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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think that things are newsworthy even if theyre happening to non-white, non-english speaking people?

111 replies

Branleuse · 19/04/2013 13:15

The amount of news coverage about Boston, which although horrible, it seems to have an out of proportion amount of news coverage, considering its still halfway across the world, compared to the much higher number of deaths of civilians in Iraq and Palestine (for example)

Was just reading some international news online and noticed this :(
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Another-rape-Anger-rises-protests-spread-in-Delhi-as-5-year-old-victim-battles-for-life/articleshow/19631652.cms

Im not sure why we hear more about the white tourist that got raped, than about that.
I could trawl the news for examples

Whats it all about?? It makes me uneasy

OP posts:
lashingsofbingeinghere · 19/04/2013 14:30

Branleuse - I don't think the coverage is disproportionate because of the rarity of the event itself - in America. Sadly atrocities happen everywhere, it's when they strike somewhere unexpected they become more newsworthy. Plus this story is still live, with a suspect on the run and another dead.

Branleuse · 19/04/2013 14:30

we didnt identify with the greeks much recently or the cypriots rioting.

Not enough business links with the UK I guess, even if they are on our doorstep

Im not sure what business links have got to do with the general public though

OP posts:
flipchart · 19/04/2013 14:30

Your title sounds like a line from a Scrooubius Pip song 'thou shalt always kill'

I was going to chat about electronic beats and English hip hop!

fromparistoberlin · 19/04/2013 14:30

that said, we had our own little 11 year old girl get raped in that park. awful tale. But I am sure it did not freach the Indian papers either

Branleuse · 19/04/2013 14:36

it probably didnt reach the US papers either though

OP posts:
whistleahappytune · 19/04/2013 14:38

Branleuse, there was huge coverage on Greece and Cyprus. There's a big Cypriot community here in London - plenty of business links.

I'm beginning to wonder what exactly your point is. Also, (and please, I don't mean this rudely) do you watch the news or read the major newspapers? Or is this just a general perception?

LaVolcan · 19/04/2013 14:42

The BBC has a habit of going OTT for some things e.g. the minutiae of US elections. However, checking their page just now, they have something about Nicaragua, Pakistan and the world's oldest person in Japan.

FreudiansSlipper · 19/04/2013 14:44

American lives are valued over others by many of the people and by the government

if the 2 men that committed this crime (the recent bombings) were from iran, even if they had no dealings with the government of iran we would be heading for a very serious situation because this can not be done to americans

because of American policies and the mindset of many americans and because they are still very powerful (and we follow them) what happens there is more important than what happens in others countries.

is it right no it is the way it is though Angry

herethereandeverywhere · 19/04/2013 14:46

Agree with those who say it is the frequency with which these things happen (or lack thereof) which makes them newsworthy. I saw the statistic that over 3000 people have died so far this year in the US from gunshot wounds - we hear nothing of this either.

fromparistoberlin · 19/04/2013 14:59

there does seem to be a "dont fuck with the US" view

mainly held by the US!!!!!

fromparistoberlin · 19/04/2013 15:00

all I really care about is the Kardashians TBH, fuck the rest of the world and their wars and atrocities

Branleuse · 19/04/2013 15:02

Thats true herethereandeverywhere. 18 people a day are shot in the US. Americans doing it to each other. It isnt really news.

I didnt write the thread in an accusatory way. Im actually trying to understand. IS IT ingrained racism?

If 18 people a day are shot in the US. Why do we hear about a bomb?
I cant deny wondering if theres more to it.

Indian papers or american papers probably dont cover every rape in the UK. Hell, most rapes arent even important to UK news, but i was as horrified as anyone about the 16 year old american cheerleader thing, but the things the news focus on seem to be about a lot more than what is horrific or out of the ordinary

OP posts:
Absy · 19/04/2013 15:14

It depends on your news source as well. For e.g. on Russia Today they have a lot of reports that don't make it to the normal British news outlets (e.g. did you know that Bahrain are introducing a 5 year prison sentence for insulting the royal family), likewise French news outlets tend to have stuff for Francophone countries (Cote D'Ivoire etc.) which wouldn't necessarily make it to the UK news.

grimbletart · 19/04/2013 15:14

If 18 people a day are shot in the US. Why do we hear about a bomb?

Branleuse. More people are killed in car crashes than in aeroplane crashes, but a car crash has to be huge for it to reach national news. Yet an aeroplane crash even on

Itthe other side of the world will make our news. It's the same sort of phenomenon.

More than 270 people die every day from smoking in the UK yet if 2 or 3 die in a house fire it will make national news.

It's man bites dog syndrome.

OutragedFromLeeds · 19/04/2013 15:23

I think the discussion about what kind of event gets reported is separate to the discussion about why the ethnicity of the victims effects how widely it is reported.

A plane crash that kills 100 people will be reported. It will be in the news and discussed far more if it's 100 Americans/French/Australians than if it's 100 Chinese/North Koreans/Indians. That's the issue.

LaMaga · 19/04/2013 15:35

I agree with FreudiansSlipper

youvegottabekiddingme · 19/04/2013 15:36

There was a plane crash in Indonesia maybe just a few days before the Boston Bombings, and an earthquake in the Iran-Pakistan region just after the bombings. I can't find anything in the news about either. In the UK we are brainwashed into thinking that only American and British lives are important. I remember from a very young age when there had been any sort of incident somewhere in the world where people had been killed, the exact number of American or British casualities was always mentioned. I could understand why they would tell us in the British news the number of British casualties. I could't work out why they mentioned the number of Americans but not the number of other nationalities. Still can't understand it now.

LaVolcan · 19/04/2013 15:49

The Iranian/Pakistan earthquake did make it to the main page of the BBC, but it was rather swamped by the reporting of a certain funeral as far as our news went.

FreudiansSlipper I think a link to Iran would have been very satisfactory to certain 'gentlemen' in the Pentagon. Alternatively, if a link to Al-Qaeda had been found, they would not have been too displeased. [old cynic emoticon].

HoHoHoNoYouDont · 19/04/2013 15:50

They tell us what they want us to hear most of the time. If you want real unbiased news and facts then you have to go searching for them.

Many times controversial stuff will be released by the government cleverly timed to be hidden in the press by a bigger story. That way when people accuse them of not telling us stuff they can prove it's there but we missed it because of the bigger story that day.

LaVolcan · 19/04/2013 15:56

Timing is certainly part of it. The Boston Marathon might have been a slightly bigger story because the London Marathon is due.

Similarly, if the Iranian earthquake had happened in August, during a slow news period, it would probably have been given more attention.

slhilly · 19/04/2013 16:02

Branleuse, you say "I didn't write the thread in an accusatory way. Im actually trying to understand. IS IT ingrained racism?"

Upthread, though, you wrote:
"... many places are war zones because of America"

That sounds like an ingoing mindset. I suspect you are minded to believe that:

  • coverage is disproportionate
  • the reason for this is because it's happened in the US
  • this is typical of overweening America, getting in everyone's faces and demanding too much airtime

If any of this accurately reflects your beliefs, I think it's worth testing them somewhat further:

  1. how do you define proportionate coverage? Chomsky did his counting of the column inches, which I guess would be one way of getting a handle on the numerator ("amount of news") but I'm not sure how you do the denominator: per what? per death? per injury? per £ of damage? Nor what the criteria for inclusion or exclusion would be: do we count only bombs? all violent deaths caused deliberately? all violent deaths? all preventable deaths? etc etc. Defining proportionality is both a practically and morally challenging exercise. For example:

At least 60,000 people are thought to have died in the Syrian civil war thus far. That is nearly ten times the number of total Palestinian civilian deaths caused by the conflict with Israel ever since 1948. Clearly, though, there has been vastly more coverage of Palestinian casualties since 1948 than there has been of the Syrian civil war. And taking this one step further....the number of deaths in Syria is a horrifyingly tiny fraction of all the deaths caused by what is sometimes called the Second Congo War, which is estimated to have killed about 5.4m people in the course of a decade. That war got less coverage than the Syrian civil war.

To my mind, this all demonstrates that it is extremely difficult to establish what the "right" level of coverage is, both for news organisations and for us as readers.

  1. as others have said, there are many reasons for the amount of coverage of this story in the UK, including rarity, the political significance of terrorism on the US mainland, and the extensive historical, cultural and other ties that the UK has to the US including but far from limited to a shared main language, a legal system based on common law, books movies and music that inter-relate etc. All of this is true to some extent for other countries, but it's nowhere true to the same degree.

Finally, I do wonder about what you intended by your comment about many places being war zones because of America. This is clearly true. But then, many places are war zones because of other countries too. I think many people for some reason rank America as the top villain on their "private list of evil places" - above China, Syria, Uzbekistan, Russia, and any number of other vile autocracies.

Absy · 19/04/2013 16:03

The Iranian Earthquake was in Le Monde, but as you said in the UK that day the news was otherwise occupied.

I have news alerts on my iphone coming in from Russia Today, Le Monde and the New York Times. It means I get a variety of news and you do see differences between the coverage, e.g. today on RT they're covering bombings of Mosques in Iraq, the NYT is obviously occupied with Boston, as is Le Monde which has also been covering the most recent political french corruption scandal (there's always one ...)

youvegottabekiddingme · 19/04/2013 16:06

The lives of people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and other countries are not any less important because something happening in America at the same time.

grimbletart · 19/04/2013 16:08

There was a plane crash in Indonesia maybe just a few days before the Boston Bombings, and an earthquake in the Iran-Pakistan region just after the bombings. I can't find anything in the news about either

Both were reported in the UK.

whistleahappytune · 19/04/2013 16:10

slhilly excellent post!

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