Earlier this week, guest writer David Olson reprimanded the mainstream media for failing to cover the Boko Haram massacre in Nigeria in lieu of the shootings at the Charlie Hebdo offices that garnered international attention. Olson noted the hypocrisy of western journalism, lampooning how the American news networks slaved after reporting every minute detail of the Paris shootings while staying mute on the approximately 2000 victims of a recent Boko Haram attack. Ultimately, Olson asserted that to combat terrorism, “we must stop selectively choosing whose lives we actually care about,” going on to expound that “no longer [can we] only pay attention when the violence and destruction of terrorists is aimed at western values, cultures and political interests, but also when it is aimed at others who we may not identify as easily with.”
From a humanitarian perspective, Olson has a sound argument. The media shouldn't under any circumstances turn a blind eye to acts of terrorism committed against non-Western peoples simply because they are not “us”; such selectivity would clearly betray a crumbling of the morals of equality the west upholds so dearly. Unfortunately, the specific example Olson provides is testament to just such a blind eye, an example of western media at its worst, wherein an enormous foreign massacre was ignored. But from a purely pragmatic perspective, mainstream news networks’ coverage of the Charlie Hebdo shooting and subsequent non-coverage of other major stories in the third week of January was simply intrinsic to the way news coverage works. Sure, the immediate Twitter storm and #JeSuisCharlie frenzy that followed the shootings may have been a bit overblown, but the general media preference to provide exclusive coverage on the events at Charlie Hebdo more so than other events that week was, realistically speaking, the obvious choice.
France has always been one of America’s closest allies, and the American and French people share common Western values that automatically make news coming from that part of the world higher on the list of reporting priorities. A terrorist shooting in the heart of Paris is bound to have a more relevance and resounding impact on American audiences than an equally large massacre in Nigeria, regardless of whether we should have the same reaction. And indeed we should — all lives matter equally, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. But it is simply human nature to care more about one’s friends than about strangers; and while the media may not necessarily be comparable to an individual, mainstream American news corporations are comprised of mostly American staff who focus on topics relevant to them and their audiences. To expect the media to offer equal coverage on all acts of terrorism, however humane and fair that may sound in principle, ignores the reality that selectivity is part of human nature.
When a relative or best friend is admitted to the hospital for a serious illness, one doesn't tend to care much for the neighboring patient’s sickness. The crux of Olson’s idea is that “selectively choosing” whom to care about is morally wrong. Such an argument, while true in a broad humanitarian sense, is simply impossible to internalize in the pragmatic sense. The deaths in Nigeria were just as — if not more — horrific as the deaths of the 12 in Paris. But to Western audiences, it would be more difficult to relate the incident in Nigeria. This is definitely not to say the media can go about practicing whatever arbitrary news coverage it desires, or that some lives matter more than others. Nor should news coverage simply feed people only the headlines they want to hear, as my fellow columnist Sawan Patel argued a few months back. But hounding the journalistic system for focusing coverage on specific events and places is just as much a critique on the human tendency of selectivity than it is about intentional coverage choice.
As I write this article, 140,000 people are living as homeless refugees in Myanmar. In the Central African Republic (CAR), genocidal warring militias hold the country in a hellish lockdown. Yet most Americans don't know about much about these conflicts, primarily because they have little to do with us. Nor will knowing about such conflicts necessarily help anyone in the areas affected, taking into consideration how low areas like the CAR and Myanmar are on the United States’ foreign policy agenda. The truth is there are numerous conflicts in remote parts of the world that we “should” know about, but don't. And while a good news source may cover these distant situations occasionally, we shouldn't necessarily hold the mainstream media responsible for providing us coverage on every possible foreign atrocity. At the end of the day, media corporations are businesses, targeted to a certain audience. To get the views, clicks and shares, networks will cater to the audience the information that relates most to them, inevitably leading to selective coverage.
Hasan Khan is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at h.khan@cavalierdaily.com.
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