You might be right that it’s not an issue of conscious personal vendetta against migrants (although I wouldn’t necessarily count that out) or an explicit class war, but I also don’t think that either of those things are what most people (or at least not the ones who weren’t just obnoxiously meming it for the drama or for hot takes) were trying to point out.

The comparison is meant to make us examine our priorities as a society. Why do we want to talk so much about these 5 rich people in the weird billionaire sub vs the migrant shipwreck? I do think it’s a valid theory that at least part of it is that as a society we place more significance and worth in the wealthy white folks. I think that a lot of it is probably also a ghoulish sort of rubbernecking impulse. The details of the sub story were weird and a bit morbid. Neither of those impulses are great, and I don’t think there’s any harm in pointing out the inequities and inviting some self reflection on where they come from.

However, I don’t love the sort of snide, gleeful celebration of the death of the folks on the sub either. I understand the frustrations that it comes from, but I think the folks cracking jokes or celebrating those deaths ought to be doing as much self reflection as the folks that were ignoring or ignorant of the migrant deaths.

My two cents:

The news outlets are only putting out what their audience wants to see.

I don’t think this is entirely true. Yes they’ll run with stories that get lots of engagement, but news agencies still have, well, agency. They can choose what to focus coverage on, even if it’s not the most lucrative story. They also have lots of room for how they want to cover a story, what angles they want to take.

While I agree that to an extent there’s a relationship from views to money to coverage, saying they’re “only putting out what their audiences want to see” is kinda reductive. They also play an important role in shaping what their audiences want to see. I’d say it’s important to be critical of what we’re being shown and what we’re not, and how different stories get spun.

One point I think we might agree on is that this also means that we should think critically about ourselves and our own reactions to the stories we’re presented with. For example, I know I have a tendency to get interested in these kinds of stories from the perspective of wanting to learn safety lessons for the future (same reason I keep up to date on US CSB reports). At some point, though, it became apparent that there were no (or not many) interesting safety lessons to learn here and I continued following the developments anyway. It’s worthwhile for me to consider why I did that, and taking that time to consider my own reactions here is a part of this same process of thinking critically about the news we’re shown.

This is like saying there are no racially discriminatory hiring practices, employers are just hiring the most qualified people (which ignores that it’s harder for disenfranchised people to gain those qualifications). That is to say: people aren’t arguing that this situation doesn’t make sense, they’re arguing that it’s wrong. And it doesn’t stop being wrong just because the people involved had no bad intentions.

Expect to butt heads with more and more people in the coming years if you argue by appealing to the status quo, because an increasing number of people are starting to take issue with the entire system as it stands.