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Why is the Berkeley balcony collapse such a big deal?

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  • 09-04-2016 3:06pm
    #1
    Celtickate
    Registered Users Posts: 19 ✭


    I know this happened a while ago but I'm curious. Why is this being treated as a national tragedy? I know it's sad for the relative and friends of the deceases but why does the public care enough to have a book of condolences? People die all the time in accidents and it's in the news for one day.

    Is it because they were all middle class? They're probably wouldn't be as much, if any, media coverage for people from a working class background.
    Tagged:


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    #2
    ceekay74
    Registered Users Posts: 634 ✭✭✭ceekay74


    This should be good


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    #3
    Mint Sauce
    Registered Users Posts: 29,294 ✭✭✭✭Mint Sauce


    Celtickate wrote: »
    I know this happened a while ago but I'm curious. Why is this being treated as a national tragedy? I know it's sad for the relative and friends of the deceases but why does the public care enough to have a book of condolences? People die all the time in accidents and it's in the news for one day.

    Is it because they were all middle class? They're probably wouldn't be as much, if any, media coverage for people from a working class background.


    Do they all be abroad, from one country, and in the one incident?


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    #4
    daveyeh
    Registered Users Posts: 774 ✭✭✭daveyeh


    Thinly veiled 'I don't care if people I think are wealthy die' thread.


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    #5
    Kev1001
    Registered Users Posts: 37 ✭Kev1001


    As horrible as it might sound I agree that this seemed to stay in the public interest a lot longer than other tradegies (that family incident where the car rolled off the pier in Donegal, the crash in Donegal that killed 8, the school bus crash that killed 5 in 2005 for example) and I can only assume that it is due to social background.


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    #6
    Shint0
    Registered Users Posts: 1,196 ✭✭✭Shint0


    Mint Sauce wrote: »
    Do they all be abroad, from one country, and in the one incident?
    Three Irish citizens were killed in the Tunisian massacre the following week and that story didn't receive the same amount of coverage. It was something that stood out for me at the time.


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    #7
    edbrez
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 214 ✭✭edbrez


    They were future doctors and didn't live in caravans.


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    #8
    insullation
    Registered Users Posts: 158 ✭✭insullation


    I think I should also claim for trauma for having to listen to the story every day. If people who were in appartment but not on balcony have a case I think I have a case as I was only 5000 miles away and saw pictures of the event.


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    #9
    Canadel
    Registered Users Posts: 1,586 ✭✭✭Canadel


    Celtickate wrote: »
    I know this happened a while ago but I'm curious. Why is this being treated as a national tragedy? I know it's sad for the relative and friends of the deceases but why does the public care enough to have a book of condolences? People die all the time in accidents and it's in the news for one day.

    Is it because they were all middle class? They're probably wouldn't be as much, if any, media coverage for people from a working class background.
    Yes. And also because they were from/studying in Dublin.

    Why do middle class lives matter more than working class? They just do. Why do European lives matter more than Middle Eastern lives? They just do.


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    #10
    newacc2015
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,379 ✭✭✭newacc2015


    These were twenty something people on a holiday. They had their entire life ahead of them. You left out that some survived the accident with horrific injuries. This accident struck a nerve with a lot of people. Thousands of Irish students go to America every year. People were upset that it could have been their child.

    This accident was entirely preventable if the Balcony was built right and maintained. People will follow this case, as it hits home for a lot of people.


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    #11
    coylemj
    Registered Users Posts: 25,326 ✭✭✭✭coylemj


    Anything unusual or bordering on the bizarre will always get more coverage. It's certainly true that if they were killed in that German train crash in February, it would have been a one day wonder and we'd have heard no more about it. Similarly, the tragedy in Buncrana where the Audi Q7 slid into the water got mega coverage in the UK for the same reason. If they had crashed into a truck and been wiped out, it wouldn't have received a tenth of the coverage, there or here.

    Journalists know this as the 'man bites dog' rule -something as mundane as a dog biting man gets no coverage but if a man bites a dog, now you have a story!


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    #12
    Lux23
    Registered Users Posts: 7,134 ✭✭✭Lux23


    Because it is sad when a number of young people die.


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    #13
    languagenerd
    Registered Users Posts: 3,201 ✭✭✭languagenerd


    It's partially because of the circumstances in which it happened. It was about 2am in California when the story broke here. That meant that the thousands of people here who had a daughter/son/sister/brother/cousin/boyfriend/girlfriend/friend/classmate etc over there were all frantically trying to get in touch but weren't getting any replies, because the person was asleep (or out). So for up to 8 hours, everyone was glued to the news instead, waiting for any information at all that might let them rule out their loved one.

    That's part of the reason it got so much news coverage the day it happened. After that, readers/viewers were invested in the story and, at the same time, almost everyone knows someone who did a J1 or spent a summer abroad, so it's very easy to imagine yourself in that situation and empathize with the families and friends.

    Should it get more coverage than other tragedies? Probably not. But you can't really quantify tragedy anyway. If that's what many people want to read, that's what the media will publish.


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