Well, it could have well been just a mistake from the editor, but there were similar instances in that last couple of months/years that also left me wondering if there might be downplaying of some sort going on in general for some quakes.
Here is an example, although I forgot the details by now unfortunately. I'll try to summarize it as best as I can though. Not long ago, maybe a couple of weeks/months ago there was a fairly significant quake happening somewhere on the globe, while another one that was far less significant and destructive was happening around the same time. I remember how I listened to a mainstream radio channel on my way to work and finding myself confused how they covered this event. They somehow concenrated on the far less destructive one as though it was a big deal, while completely ignoring the big one. I was so taken aback by this, that I told some friends about it afterwards. It wasn't only covered like that in the radio but other mainstream outlets as well.
And this brings me to something else that I've wondered about the last couple of months too. Here in germany, two big fires broke out this year, in both of which I found the coverage and reporting rather strange, which raised my suspicion that there might be more behind those events than mentioned by the media.
Both events were covered widely in germany while in
the first one they talked among other things how hard it is to take out the fire because quote "ammunition from WW2" was constantly exploding, which made it hard to calm it down. This event was near Berlin and was covered for weeks and I kept wondering about the seemingly strange way it was presented, since the media covered it as though it is something fairly common, that there are still woods in germany that are so widely covered with explosive stuff from WW2. In fact, it was the first time I ever heard of that.
Then
the second one happened, which was widely covered by the german media as well for weeks. In this fire, the media told us, a moorland fire had been ignited by a german military fighter jet, that had dropped a bomb or something on the military drill field in which the fire was then started to rage. This fire was also very hard to calm down. So I wondered why I never heard of a moorland fire in germany before and why it is that the media presented it as though it is the most normal and common kind of fire here. I also wondered about the fact that it is a military drill ground in which explosives go of regularly for decades and how it is, that now all of a sudden, this place has started to burn? This event got so much traction and headlines that even the infamous german equivalent to Killary, the german Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen, was ordered to the place of the fire and started to apologize for what their troops/government have caused there with dropping this bomb.
So what if, I thought, there is a bit more going on in both cases and the media decided to blame it on human causes and present it as something commonly happening? Why did the media go to overdrive in those two fires, with fairly similar stories and behaviors of the fire?
Could it be that those fires were either caused by something like a fireball and/or were behaving in a manner that was something new to the authorities and kind of frightening? Therefore, creating a "plausible" story to make it look less frightening and not so much not under human control?
It might be worthwhile to look closer at this and similar happenings in the future and see if similar patterns emerge. All this could just be as the media reports it of course, just saying that it might as well be a protection mechanism from the PTB who are confronted with "new" kind of fires and earthqukes.
