A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words.
The world media havenât found it so easy to wring the heart wrenching front page stories out of the flood disaster in Brazil as they have done in Australia. Itâs not so easy to travel in the devasted region, the inhabitants donât always obligingly speak English.
Could any amount of words sum up the sheer desolation of this dog sitting by itâs owners grave â No 305 of 617?
Vanderlei Almeida / AFP â Getty Images
January 20, 2011 at 05:36
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I suspect that the devastion in Brazil was more contained. That is, despite
itâs awful toll it affected a much smaller area. The casualty numbers are
horrific in Brazil, limited in Australia because of better building standards
etc.
Anyway guys, when half of York gets washed away, killing scores donât
expect the UK media to know what is going on anywhere else. Even if it happens
at the same time.
January 19, 2011 at 05:57
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Iâm not a cynic. And I really did need to see that picture.
January 18, 2011 at 00:21
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well â I blame in large part the very presence (or absence) of moving
pictures. How many times have we seen on UK TV some âdramaticâ footage up near
the top of the evening news running order. Something of earth shattering
importance such as, oh, a car chase in Miami perhaps, a skateboarding dog or
some-such.
Meanwhile in Iran the execution rate goes up, free speech is oppressed in
Burma but â no pictures , so sorry â not on the newsâ¦â¦
January 17, 2011 at 18:19
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Thou shalt give equal worth to tragedies that occur in non-english speaking
countries as to those that occur in english speaking countries.
Dan Le Sac
â Thou Shalt Always Kill ft. Scroobius Pip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X8nRxsTgzA with subtitled
lyrics
January 17, 2011 at
21:02
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Same syndrome that had British media constantly talking about the awful
tragedy of a handful of UK citizens dying in the 2004 tsunami. Yes, it was a
tragedy, but err, there werer nearly a quarter of a million tragedies that
Boxing Day.
I remember it irked me particularly at the time.
January 17, 2011 at 17:56
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If that be verily the grave of the dogâs human, we really ought not to be
surprised by its remaining nearby. A mammal of any type (not just a
domestic one), once it has befriended a human, is a friend for
life ; the failure of humans to understand this and to understand
that such animals have emotions cause many animals to suffer in a way that,
were they human, we should find abhorrent.
The failure of the media to afford coverage to the floods in the state of
Rio given to those is Queensland is, I suspect, only partly a matter of the
fact that â as Angry Exile amusingly puts it â the locals speak
something that sounds like English.
Years of watching the development of the tropical World and ever more
detailed television reports not only of natural disasters but also of
atrocities such as suicide bombings have dinned in to us an entirely
irrational belief that brown-skinned peoples care less about the deaths of
their loved ones than we.
Î Î
January 17,
2011 at 17:46
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Oh, Anna, you are clearly a âglass half-fullâ personality. I see a dog
sitting by a freshly-dug grave in a third-world country, and devotion and
loyalty isnât what first springs to mindâ¦
January 17, 2011 at 17:23
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What a loyal dog.
Thereâs what looks like a piece of fabric beside the
cross â if it belonged to the victim the dog is probably sensing it. (I am not
suggesting improper or incomplete burial â itâs just cloth.)
January 17, 2011 at 16:38
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Iâve been wondering about the discrepancy in reporting myself. Iâm
bombarded with images from the Queensland floods, and now the flooding here in
Victoria, because I live here. I was surprised to hear that it was such big
news in the UK when the damage is mostly being totted up in dollars rather
than bodies (though they seemed to have missed the plague of locusts weâve
just had â itâs been a little Biblical here lately). If I had to guess Iâd
suggest that perhaps itâs to do with the MSMâs expectations. Brazil had big
floods only last year, so itâs thought of as something that happens there. But
Australia? Not only do the locals speak something that sounds like English and
obligingly selected a useless cricket team for the Ashes, but itâs supposed to
be a dry country with dusty red soil nearly everywhere. Everybody knows that
because it was on Crocodile Dundee. And people go there on holidays and
everything. The reality â that between the dry times Oz can get some
impressive floods â doesnât meet with the expectation, and perhaps that made
it newsworthy. Still shouldnât have knocked the greater tragedy in Brazil off
the front page though.
January
17, 2011 at 17:49
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âitâs supposed to be a dry country with dusty red soil nearly
everywhere. Everybody knows that because it was on Crocodile
Dundee.â
Thatâs it, in a nutshell. The fact that part of it is actually rainforest
would be met with incredulity by most âMailâ readers.
And most âGuardianâ readers, but because theyâve seen âRabbit Proof
Fenceâ insteadâ¦.
January 18, 2011 at 16:11
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Itâs coz we as a nation have many relatives in Australia. Mine are in
Cairns, Meblourne and Sydney (I bet thatâs a surprise). Plus some others in
Rotarua, New Zealand. and the floods were severe if not extreme!
January
17, 2011 at 16:03
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Anna, great minds etc. My post will be published tonight. Yes, the coverage
has been shocking on the media.
Heartbreaking photo.
January 17, 2011 at 15:57
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Heartbreakingly sad.
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