Virginia Trioli’s comments not so much racist as unprofessional. Opinion from Peter Saxon

“We are overly focusing on what happens to rich white people in the West, versus what happens on a daily basis in those countries (Afghanistan/Iraq etc),”  Virginia Trioli, ABC2.

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I wasn’t the only one to berate Virginia Trioli over what many regarded as intemperate comments while the Boston Bombing was still breaking news.

On 2UE, Jason Morrison responded to her outburst on his Drive show saying, “The observation is fine to make right up until the appalling reference to ‘rich white people’.

He’s right, of course. It’s a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black – or in this case, white. But on this ‘site for broadcast professionals,’ that’s beside the point. As a seasoned professional Ms Trioli should know exactly why Australian newsrooms would focus on events in Boston rather than those in Iraq and Afghanistan – on this occasion. It’s not as if those countries haven’t “enjoyed” a staggering amount of coverage over the past decade.

It’s the same reason as why Al Jazeera tends to focus on events in the Middle East and why the Indian Media picks up on everything that happens to their expats and don’t much care if an ABC employee is raped and murdered on the same streets of Melbourne as one of their own is bashed.

‘On a busy news day, often it’s a judgement call to decide what is more newsworthy. The guiding principle should always be a question of what’s more important to your audience? What do they care about? Not what you care about.’

On the other hand, the 2004 Tsunami that hit half of South East Asia and the one that hit Japan in 2011 were both well reported. Some of the victims may have been rich, but most weren’t white if that’s what truly concerns Ms Trioli.

Still, the first detail every news channel reports after the headline is how many Australians were affected. Why? Because  that’s what we care about most in this country. It should come as no surprise to Ms Trioli that from Switzerland to Swaziland, that’s the first question they’ll ask about their own citizens too. It’s just how it is.

There are many variables in prioritising news to fit a limited time slot. Sometimes you have too much, other times not enough. On a busy news day, often it’s a judgement call to decide what is more newsworthy. The guiding principle should always be a question of what’s more important to your audience? What do they care about? Not what you care about.

Or, taken from the opposite angle, as one reader commented on Andrew Bolt’s blog in the Herald Sun, Question for Trioli: If the ABC studios and 3AW were both bombed at the same time, which one would YOU care more about? 

Put far more eloquently by one of Australia’s most insightful commentators, Waleed Aly, writing in the SMH had this to offer:

Let’s clear something up: our responses to terrorism are not about the loss of innocent life. We think they are because that’s the first thing we talk about. We use the suffering of victims to emote, and we look at the attacks through that prism. But it’s never really about the victims. It’s about us. It’s about the magnetic trauma of watching these attacks repeat on our news services. It’s about the fact each of us is entirely interchangeable with the killed and injured; that we can so easily transpose ourselves into the situation. It’s about the brutal unpredictability of the violence.

This is partly why the Boston Marathon bombings have attracted so much more of our attention than the much deadlier bombings that struck Iraq on the same day. It’s not just that we don’t value Iraqi lives as much as American ones (although this is true, given our ability to rationalise away the mammoth loss of civilian life during the Iraq war). It’s that there is nothing surprising about them. They do not shock us. And for that reason, they cannot truly terrorise us.

 Would it were different? Maybe. But while newsrooms in a free society compete for the eyes and ears of consumers, news directors are always going to choose the news that they believe their audience wants.

It may not be ideal, Ms Trioli, but better consumers get what they want than you or, say, the government decides for them what they should get. Mind you, that woman reading the news in North Korea looks like she really enjoys her job. 

Peter Saxon