On July 10, 2018, the 13 boys from a Thai youth soccer team were finally all rescued. The local team had been stranded since June 23 in a flooded cave in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand; their survival was confirmed on the tenth day after they went missing, and preparations for their rescue were underway. Media outlets around the world focused on the unfolding situation, and rescue updates were reported as breaking news. Many readers likely followed it day after day on television and in newspapers. For those of us watching over the boys’ safety in front of our TVs, it may even have been a moving experience.

Accidents and incidents that threaten human life and could become news occur in great numbers every day around the world. People become stranded not only in caves but at sea, in the mountains, and in deserts. Some are caught in mining accidents. Others are abducted by criminal organizations or armed groups. So why was this rescue drama reported so extensively? Why did the world focus on the lives of these 13 people?

Scenes from the rescue at the Thai cave (Photo: NBT [CC BY 3.0])

Rescue drama that drew attention No. 1: Escape from the Thai cave

We examined the volume and content of coverage in the Yomiuri Shimbun about this flooding in Thailand and the rescue. Between June 23, when the boys went missing, and July 12, two days after the rescue was completed, a total of 25 articles amounting to 16,862 characters appeared across the morning and evening editions.

In addition to the volume of reporting, it is notable that the Yomiuri Shimbun first covered the incident about a week after the boys went missing. In other words, even after a week had passed, the fact that the boys were missing in the cave was not reported. The first article was “Thai cave: missing for a week—13 boys from a soccer team; JICA assisting in the search,” and it was only when the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) stepped in to help that the accident appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun. Coverage increased sharply after July 3, when the survival of everyone, including the coach, was confirmed. On the 4th, a photo of the boys appeared on the front page. Once the rescue began, reports appeared not only on the international page but more frequently on pages two and three as well, accompanied by color diagrams explaining the rescue route.

Rescue drama that drew attention No. 2: The Chile mine cave-in

Another rescue drama that was reported as prominently as the disaster in Thailand was the tunnel collapse at Chile’s San José mine on August 5, 2010. Thirty-three miners were trapped, and all were rescued 69 days later on October 13 of the same year. Because this accident was reported daily at the time, it likely remains in people’s memories.

This incident far exceeded the Thai coverage, with 64,326 characters (from August 23, 2010 to October 15, 2011), but it was first reported only after survivors were confirmed. As in Thailand, the occurrence of the accident itself was not reported. In addition to the conditions of the miners underground, various related topics—such as the families above ground and the government’s response—were covered. The volume of reporting increased from late September to October, as the rescue work began to look more feasible. In the days around the rescue of all the miners, the front page and other sections carried large features with color photos, conveying the emotion of the moment. In Japanese newspapers, South America is rarely a subject of coverage, so it is extremely unusual for events on this continent to attract this much attention.

The president embracing a rescued worker at the Chilean mine (Photo: Secretaria de Comunicaciones [CC BY 2.0])

Rescue dramas that did not get attention

Of course, there are many other rescue dramas around the world besides those in Thailand and Chile. However, many receive little media coverage.

Similar mining rescues include the 2012 accident (366 characters) in which nine workers were rescued after six days at a copper mine in Peru, and the 2016 accident (452 characters) in China’s Shandong Province in which four workers were trapped underground for 36 days. These did not see growth in coverage, likely because those trapped were not as deep as in the Chile cave-in, making the rescues less difficult, and because the number of victims was smaller.

There are also cases in which many lives are at stake but coverage is sparse. One example is the refugee crisis that has become a major issue in recent years. From around 2015, the number of refugees and migrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean from Libya or Turkey to Europe surged, and shipwrecks and rescues have become major concerns. On May 18 and 19, 2018 alone, 2,100 people were rescued, and on the 26th and 27th of the same month, 500 people were rescued. However, these two rescue operations were not reported at all. Since the influx of refugees and related rescues have continued since around 2015, such events have lost their novelty in recent years, and coverage has declined.

Another example is the abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria. In 2014, 276 girls were abducted by the armed group Boko Haram, and in 2017, 82 of them were released. Although the lives of many girls were at stake, the amount of coverage between 2014 and 2017 totaled only 10,470 characters. On top of being an event on a continent that is hardly ever covered, this incident differs in nature from other rescue dramas: because it took place amid armed conflict, media access was difficult, which likely kept the volume of coverage from growing.

People calling for the release of the abducted schoolgirls (Photo: Michael Fleshman [CC BY-NC 2.0])

Rescue dramas as suspense stories

Having looked at rescue dramas that were widely reported and those that were not, certain characteristics of rescue stories that attract heavy coverage come into view.

Rescues from disaster-related harm generally follow a flow from “accident occurs,” to “survival confirmed,” and then to “rescue.” However, as seen in the cases of Thailand and Chile, the media often only begin to focus on the news after the victims’ “survival is confirmed” (or after considerable time has passed since the accident). In other words, rather than the accident itself—despite many lives being at risk—being deemed newsworthy, it is the expectation of a happy ending in which the victims return alive that is valued in reporting. If editors judge that there is likely to be a compelling narrative leading up to the rescue, coverage increases rapidly. Conversely, when there are no survivors or the rescue fails, the news itself often goes unreported. In February 2016, an accident occurred at a Russian mine, killing 26 workers and 10 rescuers, 36 in total. The Yomiuri Shimbun did not report on this even once.

(Photo: Vyacheslav Svetlichnyy/Shutterstock.com)

The degree to which a rescue seems feasible can also determine whether it is covered. In the Thai and Chilean cases, the rough timeframe for the rescue was foreseeable, enabling media outlets to keep correspondents on site at all times. In other words, they could constantly monitor progress and gather information. By contrast, as noted earlier, in cases like the abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria, the situation during conflict is often unpredictable, and it is difficult to approach the scene. As a result, coverage relies on wire services from bureaus far from the field.

When a suspenseful, attention-grabbing storyline is anticipated—and when its unfolding is somewhat foreseeable—the news is covered prominently, and if the victims are safely rescued, the shared emotion is amplified.

Lastly, we must not forget that there are armed conflicts where thousands of times more lives are at risk than in the rescue dramas introduced here, yet the volume of coverage is far lower. The Democratic Republic of the Congo had the world’s largest number of people displaced by conflict in 2016 and 2017, but coverage related to this in the Yomiuri Shimbun totaled only four articles (1,198 characters) over the three years from 2015 to 2017. Even regarding Yemen, said to be the site of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, only 83 articles (37,619 characters) were published in the three years since the conflict began in 2014—about half the amount devoted to the Chile mine cave-in.

A rescue team drawing media attention (Photo: Frontenac303 [CC BY-SA 4.0])

What rescue dramas reveal about the state of reporting

The moving news that 13 boys were safely rescued in Thailand has prompted us to reflect on media reporting practices. Even though various disasters, incidents, and accidents occur around the world every day, the media—newspapers and television—choose to report story-driven news like rescue dramas. Is it acceptable to ignore accidents and incidents with many fatalities just because there are no survivors? And might there not be lessons to learn from such events unfolding around the world? We must recognize that the media lead us to focus primarily on dramatic news.

Writer: Madoka Konishi