After a series of travels that started in late March, I am glad to be back in Toronto and enjoying the comforts of familiarity. One of the most curious things I observed during my travels was the kind of news sources I used, and the kinds of stories that were covered. When I left for HK and China in early May, the oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico had already been happening for a few days, although my sources were mostly international news agencies and not Canadian ones. By the time a week had past, I had seen nothing in the news coverage in Hong Kong (which is broadcasted on the trains and subways). Compared to the 24/7 coverage on BBC, and the regular tidbits I was getting through RSS feeds that monitor international news sources, I was even more surprised that some of the print sources in Toronto did not have substantial coverage of the story until about April 29th, about a week after the start of the explosion. Maybe that’s a reasonable time for the journalists to wait for all the facts to come out to start reporting, but not even a little mention?

The first question I had was pretty specific: was the coverage of the Exxon Valdez similar in its rate of spreading? First picked up by international news channels, and only slowly picked up in areas and locales that are not immediate affected by the spill? What were the channels or avenues available then that weren’t available now? Was my expectation that the developed world should have reported at least of the event within the first week of the explosion in some form simply a personal expectation that has no basis in the realities of media and journalism? This makes for a great research and design project.