Costa Concordia Disaster - Essay Example

The fact of the matter is that the Costa Concordia struck a rock of the coast of the Isola del Giglio on January 13, 2012; ultimately claiming the lives of 32 individuals and necessitating a call to abandon ship for all 4,220 individuals remaining alive (Leger 2012). Of these facts, the global media and the individual can be certain. However, after this level understanding, the level to which the news media sought to portray the incident significantly diverged from what has come to light in the intervening months since the disaster took place.

No sooner had the last individual been rescued from the ship than the news media began immediately to conjecture concerning the events that led the captain to run the ship aground. Newspaper headlines across the world sought to portray the captain in terms of words such as “Coward”, “Asleep at the Wheel”, “Uncourageous”, and a litany of other ways (The Bigger Picture 8).The news media showed the greatest imagination and flexibility as questions were asked about if the captain was even at the helm, whether he was distracted by an ongoing affair, whether he cared with regards to the fate of the crew, the ship, or its passengers, and his overall ability to lead and command.

This understanding necessarily gave way to the needs of the passengers and crew for which the captain was ultimately responsible (Sophie 14). In this way, the news media eviscerated the captain stating that he ordered the chef of the ship to cook him a gourmet meal as the ship itself was sinking or that he was the first aboard the life rafts once the call to abandon ship was made. All of these assertions have since been proven false and only add to the incomplete discussions of the motives and needs that were represented within this particular case by the way the news media presented the situation.