Cause and effect has inevitable outcomes

I FREQUENTLY hear the murmur, usually from conspiracy theorists or those fighting their "cause", over why the media does not tackle "unanswered questions" over a perceived injustice or social travesty.

My comment to that is quite often the general public is not burning with questions it needs the media to answer.

A particular case in point is the Kiwi, Daryl Jones, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen last year.

I've heard discussion on the rights and wrongs - mostly the wrongs - of a Kiwi "executed" without trial, and why isn't the media holding America and the world to account for these arbitrary killings.

I would certainly agree drone strikes aren't a perfect science, but there are two great principles with journalism that determine how far you go with a story. Common sense, and cause and effect.

I also have another principle: you can't expect to die of old age in bed if you (insert somewhat dumb activity here). If you hang out with al-Qaeda in an Arab country, the media does not need to invest in weeks of investigative journalism as to why you got blown to bits. It's cause and effect. Join al-Qaeda, see the world, meet interesting people, and get killed. Even a Western construction contractor in Iraq or Pakistan is taking his or her chances, and sometimes, unsurprisingly, it goes wrong.

An expose into a young Kiwi man's path towards an organisation associated with terrorism would certainly be interesting, but I don't think many will question someone dropping a large amount of high explosive on him and his colleagues.

There are people, and this is true of our own community, who might as well have bullseyes painted on their bodies. You might think death has no preferences, and we have seen some random, pointless tragedies that have struck the community raw. But death also works when the odds are stacked in its favour.

Drink-driving, smoking, not wearing seatbelts, bad diets, lack of exercise, reckless decisions and dangerous stunts. Many people die through their own design and bad choices.

Cause and effect. It will earn you a story in the paper, but no one will write a book about it.