THE NAKED CITY: THE BIGGEST STORY EVER!

When ABC TV’s Michael Rowland was dispatched to London a few week’s ago to cover the death and funeral of the Queen, he labelled it the biggest story he would ever cover or words to that effect. In terms of the suffocating media coverage it was indeed one of the biggest new stories of the past decade, but did it deserve to be the biggest?

Early last week a story broke that could have implications for the entire future of humanity long after the body of the former monarch decomposes and is consumed by worms. NASA’s remarkable DART ( Double Asteroid Redirection Test) program saw a spacecraft successfully impact an asteroid in space, hopefully demonstrating that its course could be redirected.

The jury is still out on the latter but what it did demonstrate is that an impact could be achieved and in future an asteroid heading for earth could possibly be deflected so as to avoid crashing disastrously into our planet. Here in Australia, viewers of breakfast TV were treated to extraordinary live vision from the NASA spacecraft, supposedly the size of a large family fridge, heading towards the asteroid Dimorphos, a rock about as a big as Accor stadium.

It was a series of incredible high definition images, taking about 35 seconds to be transmitted back to earth. After the impact we saw an ecstatic response in the NASA control room, but on local TV it was almost a matter of “oh ho hum, we’ll be back in a moment with the new album from Richard Marx”. Maybe they had seen it all before in countless Hollywood disaster movies, but the reaction by the hacks on commercial TV was decidedly lukewarm, compared with their drooling obsession with anything royal family – dead or alive.

Only ABC Breakfast’s ebullient weatherman, Nate Byrne treated the story with the monumental respect that it deserved, providing an excellent commentary and literally jumping for joy in the studio when the spacecraft connected with its target. The main presenters Michael Rowland and Lisa Millar gave a fleeting acknowledgement but looked like they were both hanging out for some new music from Richard Marx to lower the significance level.

That evening on the various news broadcasts, you might have thought that the DART achievement, along with its graphic vision, would have been the lead story. After all we now had some positive news that ‘Armageddon’ was avoidable and maybe extreme climate change rather than a giant rock would see the end of the word as we know it. On nearly every channel the story was well down the priority list, as the Optus data breach and the Melissa Caddick inquest stole the headlines.

Over the years the ‘asteroid’ movie has become a much exploited sub genre of Hollywood sci-fi. Armageddon and Deep Impact, both released in 1998, are the most memorable blockbusters, each providing somewhat fanciful solutions as to how an asteroid or comet strike could be prevented. There are numerous lists of so called ‘meteorite movies’ listed on the internet – some are meant to be serious, some are comedies and some are unintentionally funny. All appeal perhaps to our innate sense of vulnerability and a perverted desire to see well known landmarks like the Statue Of Liberty demolished in an orgy of CGI.

Maybe the countless number of asteroid epics with their heroic counter attacks, has distorted our view of reality when it comes to actually dealing with what is a real possibility. We know that rocks of all sizes from outer space have previously smashed into the earth, leaving both giant craters and the possible extinction of dinosaurs some sixty six million years ago.

NASA’s recent achievement should not be underestimated and was certainly worthy of a more intelligent media response in this country. Sadly, it will probably be overshadowed by another human moon landing or even one of Jeff Bezos’s self promoting joy flights. In the meantime more extreme republicans here might wish that one day a meteorite will take out a fully evacuated Buckingham Palace, and not just in the movies. No loss of life of course, but at least one symbol of an outdated monarchy permanently erased and no CGI needed.