Some Bombing Victims Are Better Than Others

I am listening to the NPR radio coverage of the manhunt in Boston for the bombing suspects. I used to live in the same suburbs that they're searching now for the younger suspect. It's the usual minute by minute coverage. The wait has begun and within the hour or so, this suspect will either be dead or in custody. They just did an interview with the mechanic who worked on the second suspect's girlfriend's Mercedes Benz wagon earlier in the week. Just this minute, I heard an interview with a young man who was on the wrestling team at Cambridge Rindge and Latin with one of the suspects.

As a journalist I can appreciate a great story. The Boston Bombing story has foreign intrigue, and empathetic victims in a setting where just about everyone is white and lives in a nice house. When I lived there, most of the neighbors on our street were doctors or professors at one of the area colleges.

Three people died in Monday's bombing. Meanwhile, in West, Texas--a town of 2800 that apparently was never deemed worthy of even a real name, there are 14 dead in a fertilizer factory explosion. Officials aren't saying how many were wounded in the blast. I heard locals interviewed this morning saying things like "We're all family by osmosis here" and 'we're doctorin' people and gettin' em better." (Upon hearing the sincere 'osmosis' comment, my quipster son said "they must all have sensitive skin there." Yes, he made an osmosis joke....) A state official--not the governor-- talked about how people in the town are already "picking up the pieces of their lives and moving on."

What I didn't hear was any comment about why the state would allow a fertilizer plant to be built and operated in a small residential area, in a region where land is cheap. Meanwhile in Boston, there has been minute dissection from Day 1 about the quality of media coverage and the emergency medical response. On Tuesday, The New Yorker magazine had a great piece online by Atul Gawande titled "Why Hospitals Were Ready"--ready in Boston that is. Who knows what the medical response in Texas was like: four emergency responders were killed at the scene of the blast.

The national print media is focused this morning on the situation in Boston. In the L.A. Times, there's a smidge of 'Fertilizer Blast' coverage on page 1 but Boston coverage dominates. It's the same with the San Francisco Chronicle and The Chicago Tribune. Even the Dallas Times has a large picture of the Boston manhunt activities. A story on West, Texas is beneath 'the fold'. The New York Times, which is often tagged as a 'liberal media bolt hole' has the most balanced coverage. There is a Boston manhunt photo but the 1st column is about the Texas blast.

West, Texas is tiny compared to the Boston area. There are 32,000 people living in just the suburb of Watertown compared to 2800 living in West, Texas. It's easy to justify  the difference in the amount of coverage and the granularity of analysis. That's unlikely to change over the next few months. In Texas, the reaction is 'we're tough, we're going to take care of ourselves', whereas reaction in the northeast is more "what can we do for the victims? how can we help?" Yet, there are already 14 dead in little West, Texas and probably more to come. I like to think that we're progressing  past the backward notion that the lives of some people are worth more than the lives of others, but perhaps not.