Why Taiwan's earthquake isn't on the front page

Wednesday's earthquake could have killed tens of thousands. But Taiwan made the decision that it wouldn't.

Rescue workers near the semi-collapsed ten-story Uranus building on Xuanyuan Road on April 3, 2024. Image © Shufu Liu, Office of the President via Wikipedia, CC BY 2.0

Sometimes a story that’s not in the news is the biggest story of the week. You’ve probably read that two days ago, there was an earthquake in Taiwan. But you haven’t seen anything like the wall-to-wall coverage that followed the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria that killed at least 50,000 people and left 2.7 million homeless. That’s because the quake in Taiwan, even though it was huge, killed only ten people.

The difference isn’t owed to chance.