Activists slam scant US media coverage of deadly Florida building collapse

Media activists have hit out at scant and biased US media coverage of a Florida building collapse, which left five Americans dead and more than 155 others unaccounted for, saying the deadliest accidental building collapse in the US history has largely fallen off the radar.   

Activist Heshmat Alavi tweeted that more than 150 people died in the apartment collapse in a major US city and since it can't be used to justify bombing some brown people in some far off country, US billionaire-owned media class has collectively shrugged off those deaths as not worth the time.

Searchers are still working to find more than 150 missing residents amid the rubble of a 13-story residential high-rise near Miami that collapsed six days ago.

US officials have brought in search teams from Israel and Mexico as hopes are fading to find any survivors. The exact roles of the Israeli and Mexican teams have not been detailed.

Some activists called the coverage by the US mainstream media "trash", saying that, "They are actually covering it a lot but mainly to repeat stuff like how there’s a 'heroic' Israeli search and rescue team on-site, how 'this never happens in America', and trying their best to tie this to President Biden’s infrastructure bill." 

Some US media have quote people as comparing the accident to "a mini 9/11". "The way 9/11 still dominates the minds of millions of Americans as the primary discursive framework to come to terms with traumatic events. Clearly, two decades of raping/murdering/ displacing an entire region wasn't enough to dislodge the sense of collective victimhood," Alavi added.

Another activist said US media are reticent to extensively cover the collapse and the actual death toll as the story fast became how the most advanced country in the world can only manage to pull out an average of two bodies a day.

Another activist  drew a comparison between the Florida building collapse and 2017 Grenfell tower fire in London, saying the parallels are striking, and wondering if the deadly incident sparks the same level of public outrage and protests from Americans.

The investigation into what may be the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history has just begun as rescuers spent a sixth day pushing through the enormous heap of debris. The building managers were warned about the structural damage more than two and a half years ago.

US reports claimed while a number of bridges, overpasses and buildings under construction fail each year in the US, the catastrophic collapse of an occupied building is "rare", and investigators are struggling to understand how it could have come with so little urgent warning.

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