… 18 shot on bus in Pakistan; 32 blown-up in Iraq; 3 reporters kidnapped in Columbia; 16 dead, 202 wounded in Syria; protestors dragged off islands in East China Sea; police shoot 4 miners in South Africa; car bomb kills 12 in Sri Lanka; 22 children seized by Boko Haram; 16 women raped in Goma; adulterer stoned in Sudan; thief’s hand cut off in northern Mali; inmate executed in Texas; 3 burn to death in Lhasa; tanks crush 2 protestors in Tajikistan; settler shoots teen in West Bank; mass grave found in Chechnya; temple rampage kills 12 in India; guard shoots three co-workers in Canada; 1,000 suicides in UK linked to economy; 8 soldiers die after hitting IED in Afghanistan; farmer killed in land seizure in Zimbabwe; drone attack kills 28 in Yemen; sniper hits 4 in Lebanon; 2 dead after banlieue rioting in Paris; pirates shoot 3 in Gulf of Aden raid; 6 squatters killed in Brazil; 24 teens beheaded in Mexico; drunken brawl kills 8 in Siberia; immigrant knifed by skin heads in Palermo…
When I was in journalism school a professor defended gloomy coverage since only rare events make it into the headlines.
Perhaps we don’t yet need to report that 82,438 airplanes landed safely yesterday but in some parts of the world the fact that “No one died violently today” is rare enough to make it onto A1 in 120 pt type.