Nearly 2,000 people were killed in a terrorist attack in Nigeria this week . . .

[markpkessinger]

. . . and Western media have barely noticed, having chosen instead to focus almost exclusively on the Paris attacks, in which a handful of Westerners were killed. I don't, for one moment, wish to detract from the horror of the attacks in Paris, but we shouldn't view a terrorist attack as being uniquely horrific merely because its targets were primarily Western Europeans or Americans. Our news media, in their very selective coverage of incidents such as this, feed a sense of unique victimization whenever it is Americans or Western Europeans who are the victims of terrorist attacks. They certainly did this in the wake of 9-11, and it contributed, I believe, to the apparently widespread belief among Americans that the U.S. is somehow uniquely exempt from moral constraint in its response to terrorist attacks.

http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/nigerians-hit-by-brutal-terror-attack-382766659522

[truedelphi]

1. The Parisian attack helps to further fuel the USA's ever expanding war on terrorism, while

The Nigerian attack is not important in expanding that war. So mentioning it is not that relevant by the profit driven media. (Considering that GE owns outright one of themajor networks, the MIC has a direct hand in all of this.)

(Profits being profits and what not.)

[markpkessinger]

2. Sadly, you are precisely correct n/t

[hifiguy]

21. Bingo. n/t

[Blue_Tires]

22. Not quite...

Back in the summer when Obama said he was going to lend assistance to help find some of those missing girls, a WHOLE lot of DUers said the U.S. was just exploiting the situation to take over and expand it's WOT, so I don't know how that door swings both ways...

As I said in an earlier thread, if the region was ever safe enough to consistently film the devastation (and mark my words -- Networks LOVE footage of burned-down towns and mutilated bodies, no matter what their ethnicity) they would almost certainly be there...Another factor is it's impossible to properly cover what's going on in Nigeria without going into the world class levels of incompetence, corruption, graft and cronyism in the Nigerian government, and few networks want to dive down that rabbit hole...Also, for whatever reason, BH has never had the spotlight-seeking "Hey look at us!!" messaging and media savvy of ISIS and AQ...

[truedelphi]

25. Your inter mingling two separate issues -

One) People on DU are rather familiar with our rather lousy record of going in and "providing stability, ridding an area of boogie men" etc. A lot of us were not thrilled about the idea of rushing into to save yet another country, even though the situation with the missing Nigerian girls was tragic. (I mean, especially given that the nation of Iraq, for which over a ten year period we supposedly "tried to help rid itself of boogie man Saddam Hussein and tried to help it become a democracy" is now being assaulted by ISIS. And our ten years there cost us some 6,000 service people, a quarter of a million of our service people wounded, either physically or mentally, and then perhaps as many as 900,000 Iraqi civilians were killed! And for a cost of something like 2 to 4 trillion US dollars, as well!)

When a person examines the international situation, one finds that the New Zealand people, Australian, European and Scandinavians, and the Japanese are now providing worthwhile and successful charity activities for third world nations. So maybe we should let them be the warrior nations to "stabilize regions, eliminate boogie men and provide a demcoratic form of government, wherever needed.

Two) There are teams of news reporters for such illustrious newspapers as Le Figaro, Le Monde, The Guardian, etc who are reporting on things from the capital of Nigeria. Our news agencies can't seem to even get a reporter to cover events in the various capitals of some of our more imporant states, let alone Nigeria.

[Blue_Tires]

27. Couple of points

1. Le Figaro, Le Monde, The Guardian, etc are all European, so they would naturally be more involved in reporting on African matters because they're geographically closer, especially given Europe's history in continental Africa, and the huge number of expats/immigrants who have moved to those countries...Secondly, U.S. papers don't have the staffs or budgets in years past (although the WaPo does still have a desk in Nairobi) and even then they can just simply use the AP, who is in Lagos along with all those Euro papers...Not to conflate print with broadcast, but in my first post I was referring more to the ABC/CNN/etc, who do have the budget and resources to continually report from anywhere...Because although people tend to ignore print, they very rarely ignore TV...

2. Aussies? Kiwis? Scandinavians and the Japanese? Just say you'd rather have a U.N. Peacekeeping force handle it...Which I can agree with, although given BH's indiscriminate brutality, I'd be worried about the U.N. being sent into a meat grinder..

3. (Just a gear-grinding pet peeve of mine) The preferred term is "developing nations"..."Third world" is not only out of date, it's used too often in a pejorative manner...

[Dreamer Tatum]

3. There aren't many Western news offices in Nigeria.

That's just for openers. 100+ children were murdered in Pakistan, and there was almost no coverage of that for the same reason.

[NYC_SKP]

5. News is news, fly a team in, no problemo. No, cuz they're black and poor, nobody cares.

It's not like they were white snooty fancy white French "Satirists", for crying out loud.

[markpkessinger]

7. Exactly . . .

. . . and this happened on Wednesday, so they've had almost four days to get teams in place. Also, apart from the fact that the victims are poor and black, this story doesn't feed the "clash of civilizations" narrative that Western media (at the behest of the MIC) are so eagerly peddling.

[Dreamer Tatum]

9. Well, according to you, a healthy chunk of the dead had it coming

so why would you care?

[Beringia]

10. jury results

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Sun Jan 11, 2015, 01:34 AM, and the Jury voted 3-4 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: Hide for lying.
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Lol, no comments from alerter? Good, because there's no reason to hide this post, which happens to be a true assessment of NYC Skip's opinion based on his words in this forum in previous threads.
Juror #5 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: There may be legitimate background to this post in their responding, but in and of itself, it is hurtful. Should use less inflammatory wording.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Not worth a hide. Really.
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Truth

[stevenleser]

14. This was alerted. Jury voted 7-0 to keep

On Sun Jan 11, 2015, 01:29 AM an alert was sent on the following post:

News is news, fly a team in, no problemo. No, cuz they're black and poor, nobody cares.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6070310

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

ALERTER'S COMMENTS

This guy has been blaming the victims since day one. "Snooty fancy white French satirists" f-cking disgusting

You served on a randomly-selected Jury of DU members which reviewed this post. The review was completed at Sun Jan 11, 2015, 01:47 AM, and the Jury voted 0-7 to LEAVE IT.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: That is how the poster feels about the situation. I don't see how that poster's opinion is harming anyone or anything.
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Nope. I disagree with the POV on the Paris massacre expressed by this poster but it's not hideworthy.
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Sarcasm is not a TOS violation. Vote to Leave.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I don't get the blaming the victims as much as blaming the media for skipping a few hundred deaths to cover themselves first.
Juror #7 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: I don't agree with NYC_SKP's take. But I don't think it is hideworthy either.

Thank you very much for participating in our Jury system, and we hope you will be able to participate again in the future.

[NYC_SKP]

15. Thanks. Interesting.

Funny how two of them refer to a different topic and my unpopular position.

Thanks.

[brooklynite]

19. I seem to recall a couple of Ebola stories...

...which were about the impact on the black and poor in Africa.

The only thing worse than a conspiracy theory is a lazy one.

[adirondacker]

11. There's several western oil companies that take residency there along with Plenty of English

speaking citizens. I recall a big story on how they effectively halted the Ebola epidemic on every major news network and print not too long ago and most recently a fairly big story on a Shell's pittance of a settlement for a major spill.

http://time.com/3522984/ebola-nigeria-who/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-07/shell-agrees-83-million-settlement-for-nigeria-bodo-oil-spills.html

Seems like the press works fine for certain stories

[oberliner]

4. Nigerian massacre took place in a remote border town

I do not believe there is an airport within one hundred miles. It would be next to impossible for a camera crew and reporters to get there.

Fewer reporters - remote/dangerous area. Pretty much no one able to report from the scene.

As opposed to Paris which would be the opposite of that.

[truedelphi]

12. The Jamestown Massacre of 1978 took place in a remote region also -

But back then we had national news stations that took their responsibility of being the Fourth Estate quite seriously.

During the Eighties, the networks became just another for profit business scheme, and spending on news teams in foreign places was viewed as being unprofitable.

No problem, really - I mean, the average kid growing up now knows all about the Housewives of Orange County, and if they no longer know where Africa is, so what?

[oberliner]

13. No it didn't

You really think Jamestown, Virginia is as remote as this town on the Nigeria/Chad border?

Do you understand that Western reporters literally cannot get to the place where the massacre took place without risking their lives?

Edit to Add: Do you mean Jonestown?

[truedelphi]

16. My apology: It was Jonestown In Guyana

Which is either a So American or Central American country.

Got a great deal of coverage. In part because a US Congressman was one of the victims of the massacre, while Jackie Spier, currently a House of Represenative for a Calif district, survived the machine gun attack that killed the Congressman.

Still and all, the news was far more willing to spend money on news back in the day.

Such allocations for salary and personnel allowed for the likes of Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow to grace the airwaves. Those two newsmen often brought important issues to the consciousness of Americans. Murrow produced one hour specials in the 1960's that made such issues as migrant workers' conditions arrive at the forefront of the national political discussion. Cronkite allowed what influenced him from his trips into Vietnam to become a definite anti-war slant.

Last night, I had the news on for a brief time last night, and the main news being covered was:
1) Whole Foods guilty of selling non-range free eggs (Well, the chickens the eggs come from are not range free.)

2) Chipoltes Restaurant chain will be serving vegan selections on a menu coming soon to a neighborhood Chipotles near you.

Meanwhile the Big Bankers have committed various legal crimes that have robbed every American of at least $200,000. No discussion on economics, or Trans Pacific Plan. Those items would require having someone who is more that 22 years old to sit at the news desk, and to be able to converse intelligently about such matters.

(Sorry for confusion on yr end from my combining Jim Jones name, "James" with the name of the town, Jonestown, in Guyana. BTW, that event is why we now say "drinking the koolaid" when someone is swallowing a whole bunch of propaganda and ignoring common sense.)

[former9thward]

23. Jonestown was led by Jim Jones

who was a well known and influential San Francisco personality. Somewhat different than Nigeria.

[Bluenorthwest]

17. Jonestown had it's own landing strip a short hop from Georgetown, 6 hours out of Miami

Not so remote.

[NYC_SKP]

6. Africa terrorism amongst black people doesn't concern Western press.

Or many Western "Progressives" either, apparently.

Thanks for posting this, Mark.

[HeiressofBickworth]

8. I was shocked at the Paris attacks,

but I knew that the French had the resources and the will to hunt the perpetrators down and deal with them, one way or another. When I heard about the 2,000 being killed in Nigeria, I shed tears. Tears over the hopelessness of stopping the violent group savaging northern Nigeria. Women, children, the elderly. They have no shame, no compassion, no restraint on the exercise of their sick, twisted, power-mad violence. There are factors which limit the response by the Nigerian government or any other government. The remoteness making troops on the ground nearly impossible, the lack of a single operating base that could be attacked (drones or bombing) lack of funds, lack of equipment, and maybe even lack of will. In this case, it's not lack of oil -- Nigeria has oil. Lots of it.

[truedelphi]

18. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^n/t

[oberliner]

20. Question: If there was wall-to-wall coverage of the Nigeria attacks in the Western media...

What do you think the result would be? What response would you expect from the US?

[LiberalAndProud]

24. If we actually did some serious reporting on Nigeria, we might begin to understand our

world in global terms. It's not interesting, really, that people in that far-away place are slaughtering each other. It's really not interesting because they're not rich and not blonde.

Still, if we did consider what is happening there now, we might begin to consider the real effect climate change and hyper-population has as people are displaced and resources become scarce. We might peer into our own future and that would be

...

frightening.

[randys1]

26. Were the 2000 Black? Surely this wouldnt support my comments today about how white people kinda

suck, would it

And I am going to get in a whole lotta trouble for saying it, but it is true

We pretend that white is all that is right and all that matters, and that aint no bullshit

[Turbineguy]

28. The big problem

(besides the existence of Boko Haram) is the fact that the Nigerian government is paralyzed with corruption.