“Unlike the Titan tragedy, Greece’s shipwreck was treated as devoid of protagonists and heroes”

On June 14, one of the deadliest shipwrecks in recent Mediterranean history occurred: a ship full of some 700 immigrants – mostly from Pakistan, Syria and Egypt, including some 100 children – sank off the coast of Greece , without the intervention of the coast. Guardian of that land, now charged with negligence.

Hundreds of people remain missing as the UN has called for an investigation into the case.

Four days later, on June 18, the submarine Titan, carrying five crew members on a reconnaissance mission to the Titanic wreckage, lost contact with its home base, leading to operations by the US Navy, US and Canadian Coast Guards. .

About ten ships were used in the search for the submarine, which was followed step by step in the news by millions of people around the world, until it was announced that the Titan had probably imploded and killed the crew.

Now the difference in media coverage and the global interest mobilized around the two maritime tragedies has become the subject of debate, both among experts and on social networks, with criticism of the actions of the press and the uneven emphasis given to the Titan in comparison to the drama of the immigrants who ventured into the high seas.

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Priyamvada Gopal, professor of postcolonial studies at Cambridge University’s English School, is one such critic, arguing that the lives of certain individuals have emerged while others have been “relegated to the margins of human history”.

“I think the press should definitely step back and ask what stories they want to tell and what they consider interesting or not,” he says.

“Anonymous without a face” vs. “heroic protagonists”

From her perspective as a scholar of literary criticism, Gopal believes some key elements helped consolidate what she calls the “faceless anonymity” of the Mediterranean refugees, compared to the “familiarity” accorded to the five Titan crews. datum.

“When I think about the stories we’re interested in and why, and the stories that the media gives us, I think the big difference between the two cases is that one of them (the one about migrants) was essentially treated as if there was no protagonist, a hero, Gopal tells BBC News Brazil.

“So we just have a pretty vague number, hundreds, maybe 600 or 800 people who were aboard this ship that sank and died. AND we saw very little interest in who these people were as individuals. We saw little interest or mention from their families about their grief and what happened.”

On the contrary, he argues, “in the Titan news there was a lot of interest in who the passengers were, now sadly dead, as individuals, as people with a face, a name, a story, with interests and passions. We received a lot of information about them in just 24 hours.”

She concludes:

“Those who died last week in the Mediterranean they are also individuals, likely with very interesting interests and life histories they were just not available to us. As a literary critic, I am interested in how our stories are constructed and who we treat as individuals who simply become part of an anonymous mass”.

Tension and reality TV

But could it be that the difference in attention given to the two tragedies is due to the thrilling element in the story of the submarine Titan?

The same happened, by the way, in two major searches that took place practically in real time: the Chilean miners disaster in 2010 and the story of the boys trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018.

It must be taken into account that it was now an expedition to the most famous sinking in history, that of the Titanic and that the public could follow the race against the clock in great detail to try to save the crew of the Titan before the oxygen supply ran out.

“This is clearly the case: I also caught myself clicking ‘refresh’ (on the case news) to find out what was going on. We are very used to it reality shows and sees things in real time. So there’s an element of suspense, the ‘what’s going to happen?’ Hollywood style. But that too is fabricated,” says Gopal.

He states that the ship that sank in the Mediterranean Sea also spent several hours at sea under the supervision of authorities, like other similar ships carrying migrants, but in his opinion “these are stories we don’t hear”.

“What would have happened if the aerial view of the ship in the Mediterranean had been done live? We do not know exactly what the conversation was between the passengers and the (Greek) Coast Guard, who stated that the boat did not want to be rescued and was on its way to Italy.

“What would have happened if all that, the thrill and the fascination, had been mobilized for the 700 people on that ship? (…) It is also interesting (the difference) between when we decide to be witnesses and when we decide to turn our backs”.

In the case of the refugee boat tragedy, a BBC Verify investigation cast doubt on the official report of the Hellenic Coast Guard, who claimed that the ship refused help and was not in any danger until shortly before it sank.

A BBC analysis of boat movement in the area of ​​the tragedy indicates that the overcrowded fishing boat remained motionless for at least seven hours before sinking.

However, the coast guard states that the ship was on its way to Italy during that period and did not need to be salvaged.

Interest in the lives of the wealthy

BBC Urdu, the BBC’s Pakistani service, has reported extensively on the incident, as most of the victims were from Pakistan. The country declared national mourning for the tragedy.

For Farah Zia, Director of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, it’s only natural that news of the sub received so much global attention, as it was a financially influential group of crew membersincluding billionaires and maritime explorers.

“When a tragedy happens to rich people all over the world, it becomes very important because people are interested in their lives and it is normal for the press to report on it,” he told BBC Urdu, adding that the tragedy should serve . as an opportunity for “more diverse voices” to be included in the coverage.

At the same time, Pakistani commentator Zarrar Khuhro highlighted the street demonstrations that took place in Athens after the tragedy, in protest of the Coast Guard’s actions. Other cities also registered protests in front of the Greek embassies.

“Maybe for the first time we will see a huge demonstration specifically to condemn the loss of life of migrants,” Khuhro told the Urdu Service.

“After a tragedy we simultaneously see the best and the worst that humanity has to offer..

For her part, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe – the main human rights organization on the continent – Dunja Mijatovic said she was “appalled by the alarming level of tolerance towards serious human rights violations against refugees and migrants across Europe. “.

The sinking of the Mediterranean Sea, he added, “reminds once again that, despite many warnings, the lives of people at sea remain at risk due to insufficient rescue capacity and coordination, the lack of safe and legal routes, the lack of solidarity …and the criminalization of NGOs trying to provide aid.”

prejudices

Along these lines, the Cambridge academic thinks the stories of immigrants trying their luck are embedded in the Mediterranean in preconceived stories, which also limit interest in individual stories.

“We think we’ve heard their stories, ‘well they’re desperate people or greedy economic migrants’, which is one of the stories governments tell us, at least here in the UK,” he says.

“So we thought there was nothing interesting about them and put them into family stories rather than individual stories. But each of those 700 passengers had its own story and context. (…) And again, we come back to the question of what we decide to participate in, whether it’s a faceless story or a story that deserves to be told.

“I wonder if there would be a change in public discourse regarding immigrants if we had coverage like Titan. and perhaps there is no interest in changing public discourse related to immigrants.

An example that did not follow this rule, Gopal points out, was the case of the Syrian boy Alan Kurdy 2-year-old found dead on a Turkish beach in 2015 after his family tried to escape the war in Syria.

“This case stands out precisely because it was the exception: when it comes to migrants, he is literally the only one with a name. It is the exception that proves the rule.

“I think it’s because of the strong image of how it’s found and the belief that kids shouldn’t die that way. But for the majority of migrants who die at sea, we treat it as something normal, every day, and that doesn’t deserve our attention.”