There’s a lot of discussion going on about why the ISIS attacks
in Paris received so much North American media attention, but the ISIS attack
in Beirut a day earlier go so little.
One common theme is that people who are not white just don’t
matter—it’s because of racism. I don’t think that’s the case.
The media uses a variety of factors to determine what to
cover each day. Proximity is a key one. This is also known as the local angle.
The local angle is why a car crash that kills nobody on a main street in your city or town
leads the news, but a bombing in Baghdad gets no attention at all.
After all, you might want to travel on that road—it affects you. The
bombing in Baghdad won’t alter your daily routine.
Plus, you might know people involved in the car crash.
Chances are remote you know anyone hurt or killed in bombing so far away.
How does that relate to the Paris and Beirut attacks?
Paris might not be proximate in terms of geography, but
it is close in terms of our thoughts, plans, ideas, books we read (A Tale of
Two Cities, Les Miserable). Can you name one book or movie about Beirut?
Plus, there's a better chance you will go to Paris, or know someone in Paris, than Beirut.
Then there’s the basic news test: Is it new? Is it different
than normal? Unusual? Out of the ordinary?
When it comes to bombings and attacks in Beirut, the answer is no; it is not unusual.
There have been 59 significant
attacks and bombings in Lebanon since 2004, not to mention various civil
conflicts. There have been 14 in France in the same time period.
It sounds callous, and I mean no disrespect for the many harmed by attacks in Lebanon. But violence of this type is more
common in Lebanon than France, and therefore less potentially newsworthy.
Those are all factors. But a main reason why we got more news about Paris than
Beirut is us, the media consumers.
Reporters have known forever that international news is
of less interest to readers, viewers and listeners than local news, sports and
arts and life.
For a long time, it was hard for them to quantify this
knowledge. But the Internet has solved that problem.
Now they can know
day-by-day and hour-by-hour what stories resonate with media consumers.
Stats from my hometown newspaper back this up; a snapshot
of website visits for one month in 2014 show that the most visited sections
were local, sports, arts & life, opinion, Canada, business, world.
Local, at 2.9 million visits, was over seven times more
popular than world news at 396,059. Arts & Life was three times more popular.
Today, an editor recently said, Miss Lonely Hearts, the romance columnist, is more popular than most other parts of the newspaper, except for the local hockey team.
The media isn’t stupid; they aren’t going to publish stories people don’t want. And advertisers won’t pay top dollar to
be on pages that few people visit.
In other words, we get the media we want, and maybe that we deserve.
As a panel the Columbia School of Journalism put it, as
reported in the book News Prism: Challenges of Digital Communication (2012):
“There is a crisis in international news reporting in the United States—and not
one that should simply be blamed on the reporters, the gatekeepers, or the
owners. We know there is stagnation, and even shrinkage, in the number of
international stories in the media . . . but the primary reason for this
decline is an audience that expresses less and less interest in the
international stories that do appear.”
In the 1960s, reporters at a major U.S. network put it
more cynically with what they called the “Racial Equivalence Scale.”
The scale showed the minimum number of people who had to
die in plane crashes in different countries before the crash became newsworthy.
One hundred Czechs was equal to 43 Frenchmen, and the Paraguayans were at the
bottom.”
(BBC journalists had a similar scale, in which “one
thousand wogs, 50 frogs and one Briton” were equivalent.)
Not in real life, of course; the death of anyone is a terrible. But in terms of reader interest, that's how it often works.
Of course, there are other factors—the political
significance of the country in question (there was more reporting about Iraq in
the U.S. during its war against that country), its economic impact (especially if it has
oil), or if there are strategic military concerns.
Sometimes complexity can also militate against coverage. Lebanon, with all its competing militias,
militaries, political parties, religions and ideologies is very hard to report about and understand.
Good guys versus bad guys is much easier to report about—and
read about.
(Of course, if a celebrity is involved, then anything
that happens anywhere can be newsworthy.)
This doesn’t excuse the media. But it does begin to explain the difference in coverage of Paris and Beirut.
One more thing: If the lack of media coverage about
Beirut bothers you, or the lack of coverage from any other of the world’s
hotspots, then tell your local media outlets.
And also make sure to click on those stories on their
websites.
