Saturday’s huge earthquake in Nepal killed at least 5,000 people, injured more than 8,000, and affected millions more. Relief efforts are underway to aid the survivors.
The extent of American aid may be limited, however, by our collective attention span. In the days since the quake, the riots in Baltimore after a man died from injuries suffered while in police custody came to dominate the news cycle. Reporting on events there has pushed news about the earthquake off the front page and attracted extensive cable news coverage. What coverage remains of the aftermath has tended to focus on the fate of a small number of Western climbers on Mount Everest rather than the larger humanitarian crisis.
The events in Baltimore and Nepal are both important and deserve our attention. But foreign news generates far less interest from consumers than domestic events. As a result, a story about a disaster like Nepal’s is more easily pushed off the news agenda.