Two boats capsized in the news this week. One was a rented jet ski off Koh Samui, Thailand: a French father and his two small boys spent a frightening 16 hours in the water, were rescued, checked at a hospital, and discharged. Everyone lived. The other was a ferry on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe, carrying an estimated 153 people — capacity 90 — which rolled over on Tuesday. By Sunday, France 24 put the death toll at 84. * Now open the BBC's news sitemap — the machine-readable list of everything it has published in the last two days. The jet ski appears three times: an article, a second article, and a video ("Moment family rescued after 16 hours floating on jet ski off Thailand"). Lake Kariba appears zero times. Eighty-four people, eighteen of them children by CNN's Saturday count, and the fresh output of Britain's public broadcaster this weekend had no room for the update — but did have room, three times, for a capsizing everyone survived. * To be fair and precise: the BBC covered the Kariba disaster when it happened, and a sitemap only shows the newest 48 hours. This isn't 'the BBC ignored Zimbabwe.' It's something more routine and, honestly, more revealing: the disaster got filed under done. The toll has kept climbing all weekend — the Guardian had 68 on Saturday, CNN and Al Jazeera reached 72, France 24 hit 84 on Sunday afternoon — and each new number is a new fact about one of the deadliest African lake disasters in years. The BBC's news feed treated the climbing count as no longer news. The jet ski, meanwhile, had a happy ending and great video, and happy endings with great video always find a slot. * Compare the treatment of Sunday's other transport tragedy: a bus carrying Polish pilgrims crashed in Hungary, killing 12. Covered same-day, everywhere — the Mirror had it by breakfast, France 24 by lunch. Twelve dead Europeans: immediate, universal news. Eighty-four dead Zimbabweans: a trickle of toll updates that most outlets stopped carrying after Friday. The industry has a name for this math problem, usually attributed to a cynical old city-desk formula about how many faraway deaths equal one local one. Nobody says the formula out loud anymore. The sitemaps still run on it. * Credit where it's due: France 24 was still counting on Sunday — "Death toll from Zimbabwe capsized ferry accident rises to 84" — its second Africa follow-up of the day, alongside the Hungary crash. Al Jazeera filed update after update all week, its URL fossils showing the toll climbing 15, 44, 69, 72 in the same story slot. The outlets with actual Africa desks treated the story the way running stories get treated: you stay on it until it stops moving. It hasn't stopped moving. * Here's why staying matters, beyond respect: the follow-ups are where this stops being a weather story. An overloaded boat — 63 people past its licensed capacity — a state of disaster declared, survivors' accounts of the crossing: the accountability questions live in the updates, not in day one's wave-swamped-vessel copy. Drop the story at 44, and it's a tragedy. Follow it to 84, and it's a scandal. The reader of the outlet that stopped counting doesn't just have an old number — they have the wrong genre.