Meanwhile, in other news.
When huge world events happen, they have a loud voice. For months, the US presidential election has dominated pages and news feeds, and rightly so, because the most powerful country in the world was electing its leader and deciding its direction for the next four years.
But that causes a problem. As reporters and editors work hard – and I do mean hard – to fulfil their mandate of informing the public, other important issues are eclipsed.
While so many of us looked on in horror as slightly fewer than half of voting Americans installed an inexpertly-shaved orangutan as the leader of the free world, other horrors were secondary.
Amid the political hysteria, the people of Aleppo continued to die. Last week, food aid ran out in the rebel-held city, where 275,000 people had little interest in the prospect of repealing Obamacare because of the indiscriminate bombing the Syrian government refuses to stop.
In just three recent weeks, the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres reported, 114 children died in east Aleppo and 321 were wounded. Estimates of the total death toll in Syria’s civil war vary between 300,000 and 470,000.
Three weeks ago, the United Nations said 2016 was already a record for migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, a statement accompanied with an estimate that 3,800 lives had been lost in frightening, heart-rending circumstances.
Down the page or on deeper pages, there’s more news, all of which matters to someone out there. It is often a source of discomfort to me to see important human stories cut to fit a small space or drawing few clicks online. When something big is happening, it’s easy follow the pack and join the howls.
Of course Trump’s victory is important, not least because his tenuous grasp of foreign policy will have direct effects on places like the Middle East and Europe.
However, it’s also important to remember there are other stories out there and journalists telling them, and right-thinking people can ignore the noise and bluster and listen to quieter voices.