@Deeeleonce rightly wrote that the Western world tends to be selectively ignorant of terrorist attacks if they happen in developing countries. What can I say? He is completely right.
Two days ago, a suicide bombing occurred at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan, Pakistan. 88 people died, over 250 people are injured. How did I learn about it? From the English Wikipedia’s starting page. I didn’t read about it in the English-speaking media, didn’t see any articles about it in the German media, didn’t come across any news about it in the Russian media. Silence. Ignoble silence.
There is a terror attack in Paris, Nice, or Berlin, and the world goes bonkers. There is a terror attack in Sehwar Pakistan, killing 88 people, and the media are still chewing the fat about stupid things President Trump said, the politicians don’t care (like they ever care), and we don’t even know about it.
May all the dead be reborn in a fortunate realm, may all the survivors be in good health, may the murderers find peace and realize what they did! Death is always death, pain is always pain, dukkha is always dukkha. My metta is with all the victims and perpetrators of the Sehwan attack
I think there is a huge difference between an avalanche of news about the attack in Nice, when you couldn’t even find a single article not about the attack on the home page of Spiegel and… how many articles were there in Der Spiegel? Two? Three? I didn’t see them anyway. Could you have missed the articles about the Nice attacks? I don’t think so.
Sorry, I am a bit salty about that. Actually, not quite a bit. That’s wrong, I know, I just can’t help myself.
My primary news source is Reuters website (reuters.com). I find it to be comprehensive enough to keep me informed and pretty free of skew. Reuters had the Sehwan bombing as a front-page story. I like BBC News - World too.
Nice to hear that. Very nice. These days, Der Spiegel prefers to post article about how dumb Trump is, what dumb things he did, and who said he’s dumb as front stories. I am very glad Reuters still knows what is really important.
there’re regions in the world where violence is so prevalent and pervasive that at certain point it becomes just noise and not really news so long as it doesn’t affect lives elsewhere
I understand all that, you are right, but 88 people dead! Not one, not two, not even a dozen, 88 people! If it doesn’t affect us, there is something very wrong about it.
How do you know Reuters is free from skew? I browsed the recent ‘Aleppo’ matter & Reuters had lots of the skewed news, such as four stories on the Aleppo Twitter girl (whose father was an extremist) who was part of a fake media campaign crying out that a humatarian crisis was to occur in Aleppo when the truth was the terrorists (such as her family) were being orderly bused out of Aleppo to Idlib.
Reuters also sentimentally wrote due to the return of Aleppo to Syria, former residents (i.e. terrorists) could not return their “home”. Reuters is writing sentimental stories about Idlib, a town full of Wahhabi terrorists.
Reuters also had a recent positive story about the ‘White Helmets’ in Syria, who have been proven, i.e., filmed, to work with extremists, including in the execution of people.
The mainstream reporting on Aleppo last year was the greatest dishonesty I have witnessed in my life and the fruition of a new Orwellian age by mass-media & governments.
Cheerleading for a fundamentalist Sharia Law Wahabbi government and propagating regime change against a secular state is what Reuters appears to be doing.
If this is the reason we should not report about this, there should be no reporting about terrorist attacks in European countries as well. Why are they so important if we can’t change anything in other nations anyway? Heck, no-one was really punished for the gravest display of incompetence after the German attack, so should there be no reporting about it? Why should we even report about Trump doing this or that or Putin saying this or that if we can’t change anything? Should we report about Russians put into jail for thought crimes or playing Pokémon GO in a church if we can have no influence on the Russian authorities whatsoever? Can we have a candle vigil only if European or American people were attacked? Should there be no reporting about the Syrian war, whatever the tone, in the countries not involved into it? You could go on for very long.
Even more importantly, this post is not only and not primarily about the media, it is about compassion for people who suffered a horrible fate.
