Pakistan mourns school massacre victims

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Murihiku
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17 Dec 2014, 3:18 am

Pretty bad start to the week around the world:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30507836

BBC – Funerals are being held in Peshawar after Pakistan's deadliest Taliban attack left 132 children and nine staff dead at a school.


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trollcatman
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17 Dec 2014, 4:06 am

It's a pretty bad year all around really.



The_Face_of_Boo
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17 Dec 2014, 8:40 am

This got way less media coverage than the few australian hostages, super nations were about to send aid forces over those, CNN was almost covering it for all day long.

The 150 women who recently got massacred by ISIS also got much less media coverage, of course they won't, they are not whites and blondes.



sartresue
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17 Dec 2014, 9:26 am

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
This got way less media coverage than the few australian hostages, super nations were about to send aid forces over those, CNN was almost covering it for all day long.

The 150 women who recently got massacred by ISIS also got much less media coverage, of course they won't, they are not whites and blondes.

Coverage charge topic
Media coverage is much safer in Western nations, without the threat of kidnap and beheadings by terror groups and individuals. That being said, many brave journalists risk torture and death by jihadists when they venture into war zones.
TFOB, citizens like yourself are the modern news reporters, as you are the ones at the ground zero of Middle East conflict, informing many in the west of what is going on and keeping such events in the spotlight. Many big media agencies rely on citizen journalists from various conflict-ridden countries, many of whom have paid with their lives for their imbedded bravery, to keep us informed. Many here at WP are kept up-to-date about little known Middle East crises via your posts. :idea:


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trollcatman
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17 Dec 2014, 9:54 am

What happened in Pakistan and later in Afghanistan was in the news here in the Netherlands, but the Australian attack may be perceived as different because it was an Islamist attacking in a Western country as opposed to an Islamic country. In other words, viewers are finding it "normal" for attacks to happen in the Middle-east as it is a daily event over there, while in Western countries they are quite rare. Also, it doesn't help that most Westerners probably have no idea where Pakistan actually is, while they know of Australia.

Maybe cultural and linguistic similarity is also part of why people here find it easier to identify with Australians than with Pakistanis and Afghans. Somewhat off-topic, but recently a few Kurdish Peshmerga were interviewed and they spoke German, and one of them spoke Dutch, somehow that made it much easier for me to sympathise with them (irrational, I know).



androbot01
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17 Dec 2014, 11:58 am

When I heard about this I couldn't believe people would actually be capable of committing such acts. Then I thought about it and realized this is nothing to them. They are sub-human.



Magneto
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17 Dec 2014, 2:06 pm

No, they are human, just like us. They're just part of that majority of humans who will commit atrocities if told to do so, or if their peers are doing so as well.



Dhawal
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18 Dec 2014, 6:03 am

You seem to be referring to Milgram experiment. This was different, like they were ordered to kill the older students but they killed students of all ages. Taliban are sub-human, definitely not like you and me. They have released pictures of the seven killers -
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/arc ... 40725c.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/12/ ... 060338.jpg

As a neighbour of the Pakistanis (and as we were one country once), my heart bleeds for the children and their families. I pray that the parents find strength within themselves, and human race finds the sanity it has lost.


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The_Face_of_Boo
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18 Dec 2014, 4:21 pm

sartresue wrote:
The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
This got way less media coverage than the few australian hostages, super nations were about to send aid forces over those, CNN was almost covering it for all day long.

The 150 women who recently got massacred by ISIS also got much less media coverage, of course they won't, they are not whites and blondes.

Coverage charge topic
Media coverage is much safer in Western nations, without the threat of kidnap and beheadings by terror groups and individuals. That being said, many brave journalists risk torture and death by jihadists when they venture into war zones.
TFOB, citizens like yourself are the modern news reporters, as you are the ones at the ground zero of Middle East conflict, informing many in the west of what is going on and keeping such events in the spotlight. Many big media agencies rely on citizen journalists from various conflict-ridden countries, many of whom have paid with their lives for their imbedded bravery, to keep us informed. Many here at WP are kept up-to-date about little known Middle East crises via your posts. :idea:


No, this media disparity was way before the threats of kidnapping and beheading by terror groups.

Things like this phenomena isn't new in the western media: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_wh ... n_syndrome

Besides al Jazeera covered it well, and the nowadays jihadists often film all, so you don't really need journalists on ground to get the ugliness of what really happened.

Here a blog post that talks about this, comparing the School massacre to Syndey SIEGE (even the name is so exaggerated: the whole City name + siege?)

http://grassisalwaysgreener.net/2014/12 ... ol-attack/


Quote:
Yesterday’s breaking news was the following: Pakistan school attack in Peshawar killed 141 people.

It was just a day following the Sydney siege, where 3 people died and what kept the attention of the world for the whole 24-hours.

While the case of Sydney is surely shocking and heartbreaking, something keeps bothering me. During the day of Sydney’s lost innocence I got breaking news notifications every 10 minutes or so. Among others, I was informed who fled from the siege, when and how did s/he flee, how many police officers arrived, who is the person behind the hostage. I was also informed about a message from a mother, whose adult daughter was kept in the hostage. Later on, I was informed about the end of the story, but also about a news reporter, who broke down during her TV appearance finding out that she had connections to one of the victim. I got to know many other things, too, and I surely went to sleep knowing that the attack is considered as Sydney’s 9/11.



Quote:
Today, I opened the main Hungarian media platforms. Not one reported on the massacre’s updates. Then I opened the English speaking platforms in Belgium. The situation was the same: nothing. Then I opened the New York Times. The middle section, known as ‘where the eyes fall’ said: A Flower Industry’s Heart Faces Competition. On the right column finally a report on the massacre. Washington Post’s main news was Ruble’s rapid tumble turns up heat on Putin.
To my relief that journalism is still alive, BBC and CNN did keep an eye on the developments of the attack.

Then, I scrolled down my social media walls. Hardly anything. Drip-drops.


I mean COME ON.



sartresue
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21 Dec 2014, 11:44 am

http://www.everydayanalysis.com/ (This is a blog post written by someone who has noticed media disparity)

Memory and Mourning topic

I have reviewed the post by TFOB and checked the links provided regarding media coverage of the Pakistani schoolchildren massacre. I watch my local news coverage here in Ontario Canada, and consider the reports reliable, though not overly detailed, and so I check other internet news sources, WP, videos, and the like. Not everyone does this, but I like to read and research different angles while forming my own theories. There is media disparity in terms of news from third world countries (especially Africa), war zones and the middle east. Not all governments in these countries want to broadcast disasters, which is why many times citizen journalists/independent reporters and bloggers will make known what is happening. The most video coverage I saw of the parents of those murdered children were of them crying, holding funerals and searching for survivors at the the ground zero of the school. Any interviews of witnesses/parents were quite short. What I see is very little coverage of any type of demonstration against this despicable massacre, with the exception of Mallala, the young Pakistani female Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and others, whose names were barely mentioned, and should be.

Injustices involving murder are better reported in Western nations because we here have the right to protest, demonstrate and we have the media savvy and spokespersons to keep these kinds of stories in the spotlight. I sincerely hope that the places listed in the above paragraph will one day have the same opportunity in order to help mitigate the problem of media coverage disparity, and to eventually live with daily peace and mutual respect.


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cyberdad
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22 Dec 2014, 5:16 am

The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
This got way less media coverage than the few australian hostages, super nations were about to send aid forces over those, CNN was almost covering it for all day long.

The 150 women who recently got massacred by ISIS also got much less media coverage, of course they won't, they are not whites and blondes.


There seems to be a sliding scale, In the Australian media two dead Aussies get more coverage than 40-50 dead Ukrainians in turn more coverage than a few hundred dead arabs killed by ISIS, Israel or Lebanon which still gets more coverage than a few thousand dead Asians in Burma or Sri Lanka who in turn get more coverage than a few million dead Africans in the Congo or Rwanda in Africa. You can guess the dependent variable.



The_Face_of_Boo
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22 Dec 2014, 10:29 am

cyberdad wrote:
The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
This got way less media coverage than the few australian hostages, super nations were about to send aid forces over those, CNN was almost covering it for all day long.

The 150 women who recently got massacred by ISIS also got much less media coverage, of course they won't, they are not whites and blondes.


There seems to be a sliding scale, In the Australian media two dead Aussies get more coverage than 40-50 dead Ukrainians in turn more coverage than a few hundred dead arabs killed by ISIS, Israel or Lebanon which still gets more coverage than a few thousand dead Asians in Burma or Sri Lanka who in turn get more coverage than a few million dead Africans in the Congo or Rwanda in Africa. You can guess the dependent variable.



It's sorted from 'most white' to 'least white'.



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22 Dec 2014, 2:04 pm

There is also the angle of the news:

Ebola: Hundreds dead in West Africa, media reaction: oh noes!! What if someone gets on a plane and brings it over here?
ISIS: A bunch of Westerners go to Syria to join ISIS and murder people, media response: Oh noes!! What if one of them comes back and pulls the same s**t here?



Humanaut
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22 Dec 2014, 2:10 pm

Some good news.

Quote:
Pakistan plans to execute around 500 militants in coming weeks, officials said Monday, after the government lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases following a Taliban school massacre.

http://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-plans-execute-500-terror-convicts-officials-093327925.html



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29 Dec 2014, 6:23 pm

The leader was killed.....RIP (Rot in Pieces)

:evil: