MSNBC Host Protests ‘Clear Difference’ in Coverage Between Missing Sub and Migrants Who Drowned – After Devoting 20 Minutes to the Sub

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi protested the “clear difference” in news coverage between the missing “Titan” submersible this week and more than 300 migrants who drowned the week prior — moments after he spent nearly 20 minutes covering the missing submersible.

Filling in for Alex Wagner as the host of Alex Wagner Tonight on Wednesday, Velshi addressed the R.M.S. Titanic-seeking vessel:

We should note that while this race against the clock to save five people trapped thousands of feet below water has been dominating news coverage for the past couple of days, there was another story about another vessel lost at sea last week. Hundreds of migrants from countries including Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were on a fishing boat that sank last Wednesday while en route from Libya to Italy. About a hundred people were rescued. More than 300 drowned.

He protested, “Now there’s a clear difference between both the news coverage and the rescue resources given to that fishing boat and the missing submersible in the North Atlantic,” before adding:

There are lots of people at sea at any given time, whether for adventure or for survival and self-preservation. At any moment, some of them, whatever their station in life or their intention when they set out, could need the world’s urgent attention, and in moments like this as we do and should do, we should be doing all we can to save those who are on the Titan. But it is also during moments like this where we should ask ourselves how we, as a society, marshal and deploy our resources and attention to all who might need them when the time comes.

Velshi’s comments came just moments after he devoted nearly 20 minutes of the show to coverage of the missing submersible.

In March 2022, MSNBC host Joy Reid made similar complaints about the war in Ukraine receiving more coverage than conflicts in “browner and blacker” parts of the world, even though Reid had done the same on her show.