A survey conducted by FAIR of US media coverage of ISIS or ISIS-inspired attacks in Europe and the Middle East reveals a disparity of coverage, showing that European deaths are roughly 1,800 percent more newsworthy than deaths in the Middle East.
For the purposes of this survey, both articles and video reports were included. We chose the three most-circulated “traditional media” newspapers and Buzzfeed, one of the most popular newsites for “Millennials,” to get another perspective. The list was compiled using a combination of the Nexis news database and Google.
Building on a survey of media mentions from March (AlterNet, 3/31/16) of mass attacks on civilians that are either connected to or perceived to be connected to ISIS (note: The Nice attack has yet to be confirmed as an ISIS-inspired attack), one finds that a death in Europe, broadly speaking, is seen as 19 times more newsworthy as one in the Middle East. Setting aside Baghdad, which one could categorize as a “war zone” (unlike Turkey or Lebanon), deaths in non-Western attacks are nine times less likely to garner news coverage.
But why? American pundits like Max Fisher (Vox, 11/16/15) and Brian J. Phillips (Washington Post, 11/16/15) have dismissed those concerned over this discrepancy as “tragedy hipsters,” a pejorative used to describe people who feign outrage over imbalanced coverage.
Some commentators today honestly sound like tragedy hipsters, “Bro- I care about suffering and death that you’ve never even heard of”
— Jamiles Lartey (@JamilesLartey) November 14, 2015
Max Fisher in Vox (11/16/15): “I have never really succeeded in getting readers to care about such bombings that happen outside of the Western world.”
Those like Fisher who dismiss such concerns largely chalk up the difference in coverage to a gap in reader interest, which Fisher supports with a personal anecdote. This argument ignores the extent to which audience interest is shaped by media priorities. Phillips blames the “man bites dog” factor—meaning the attacks in France have more news value by virtue of the fact that attacks there are “more unusual.” While this could be said for Baghdad (and to a lesser extent Turkey), there have actually been three times as many terror attacks in France as there has been in Lebanon over the past year and a half, yet France merited over five times the coverage.
Not surprisingly, Fisher’s former publication Vox had only one passing mention of the Baghdad attacks, while dedicating nine articles to the Nice attack, despite it having one-third as many victims. As another point of reference, Vox dedicated three times as many articles to the Taylor Swift-Kanye West controversy as it did the worst terror attack in Iraq’s post-invasion history.
Recent reports by Public Radio International (7/16/16) and the New York Times (7/5/16) attempted to answer why, despite being the worst terrorist attack since the US-led invasion in 2003, media coverage of the ISIS Baghdad bombings earlier this month that left over 300 dead was largely absent but came up short, alluding toward the obvious but not really noting it with certainty.
The elephant in the room, and one the media doesn’t seem willing or able to address, is racism—sometimes gestured toward with the vague catch-all “shared cultures,” but more often simply ignored. While it’s possible that proximity and frequency, or a general lack of reader interest, is the culprit, it can’t account for such a wide gap. (It’s worth noting that there are more people in the US of Lebanese than Belgian descent—488,000 vs. 378,000, according to the US Census.)
Occam’s razor suggests that institutional white supremacy (often manifesting with orientalist assumptions about a “cycle of violence” in the Middle East) heavily influences the disparity of coverage. France isn’t any more the United States than Turkey or Lebanon are, but France and the US do share a majority white population. Without at least recognizing this factor, how can newsmakers accurately assess their editorial priorities? Doing so doesn’t make one a hipster, it means one acknowledges reality — a trait that should be encouraged rather than glibly mocked.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Part and parcel of the media disinterest has to lie with the owners, who do not want the idea stirred up that ‘We, in fact, are the terrorists’ in the middle east. It has nothing to do with selling newspapers or news stories to the people. It has all to do with ‘advertisers’ not wanting to advertise if the media is pointing out ‘we are at fault’. By extension, ‘We the U.S.” is “We the Corporations” because “we the people” are told how important ‘They the Corporations’ are to We, the people. If ‘WE’ are guilty, then we turn and look at Them. Of course we should also look in the mirror, because we are supporting Them by purchasing those products they make a profit on, from “WE” the people.
They seriously don’t want ‘We the peeps” taking that a look at that reality, as the “Prophets of Profit” know all to well what that would end up entailing, fewer profits. So sell us that person being eaten by the Lion is not one of “US” (as in WE/Them) but one of THEM (as in not “US”).
See it is all so easy if you depersonalize them with pronouns cause after while ‘They’ all blend together and make it impossible for ‘US’ to sort it out.
Very interesting. Are you planning a similar report on disparities in coverage of attacks in African nations?
We really ought to. I limited the scope due to time concerns but I think this would be useful, yes.
This is not new. When a nationality, religion or race is demonized, the deaths suffered among them is simply not of the same importance as ones own.
During WWII, the US firebombed Tokyo and the RAF did the same to Dresden. I’ve never read reports of any contemporary concern for these two horrendous attacks against civilian centers of population.
Years later, Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and an employee of the War Department during WWII, admitted that the damage done by the US in the Tokyo attacks constituted a war crime and, had we lost the war, he might have been among those tried for it.
Dresden was documented by the percipient witness, Kurt Vonnegut who, as an inmate in a German Prisoner-of-War camp, was forced, along with other POWs, to help bury the dead. Vonnegut never forgot what he saw and what an atrocity had actually occurred. Even Churchill gainsaid the wisdom of the Allied bombing questioning the efficacy of such “mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.”
Thousands of civilians were blown apart and burned alive in those raids. One Asian city, one European. And, much as we’ve done regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we’ve offered rationalizations for both, but never apologized for either one. We won the war, prosecuted the losers for their war crimes while denying or downplaying our own, and got to write the official histories.
Now we’ve got world wide Terrorism and nothing done to Them is as important as what happens to US.
It’s what war does to people.
Well said , Steve! Sadly the majority in the US and Europe does nor seem to bow to reason and facts!