> US companies make money from stories about Chinese weather balloons. They lose money when horrific things like this happen.
The carrier will lose money. But a news company would make money, wouldn't they? Bad news is good news after all, and environmental disasters are bad news.
Likely there is considerable overlap in ownership between the handful of railway companies that dominate the market and handful of media companies that dominate the market.
> advertisers (which could include chemical plants etc) are their clients
The closest in the top 200 is Berkshire Hathaway [1], because they train. Also, this media hypothesis predicts Google, Pfizer, Amazon and Walmart are media darlings. (And that Apple is not.)
I think jingoistic China bashing pays better than putting the spotlight on America's various problems and shortcomings.
They did it in the 1970s and aside from brilliant Hollywood movies it wasn't a good decade for America.
The less introspection the better as far as the media and political interests are concerned.
How is it jingoistic when China is flying warplanes over Taiwan and their media is now making claims the US has flown 10 balloons over their territory and supposedly were about to shoot down one of them and feign ignorance about the ones they sent over to us? Or are you saying both sides are being jingoistic?
Your dismissal make the ops point. The train derailment is not the news the environmental disaster that is happening because of it is the news. But you only know about the train derailment not much about the environmental disaster which should have been milked for views by the media normally.
It isn't always "Chernobyl in Ohio", as locals are calling it. Although, that is becoming more common. If only the rail industry were regulated... maybe we need to dig up Teddy Roosevelt?
The rail industry is regulated. In certain ways over and in certain ways under. Eg, there's very little sense to the requirements a passenger train needs to reach to run on the same rails as freight, and Europe does it safely all the time.
