Disaster

I am always annoyed when I see a news article regarding a disaster wherein the journalist reports the number of casualties from his country of citizenship. While one might argue that it puts a local spin on the issue, I think it also trivializes the casualties from other nations and suggests that the reader cares more about casualties who share his own citizenship than others. Especially in the case of when there are no such casualties, i.e. the article reads : No Singaporean Casualties from Whatever Disaster. It sounds as if there is some sort of relief to be had from this fact. Indeed when almost everyone has cellphones, I am want to believe that a distressed relative's first source of information would be the journalist's article, meaning the article has practically no purpose, other than for the writer to churn out another story on the same issue. Even if the journalist was attempting to allay the fear of the Singaporeans who had the possibility of having someone they know involved in the disaster and somehow, no means of contacting them, the journalist must be working on the supposition that Singaporeans only have Singaporean friends and family and that there is therefore no need to account for the other nationalities.

-Luke