During the Hezbullah war, a Red Cross ambulance was supposedly fired on by Israel, and headlines race around the world, causing hundreds of fraudulent news stories, what with the ambulance having never been hit by IDF missiles. But the world still got to read about it with their morning coffee the next day.
Sometime in the last two weeks, a Red Cross ambulance driver was murdered after having been kidnapped. Nobody knows when, because nobody really noticed, and nobody really cares—because he was a Sudanese, and he was killed in Darfur. The ambulance driver wasn’t an Arab killed by an Israeli. There’s absolutely no news value in another dead Sudanese. After all, there have already been some 200,000 Sudanese killed in the war—two hundred times the number of Lebanese killed—and nobody really cares. It hardly even makes the evening news. I could only find a dozen or so articles on Google News about it.
I doubt Time Magazine will mention it at all. Dead Sudanese? Not sexy enough. Dead Arab killed by Israeli missiles? STOP THE PRESSES!
No worries that Zombie will have to put up any stories of phony hits on Darfur Red Cross ambulances. The world doesn’t care enough to show up to take photographs.
Udpate: Reader Birt points out correctly that the driver wasn’t an ambulance driver. Sorry, folks, I misread and assumed. The main point, of course, remains the same: There is a different level of attention to anything that Israel does.
And of course, it was completely ignored by the world media.
Sometimes this world just depresses me.
Meryl it is the epitome of hypocrisy in the Media. They play up any story that will give Jews or Israel a black eye and downplay or totally ignore that tragic occurence in Darfour.
Wonder if Nick Kristof will mention it? Not.
I am disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Media. I am totally on the side of those who work at exposing their bias and two faced reporting.
However, I went to the CNN article linked by your article, and I found nothing about the person that was killed being an “ambulance” driver. He was, according to the story, involved in distributing food. This does not make the reporting any less biased nor the murder any less horrible. But, unless you have other sources that actually make this person an “ambulance” driver, isn’t the head on your story a bit misleading? I want those of us on the side of exposing media hypocrisy to be extremely vigilant in keeping our information as factual and accurate as possible.
It isn’t just the media.
The U.N.
What about them? Why won’t they do the right thing?
Instead, they tell the rest of the world – especially those of us in the United Staes – that it is wrong to have firearms for self-defense.
Of all the gall.
This is new? Are you saying the Media only started this selective reporting in the last month or so?
They do it all the time on all subjects. It’s the headlines that make the news.
It’s interesting that we’re not hearing the tired old lie “the Jews control the media”. Why is that?
It’s a story line in a soap opera.
What furthers that, gets published.
The media only reports what attracts eyeballs. They sell eyeballs to advertisers.
The aura of seriousness needs ridicule, is all, as does their core audience.
Is there a possibility that this was not an accident? Isn’t there talk of investigating the phony incident? Now the witness is dead? Maybe I’m thinking to hard, but this is weird.
You’re right, Birt, and I updated the post accordingly.
Thanks Meryl. Now, if we could just rely on the “media” to make as quick and as clear corrections…. What a wonderful world it might be.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,1800190,00.html
June 18 the Guardian reports MONUC firing when women and chidren present and giving no warning. (Kazana Congo) Guardian argues that as mortars fell women and children were seen running. Reporter Adian Hartley entered with UN troops after they became concerned that the high on drugs and alcohol Congolese troops entered village and started burning village, nevertheless they stood by and let it happen.
And by the 26th June the UN had done its investigations and
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/06/26/monday/index.html?eref=sitesearch
“UNITED NATIONS (CNN) — A preliminary investigation found that United Nations peacekeeping forces did not fire on civilians or use excessive force in a town in eastern Congo last April as alleged in two British news reports, the U.N. said Monday.â€
Again, who cares, wasn’t Israelis and Arabs. Pakistani troops though.
Even if the UN has to concede that MONUC troops troops sexually abused women and children in the Congo, Annan can’t bring himself to claim in great pain what bad guys the UN troops are. He is only overcome with emotion and anger when it is Israelis somewhere in the mix.
And just a little while later Annan was blasting the Israelis. Now the UNHRC is running a special investigation of war crimes by Israel. TheUN troops and the Congolese Army?
The poor chap who died in Darfur, ambulance driver or food aid truck driver, he is certainly entitled to be called “an impartial protector of war’s wounded†as the journalist at The Australian calls Shalin, who almost lost his life. Almost, what does that mean, as it turns out, if Shalin had any injuries, they had healed within a day. If I had a car crash and walked away unscathed it would be bizarre to claim I almost lost my life. Unless of course an Israeli had been driving the other car.
The Red Cross doesn’t even know his name.
The MSM doesn’t care about Sudanese dead, because they’re only a few hundred thousand Christians (and a few black Muslims, since Arabs are pretty racist too) being slaughtered by Arab Muslims. Nothing to see here.
Should Israel “invade” Darfur?
The overwhelming majority of people these days seem to be more interested in being entertained rather than informed. Whether this is a new development or not, I don’t care to speculate…the point is, the media are giving them exactly what they want. The tired crap about the Jews controlling the media hasn’t been heard in a while because most people in the West still aren’t comfortable showing their antisemitism openly, which is why it takes the much more subtle [hahahaha!] form of attrociously biased reporting vis-Ã -vis Israel. The reporters aren’t in Darfur because the Jews left Sudan decades ago, so there’s nobody there to feed the media obsession with Jews. Give it time…and I think probably not too much more, and the kind of antisemitism that has become slightly more than commonplace throughout the Arab [and most other Muslim] media will start showing up in the US [and elsewhere] English press. … and when they say “the Jews control the media”, people will be just gullible enough to believe it — with the possible exception of a few bloggers who will dare to point out that the media are the ones saying the worst things about Jews… [Will anyone listen then either?]