Tipsheet

The New Republic Decided to Go There on the Titanic Submersible Story

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  June 21, 2023 9:45 PM

The five-man crew inside the Titan submersible lost on Sunday now has less than 12 hours of life support left. The seacraft was diving to depths of 12,500 feet to view the wreckage of the Titanic. A massive search is ongoing, covering at least 10,000 square miles. It’s still considered a search and rescue mission, and there was cause for hope last night when banging noises were picked up on sonar in 30-minute intervals around the area where the craft disappeared. Some theorize the loss of the seacraft to be power failure, or that the submersible got caught in the wreckage of the ocean liner, which has happened before. 


No one needed to go here, but The New Republic decided to use this human interest story, where everyone is rooting for a rescue, and weaponize it against Republicans. The first story revolves around the CEO of OceanGate, the company that conducts these expeditions, which has a hefty price tag of $250,000 per seat. He has a history of giving to Republican candidates, you know: 


Public campaign finance records indicate that Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate currently stuck on the missing Titan submersible that was running a tourist expedition of the Titanic wreck, has been a consistent Republican donor over the years.

Now a point of caveat here: According to these public finance records, Rush was not a Republican megadonor, but his donations over the years leaned heavily toward Republican candidates. 

Federal Election Commission campaign finance filings show a Stockton Rush of Washington state employed by OceanGate giving $1,500 to Culberson for Congress, the principal campaign committee for now-former Republican Congressman John Culberson who represented Texas’s 7th district from 2001 to 2019. Culberson had a 100 percent scorecard rating from the conservative Family Research Council, a 92 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, and a 4 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. Not exactly a RINO. 

Okay, am I supposed to be shocked or what? The man gives to Republicans—not exactly a crime. Regarding updating the rescue effort, this has nothing to do with the story. The publication also tried to shame us, blasting media coverage of the rescue mission while ignoring some migrants who drowned off the coast of Greece. Two pieces that are shameless and worthy of mockery from all sides. The New Republic should know better: the Left only cares about Europe if the news concerns our endless Ukraine military packages. Both pieces are laughably forced, making one wonder what is happening within this magazine's halls. If this were brought up at an editorial meeting, I’d be embarrassed: 

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Coverage of the missing submersible unintentionally illustrates something even more tragic, however. On June 14, what was likely the second-deadliest refugee and migrant shipwreck on record occurred when a boat carrying as many as 800 migrants sank off the Greek coast. Greek authorities had tracked the vessel, and early signs suggest the country’s coast guard was slow to act despite numerous warning signs. This is a huge news story, one that hits at both Europe’s ongoing refugee crisis and the callousness with which many European nations treat migrants who are desperately trying to reach their shores. Yet it has received scant attention in the American media—and the missing submersible story has dwarfed what coverage there has been.

[…]

The sinking of a boat carrying hundreds of migrants should be treated this way, but it isn’t and hasn’t been. It is undoubtedly a new story and an unspeakably tragic one—it’s also, unlike the Titanic tourists story, one that says a great deal about the way the world works. And yet it’s treated as routine or even mundane—yet another faceless tragedy involving people who typically receive far less attention than those who are far better off than they are.  There’s greater appetite for coverage of lifestyles of the rich and (now) famous than for the deaths of hundreds of anonymous migrants, or at least cable news assignment editors think so. The story is undoubtedly political as it involves immigration policy, various European governments, and the conditions that drive people to take extraordinary risks to go on hazardous journeys across the Mediterranean. And yet much of the coverage that does occur fails to address these complexities. 

The deadliest migrant and refugee shipwreck occurred in April 2015, when a boat carrying as many as 1,100 people traveling from Libya to Italy capsized in the Mediterranean. Later that summer, a haunting image of a young boy’s drowned body washed up on a Turkish beach went viral after the boat that had been carrying him and his family capsized. Migrants and refugees have continued to arrive in Europe since then; boats carrying them have tragically continued to sink. And yet news coverage in the United States has largely dried up. The American media has moved on, particularly after the rise of Donald Trump. Attention never returned to the levels it did that summer, even though migrants have continued to take extraordinary risks to go to Europe. 

Oh, just shut up.