When I switched my laptop on on Saturday morning, all the terabytes of the internet were consumed by people’s reactions to the Paris shootings. On Facebook were expressions of everything from sympathy to anger. One of the most common responses among my friends was: “What about all these other tragedies that have happened recently?”
These posters, some propelled by enough righteous anger to fry an egg, mostly referenced Thursday’s Beirut suicide bomb and the massacre at Garissa University in Kenya. So hasty were they to shame these superficial Europeans, some even failed to spot that the Garissa massacre happened in April.
Their basic point is this: why have the Paris attacks attracted such a public orgy of grief, when comparable tragedies in countries that the west views as poor, war-torn and remote attract not a whisper? (In this post I’m ignoring, because it’s so blindingly obvious, the point that France and the UK are neighbours, most Brits have probably been to Paris, and many were personally alarmed for their friends.) Why the disproportionate media focus on Paris? Why has Facebook gone so far as to enable a special French flag filter for your profile picture, when many more people are hurting in other countries? What despicable traits of racism, thoughtlessness and derision do these imply in our collective psyche?
There’s one problem with this: Garissa received reams and reams of coverage. It attracted reportage, videos, analysis and photojournalism from The Guardian, the BBC, the Telegraph, the Daily Express and, yes, the Daily Mail. Just about every major news outlet in the UK covered it, albeit not to the same degree as Paris. Coverage included reporting the #147notjustanumber campaign to humanise the massacre’s victims. If you’re pissed you missed that one, you should change how you read the news.
The media has innumerable blind spots reporting important issues in the developing world, and this is a genuine problem. There are all kinds of reasons for this: lack of funds means major news outlets close bureaus and buy their stories from agencies such as Reuters or AFP, for instance. But the number one driver for the news agenda is what people want to read. No news editor in the world is going to see a story shooting to the top of the most-read list and say: “Meh, covered it. What else have you got?” If the media aren’t covering other massacres, it’s because you lot aren’t reading about them.
If your idea of staying informed about global events is re-sharing a Comment is Free link and glancing at BBC News’s Most Read, the main problem isn’t the media. It’s your own lack of interest. On an internet that seems to be gravitating towards Facebook like a black hole in the pocket of Mark Zuckerberg’s hoody, why seek out a broad range of news sources when Facebook could be your one-stop shop?
Where once, social media was all trading likes on angle shots and having a catty rejig of your Myspace Top 8, it has become a cover-all for messaging, professional networking, event planning and, crucially, news. Facebook now has a panel telling us what stories are trending. Where once we trusted professional editors to collate the most important happenings and topics, we now crowdsource the job to our friends, hoping that the mix of hardcore activists and viral content lovers will do the trick instead.
If you want to know more about major massacres and attacks when they happen, you have a smorgasboard of choice. Big outlets like The Guardian, The Economist, Al Jazeera and the BBC provide ample coverage of these stories. There are almost no regions on earth that don’t have their own English-language press. There are dedicated publications like The New Internationalist and Foreign Policy, and organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International with all manner of mailing lists. Indie news websites providing alternative perspectives less palatable in the mainstream media are popping up like digital daisies.
Go ahead: look ’em up. Bookmark them. Instead of scrolling blankly through Facebook when you’re bored, see what’s going on in the world. It’s a good alternative to “liking” other people’s posts about how bored they are in a great circlejerk of stupefaction.
Share what you find. Say what you think. And if you’re waving Garissa around from your high horse like a giant banner of philosophical butthurt but only heard about it last week, please just fuck off.
For when my ideas want to get out. 