For a few, long days, the world had its eyes and ears on what was happening off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Five people were attempting to visit the wreck of the Titanic, which had sunk after hitting an iceberg in 1912, on board a submersible vehicle named Titan. But their mission failed. Contact with the submersible was lost and, after days of frantic search, investigators said that it had imploded not far from where the Titanic rests. The five people on board died.

Millions of dollars are believed to have been spent in the search and rescue operation, according to media reports.

A week earlier, 81 people lost their life off Greece in what is one of the worst migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean. There were around 750 people on board the rickety vessel, with 104 survivors. The others are believed to have died.

Questions have been raised on the response by the Greek Coast Guard to the plight of the migrants. It is not the first time that countries have been accused of not doing their best to rescue migrants in difficulty. Malta, Italy and others have often been criticised, especially by NGOs, for not lifting a finger.

The Titan story grabbed the world’s attention, with unrelenting minute-by-minute reporting on what was going on. The Greece story was followed too, but it was just routine news coverage of a crossing that went wrong.

The two events expose how the world reacts differently.

On the one hand, we had a few wealthy people trying to defy nature and spending some of their extra money to “visit” the world’s most famous shipwreck , turning the ocean into their own playground. On the other hand, we had hundreds of migrants who sweated their way into saving just enough money to be able to pay for a voyage in the hope of a better future.

One was a high-risk experience simply for the fun of it, the other was also a high-risk experience, but the aim was to find a better job or a new beginning away from the strife of civil unrest and economic difficulties.

Both were tragic events that resulted in loss of life.

But the world empathised more with the Titan passengers than with the migrants on that boat who tried to reach Greece. The world did not “blame” the five for trying to do the impossible, but it “blamed” the migrants for trying to seek greener pastures for themselves and their children.

It can all be encapsulated in the words of Apryl Alexander, a public health professor at University of Carolina-Charlotte who has studied trauma and survivors. She said that the migrants on the ship in Greece did not engender the same interest from the public as did the wealthy individuals who paid $250,000 apiece to explore the Titanic.

It reminded her of the differences in news coverage of crime in the United States. Crimes get more attention when the victim is white and wealthy compared to a person of colour in poverty, she said.

She’d like to see the same level of societal interest in human tragedies regardless of race, religion, demographics or other factors. “For all of us, we hope that if any of our loved ones go missing that the media and the public would pay the same attention to all stories.”

That would happen in an ideal world. But we’re not living in an ideal world, are we?