The devastating earthquake that flattened the Wenchuan region of China yesterday, killing at least 10,000 Chinese people, stayed in the news for an extra day when it was discovered that 15 British tourists are missing.
Newsdesk veterans across Britain recalled the heady days of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, in which over 6,000 Japanese deaths were instantly brushed aside in favour of blanket coverage of the story of the missing British nurse, who later turned up virtually unscathed.
“Look, there’s billions of Chinese, and let’s face it, they all look alike to us,” said one yawning tabloid hack. “But fifteen missing Brits – that’s fifteen desperate families to be relentlessly doorstepped by packs of feral young work-placement graduates, all clutching their shiny new journalism degrees and repeating the time-honoured phrase: ‘Your son or daughter is probably squashed under a collapsed building or lying at the bottom of a yawning chasm – tell me, how do you feel?’ It brings tears to the eyes of jaded journos, I tell you, when you find out there’s at least one Brit casualty. It means you can forget all about all the bad things in life - such as how one distraught, wailing foreigner looks pretty much like another - and reduce an unimaginable catastrophe to a simple human interest story.”
“What would be the icing on the cake,” added the anonymous reporter, “Would be if they can pull a cute little kitten out of the rubble. We’d put that on the front page for sure. We could probably even start up a rescue fund to bring it to Britain and campaign for Madonna to adopt it.”
The massive rescue effort continues.
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