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#14812061
We've had wall to wall coverage of the Manchester bombing but very little about the Kabul truck bomb. It seems that western lives matter and middle eastern lives not so much. Is this because of nationalism and racism?

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The death toll from a truck-bomb explosion in Kabul last week has reached more than 150 people, President Ashraf Ghani said on Tuesday, making it the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afgha ... SKBN18X0FU
#14812062
Is this because of nationalism and racism?


Mostly just self interest. Western media cares more about the west because they have a western audience and western staff.
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By fuser
#14812063
Naah it's mostly because western news outlets care more about west and is same for any other country's/region's media outlet.

Do you expect same level of coverage from British media for British Election and let's say srilankan election?? Obviously not.
#14812064


Nothing new here, this goes back to at least Napoleon bringing his scholars to Egypt and then European scholars eventually being in a position to teach Middle Eastern history to Middle Eastern people.

Where the Soviets had early on attempted to understand and liberate the common Eastern person as victims of a global system, the Cold War enforced the idea that Easterners were out of control and needed to be guided by the West for Westerners.

In this way, the Western life mattered a lot more for the Westerner—where the Easterners were more or less ants stuck in a draconian system, etc, etc, etc.
#14812067
fuser wrote:Naah it's mostly because western news outlets care more about west and is same for any other country's/region's media outlet.


I don't know about that.
The Manchester bombing headlined in the RT news and the Al Jazeera news for many days.




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Last edited by anarchist23 on 06 Jun 2017 16:32, edited 4 times in total.
#14812068
Terrorist attacks in the west are of interest to the east because our reaction matters. It doesn't in the other direction.
#14812071
It is indeed unfair and I have always hated it - even small things when the news reports "4 billion dead, including 2 Americans"... the news completely ignores things happening everywhere. But it is a case of identity. Local news will report more on local things. Broadcast news will report on murders in the city even if there are worse murders in other cities. Cable networks will report on their home countries more than they will on far more horrible things happening elsewhere. It is human nature. It isn't even limited to bad things - the news will also ignore good things... like the release of the schoolgirls by Boko Haram, or the Kurd/Iraqi campaign against ISIS. It isn't that people don't care about those things, it is that they just aren't interested because it doesn't affect them.

And this happens to all genres... something significant happening for one community means nothing to other communities that share the same basic population.
#14812079
anarchist23 wrote:We've had wall to wall coverage of the Manchester bombing but very little about the Kabul truck bomb. It seems that western lives matter and middle eastern lives not so much. Is this because of nationalism and racism?

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afgha ... SKBN18X0FU


Obviously Europe matters more then some backwater in middle of the mountains. Last time I checked we are still not piece of shit global society, we still have borders, we still have alliances and closer ties to our cultural identity. It is not human nature to care about Afghanis same way we do about Europeans.
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By AFAIK
#14812083
If it's any consolation these terror attacks haven't been covered in Cambodia where the press has been focused on local elections. There was significant coverage of the deaths of four UN peacekeepers in CAR, though. Those peacekeepers were Cambodian.

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#14812099
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