, with a charming online presence and even if you wanted to you could not escape the details of that sad story.

Every missing person, every victim of bad acts deserves our attention, but Black, Latina and Indigenous women and girls go missing at alarming rates — and they do so to deafening silence. One analysis said that white women account for roughly half of missing persons coverage in the media, though they make up just 30% of actual missing persons' cases. Organizations such as the Black and Missing Foundation try to fill the gap, but they're up against a juggernaut of past practice, intellectual laziness and — let's just say it — racism.

The Titan was supposed to cart those well-heeled people to something the rest of us will only see in photos and videos. Contact was lost not long after Titan submerged, and an expensiveinternational search was launched while news outlets breathlessly counted down the 96, 95, then 94 hours of oxygen the passengers most likely had left.

For some, that was a reason to attempt humor, though most of the grownups restrained themselves as the media kept counting down. The coverage had a definite vibe of the 1951 film “Ace in the Hole” to it.

While rescue and journalism resources were poured into that dark hole, the Mediterranean Sea continues to serve as a watery grave (25,000 people between 2014 and 2022 alone) of (other than white) refugees seeking to leave troubled homelands. That figure does not include the hundreds who died in one recent and tragic water catastrophe, where the dead included 100 children, who'd been traveling below deck. We may never know the (other than white) people we lost.

These two worlds rarely collide — rich people who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to experience space or deep-sea travel, and refugees willing to board crowded boats for a shot at a new life. Occasionally, the random luxury yacht may answer a distress call — that certainly makes the news — but refugees-at-sea stories do not. We rarely know much about those victims, though in the last few days we learned plenty about the Titan's passengers.

I cannot get on board with making Titan jokes. As my granddaughter said when we discussed this the day the news reported that the passengers were dead, “They're people, too,” but we could start demanding that same attention be given to the people who don't make it across the Mediterranean, and to the people of color who go missing and are currently unremarked upon. Would that make us more aware of the United States' role in creating untenable conditions in these countries the refugees are fleeing? Would that move us to act, and maybe sink resources into solutions that stop the deaths and victimization at home?

We can hope. But first, we'd have to value equally all lives lived and lost.

Susan Campbell is the author of “Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood,” “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker” and “Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl.” She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.