{"id":233566,"date":"2016-03-23T18:58:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T18:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/brussels-bombings-destroy-fiction-that-all-terrorism-deaths-count-as-equal\/"},"modified":"2016-03-23T18:58:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T18:58:43","slug":"brussels-bombings-destroy-fiction-that-all-terrorism-deaths-count-as-equal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/brussels-bombings-destroy-fiction-that-all-terrorism-deaths-count-as-equal\/","title":{"rendered":"Brussels Bombings Destroy Fiction That All Terrorism Deaths Count as Equal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New<\/a><\/p>\n

New York Times<\/strong> online edition (3\/22\/16)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When a series of bombs went off at the Brussels airport and in a subway station yesterday, killing 31 people and injuring more than 200, the reaction of the US press was immediate and overwhelming. Every major news outlet turned its website over to coverage of the suicide attacks, often accompanied by live tickers and infographics. \u201cBrussels Attacks Shake European Security\u201d reads the banner headline on today\u2019s New York Times<\/b>\u2019 front page (3\/23\/16); the Washington Post<\/b> (3\/22\/16<\/a>) worried that the bombings \u201cmade clear that European capitals remain perilously vulnerable despite attempts to dismantle the militant network that perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in Paris in generations last November.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a curious statement, given that just nine days earlier, another European nation\u2019s capital had been the site of a remarkably similar suicide bombing. On March 13, a car bomb went off in Ankara, Turkey, killing 34 people and injuring 125. As in Brussels, the Ankara bombing, carried out by a Kurdish group opposed to Turkey\u2019s military actions in Kurdish regions of Syria, targeted a transit hub\u2014there a heavily trafficked bus stop\u2014and the victims were likewise unsuspecting civilians going about their lives, including the father of international soccer star Umut Bulut (Guardian<\/b>, 3\/14\/16<\/a>), who was on his way back from one of his son\u2019s matches.<\/p>\n

If terrorists had set out to conduct a controlled experiment on how the US media covers mass deaths overseas, they couldn\u2019t have planned it any better. The Ankara bombing was mostly relegated to smaller stories buried in the foreign section: The New York Times<\/b> (3\/14\/16<\/a>) ran a 777-word story on page 6, noting that the attack \u201craised questions about the Turkish government\u2019s ability to protect its citizens\u201d; the Washington Post<\/b> (3\/14\/16<\/a>) ran an even shorter story reporting that “initial reports suggested at least some of the casualties were civilians waiting at nearby bus stops\u201d \u2014 a strangely inexact account, perhaps explained by the article\u2019s dateline of Beirut, over 400 miles away. CNN<\/b> at least had a reporter on the scene \u2014 Arwa Damon, an Emmy-winning Syrian-American journalist based in Istanbul \u2014 though she was limited to a series of five-minute reports running down the basics of the attacks.<\/p>\n

\"Washington<\/a><\/p>\n

Washington Post<\/strong> online edition (3\/22\/16)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The news reports following the Brussels bombings were dramatically different in both scale and tenor. Multiple stories on the bombings and on the growth of support for ISIS in Belgium, plus video of the bombings\u2019 aftermath were the norm; the New York Times<\/b> website added a series of interactive graphics showing the bombing sites in detail. Scrolling website tickers updated readers on related news both large and small: The Washington Post<\/b>\u2019s feed included the breaking news \u201cStarbucks Closes All Belgian Stores<\/a>,\u201d while the Times<\/b> ticker included a post reporting that Facebook <\/b>hadn\u2019t yet released a tool to overlay the Belgian flag on top of profile photos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was almost an exact repeat of last November, when bombings in Beirut and Paris on subsequent days received wildly disparate attention from the US news media, with the Beirut bombings that killed 43 getting just 1\/40th the US media coverage<\/a> of the next day\u2019s Paris attacks that killed 136. And the wall-to-wall coverage of Paris and Brussels is called into even greater relief when compared with the numerous other terrorist incidents in recent months that have received little US attention, such as attacks in Bamako, Mali; Tunis, Tunisia; Istanbul, Turkey; Jakarta, Indonesia; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Mogadishu, Somalia; and Grand-Bassam, Ivory Coast, between November and March that collectively took 117 lives (Public Radio International<\/b>, 3\/22\/16<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The usual defense of US outlets that offer lesser coverage of deaths in other parts of the world cites readers\u2019 and viewers\u2019 increased interest when Americans are somehow involved \u2014 at its most base, the principle expressed in McLurg\u2019s Law<\/a> that a death in one\u2019s home country is worth 1,000 deaths on the other side of the world. (This was on full display in the Chicago Tribune<\/b>\u2019s lead story<\/a> on the Brussels bombings, which was headlined \u201cBrussels Attacks: 3rd Bomb Found; Americans Hurt.\u201d) But while US citizens were injured in Brussels \u2014 three Mormon missionaries caught in the airport blast received widespread coverage, including in USA Today<\/b> (3\/22\/16<\/a>) and on CBSNews.com<\/b> (3\/22\/16<\/a>) and NBCNews.com<\/b> (3\/22\/16<\/a>) \u2014 and none in Ankara, another Turkish bombing this month did have American casualties: Two Israeli-Americans, Yonathan Suher and Avraham Goldman, were killed along with two others in an ISIS suicide bombing in Istanbul on March 20. Their deaths earned brief stories in the New York Times<\/b> (3\/19\/16<\/a>) and Bloomberg News<\/b> (3\/19\/16<\/a>), but no mention elsewhere in the US news media.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the greatest difference in post-bombing coverage, though, came in the lessons the media suggested that readers draw from the Brussels and Ankara attacks. Ankara\u2019s bombing was treated as matter-of-fact, if not entirely unremarkable: The New York Times <\/b>article\u2019s first sentence (3\/13\/16<\/a>) described it as merely \u201cthe latest of a string of terrorist attacks that have destabilized the country,\u201d though it later acknowledged that it was the first of these that had targeted civilians. (By the US State Department’s definition<\/a> of “terrorism”\u2014which involves attacks on non-combatants\u2014the earlier attacks would not be considered terrorism.) The Associated Press<\/b> coverage (3\/13\/16<\/a>) noted only that it was \u201cthe third in the city in five months,\u201d without mentioned that the first two attacks were against military targets, not civilians.<\/p>\n

The Brussels attacks, meanwhile, were presented as a \u201cshocking turn of events\u201d (Washington Post<\/strong>, 3\/23\/16<\/a>), but one explained by Belgium no longer really counting as European at all. The Post<\/b>\u2019s Adam Taylor reported that the Brussels bombing \u201cwasn\u2019t exactly a surprise,\u201d noting that the Belgian capital, \u201conce best known as a center for European culture and politics,\u201d was now \u201ctainted\u201d by its \u201clinks to extremism and terrorist plots.\u201d The problem, it specified, was centered in Molenbeek, a Brussels suburb \u201cjust across the Canal not far from some of Brussels\u2019 more fashionable areas,\u201d which\u00a0 \u201cfirst began to fill up with Turkish and Moroccan immigrants around 50 years ago\u201d and is now beset by high unemployment and \u201cmany seedy and rundown shops.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

This New York Times<\/strong> article (3\/22\/16<\/a>) originally suggested that security would require “crimping civil liberties.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The New York <\/b>Times<\/b>, meanwhile, prominently featured a news analysis piece by Adam Nossiter (headlined \u201cBrussels Attacks Underscore Vulnerability of an Open European Society<\/a>\u201d) warning that \u201cthe enduring vulnerability of Europe to terrorism in an age of easy travel and communications and rising militancy\u201d would lead to<\/p>\n

\n

a new round of soul-searching about whether Europe\u2019s security services must redouble their efforts, even at the risk of further crimping civil liberties, or whether such attacks have become an unavoidable part of life in an open European society.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nossiter didn\u2019t specify which civil liberties could be \u201ccrimped\u201d \u2014 a term that had been toned down, by the time his article appeared on today\u2019s print front page (3\/23\/16), to \u201cimpinging on.\u201d He did suggest, though, that Belgium could face “widening derision as being the world\u2019s wealthiest failed state\u201d \u2014 something that raises the question of how the United States, with 31 mass killings in the year 2015 (according to USA Today<\/strong>\u2019s ongoing \u201cBehind the Bloodshed\u201d count<\/a>), should be categorized.<\/p>\n

(Nossiter, a longtime Times<\/b> correspondent, has a bit of a history of \u201cnews analysis\u201d pieces showing the need for a bit more analyzing, including one arguing that the displacement of New Orleans\u2019 poor could present an \u201cupside\u201d of Hurricane Katrina<\/a>, and another citing<\/a> the African Union\u2019s refusal to cooperate with the International Criminal Court as representative of \u201cthe gulf separating the West and many African leaders\u201d on human rights, notwithstanding that the US has itself refused to cooperate with the ICC on numerous occasions.)<\/p>\n

Bloomberg News<\/b><\/a> echoed the idea that freedom \u2014 either of civil liberties, of travel, or both \u2014 was to blame, noting \u201cthe vulnerability of open societies such as Belgium” while asserting that \u201ca deluge of refugees from the Middle East is testing the 28-nation bloc\u2019s dedication to open borders and stirring up anti-foreigner demagoguery\u201d \u2014 a correlation that would be more believable if Europe hadn\u2019t had a long history of xenophobia<\/a> well before Syrian refugees began arriving in 2015.<\/p>\n

There are certainly reasons why the Brussels bombings might be considered of greater direct concern to American residents than the one in Ankara\u2014specifically, the involvement of ISIS, which as the target of US bombing is more likely to attack the US than a Kurdish group. (Much of yesterday\u2019s reporting on the Brussels bombings focused on what they meant for possible attacks on the US, including former US House homeland security chair Peter King helpfully telling CNN<\/strong>\u2019s Wolf Blitzer, \u201cEven though there is no indication of an attack, it could happen.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"Independent:<\/a><\/p>\n

Coverage in the London Independent<\/strong> did much more to humanize the victims of the Ankara attack than most US papers did.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Yet the deluge of coverage of the Brussels bombing, and the paucity of attention for Ankara, began even before the bombers\u2019 identities were known. And US news outlets steered clear of any opportunities to humanize the Ankara victims \u2014 unlike the UK\u2019s Independent<\/b> (3\/14\/16<\/a>), which reported on a widely shared Facebook<\/b> post that asked \u201cWill you be Ankara?\u201d and compared the site of the attack to \u201ca bomb going off outside Debenhams on the Drapery in Northampton, or on New Street in Birmingham, or Piccadilly Circus in London.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the lasting impression for US readers is that deaths in Belgium are more newsworthy than an equal number of deaths in Turkey, and that if Belgium is to avoid sinking to the level of \u201cfailed nations,\u201d it needs to address the outsiders who are dragging it down to a level unbecoming of its continent, or at least its western half. Europe, it\u2019s clear, has no monopoly on anti-foreigner demagoguery.<\/p>\n

\n

Neil deMause is a contributing writer for FAIR, and runs the stadium news website Field of Schemes<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Times online edition (3\/22\/16) When a series of bombs went off at the Brussels airport and in a subway station yesterday, killing 31 people and injuring more than 200, the reaction of the US press was immediate and overwhelming. Every major news outlet turned its website over to coverage of the suicide attacks, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-233566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}