What Do You Think? The Chilean Mine Rescue
This week, 33 workers who were trapped underground for over two months in a collapsed mine in Chile were rescued. The Chilean mine rescue has been quite a prominent media event, which is already being compared to the coverage of the first moon walk in 1969 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. People around the world have watched live video feeds, produced by the Chilean government, aired nonstop on cable news channels and streamed over the internet. Journalists from around the world were (and are) on the scene (prompting media training for the miners) and the story continues to swirl all over Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.
So, what do you think about all this? Is this a momentous and unprecedented media occasion, bringing the globe together through technological advances and the triumph of the human spirit? Or is it just the classic overblown media spectacle filled with feel-good fluff? Do you find it captivating, emotional, exploitative, or do you even care? Does it deserve our close attention or is it just a distraction from the myriad pressing political, social, and economic issues facing us right now? What are the global dynamics involved here with the international media, the global audience, the people of Chile, the miners themselves, and the Chilean government orchestrating it all? What does this tell us about media today– even reality TV?
While I am of course happy they are out, this is really just the old baby in a well story blown up. It also overshadowed the ecological disaster in Hungary that happened earlier this week and which should probably be the bigger news story, as it involves more people and will have greater repercussions.