For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
As other have said, there’s more going on than just these people being rich that is causing the story to receive attention. Having said that, them being rich is definitely a contributor, not because that means that their lives are worth more but because it contributes novelty to the situation, and our collective attention tends to be drawn, for better or worse, to situations which are novel rather than situations which are routine, even if we should be caring more about the latter than the former.