You already know: big earthquake in Peru yesterday. As of last night, there were over 70 dead, almost 700 injured.

I get ATV’s North American service on the dish, so I recorded the evening’s local programming. Estoy aprendiendo español anyhow, and I was curious to see how a crisis like this gets covered in Peru as opposed to the US and elsewhere.

Pretty much what you’d expect, at least for a while: two studio anchors in Lima getting the latest from various officials and experts, in between cutting back and forth to field reporters repeating the latest facts and showing the most vivid footage they could find, over and over.

Then, as the casualty numbers continued to rise ominously, the news coverage… stopped.

You see, ATV is also home to the highest-rated gossip show in the country, Magaly TeVe. With all the latest urgent celebrity news. And obviously you can’t preempt that.

Once these unmissable tidbits were over, however, ATV went back to informing their fellow Peruvians about the damage across the coast, loss of power and water facilities, and mounting civilian casualties. Which climbed throughout the night. So far, 450 dead, 1500 injured. And still climbing.

Nosotros todos tenemos nuestras prioridades.

PS — if you’d like to support emergency relief efforts, Oxfam, AmeriCares, and Direct Relief International would like to hear from you.