Cyclone kills 350... Is the death of a horse more important?

This story just came over the wires..from Yahoo.
Cyclone kills at least 351 in Myanmar, state-run TV reports



By AYE AYE WIN, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's state-run television reports that a powerful cyclone has killed at least 351 people.
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State-run television says the toll from Tropical Cyclone Nargis includes 109 who lived on Haing Gyi island located off the country's southwest coast.

A U.N. official said earlier that thousands of homes have been destroyed, mostly in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta.

The military-run Myaddy television station says five regions of the country have been declared disaster zones.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — More than 240 people were killed and thousands of homes were destroyed by a powerful cyclone that swept through Myanmar, state-run media said Sunday.

Five regions of the impoverished country have been declared disaster zones following the storm, which struck early Saturday, the military-run Myaddy television station said.

State-run television reported that 241 people died in the storm, nearly 222 of them from the country's low-lying Irrawaddy delta. The rest were killed in Yangon, which was devastated and

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080504/ap_on_re_as/myanmar_cyclone

How come we did not hear about this?..makes you think...

Both are important for different reasons.

The first poster is absolutely correct ... you present a false dilemma ....

Do yourself a favor and wipe this thread off the face of the map ....

I wont tell anyone ...

Seriously though, I am sure there will be something mentioned on the evening news about the terrible loss of life in Myanmar. Unfortunately it is a very common occurrence in that area of the world where there are so many people living in low lying areas near the ocean being exposed to storms.

What a disaster

after cake and ice cream
:sarcasm:

As if the Kentucky Derby TOTALLY overwhelms Iraq, the economy, the cyclone, whatever. It doesn't. But the euthanization of a horse on the track of one of America's most storied sporting events IS news. What did happen yesterday is newsworthy, and I predict that after today it will move off the radar (except for maybe SportsCenter, or other horse-racing media venues).

Do you expect your newspaper to carry three sections of the same story, to the exclusion of everything else, because it is "THE" most important story that we should all be focusing on?

Your assumption that because the horse is at the top of most newscasts no one cares about Myanmar. Pretty broad generalization, there.

the ONLY female horse in the Derby? I rest my case. :sarcasm:

If you are in the United States, stories of death and destruction that happen in other countries, to non-Americans, always will receive lower play in the newspapers you read and on the TV broadcasts you watch than will deaths that happen on American soil and, essentially, on American television. Especially if that death concerns a figure in a major U.S. sporting event.

It would be the same if a football player died of a heart attack immediately after the Super Bowl, or a baseball player were hit in the head with a ball during a World Series game and died.

The reason for the bigger play would be publicity and proximity. It would not be a value judgment on which deaths were more "important" or which figures who died were more "important." It's just that you can't put all the news that happens in the world on a single day on the front page in the top spot, so you have to pick and choose. News outlets do so using elements such as proximity (how close did it happen to here) and height of profile (how well known is this person/thing/event) as their guides (the assumption being that generally people are more interested in learning about geographically nearby news and highly familiar people, things and events).

It's for this reason that the death of a well-known celebrity will get bigger play in your local newspaper than will the death of the guy down the street. A value judgment on the relative "importance" of their deaths is not being passed. It's just that more people were familiar with the celebrity in at least a small way.

I am sure that in Myanmar, the cyclone deaths are the top story, and their media may not be reporting the horse's death at all. That is, at least, how I would expect it to be.

I guess that the Derby, and the horse that was injured and died, is indeed an important story. Yes, I thought the judgment of coverage as BerryBush points, out was in my opinion... poor. But that was my view.
.. I now understand that the viewing public here is interested in other views. I guess that I see it as "overplay" as the mainstream media often does with events. So little coverage is given to the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq, and much less to the "collateral damage" ..
........of the many people that live and work in Iraq who have been killed and permanently injured. And the destruction of so many Iraqi families? what of this? . What a major calamity, yet, again not much coverage. But that is me, and I do think that this is important to discuss honestly. I don't think that this discussion should be removed. But that is again my view.