This
weekend saw an
extraordinary
demonstration of
strangely selective
“news value” in the
British and U.S.
media. On Saturday
night a pair of
synchronized bombs
ripped apart two
crowded nightspots
in Hyderabad, India.
The explosions
killed 42 people and
wounded at least a
hundred more. Since
the attacks, police
have found and
diffused 19 more
bombs at movie
theaters, bus stops,
and pedestrian
bridges.
As far as I can tell
this slaughter was
not important enough
to make the front
page of any major
newspaper in Britain
or America. Why?
Well, one thing is
certain: It is not
as if bombs go off
every day in
Hyderabad, which
happens to be one of
India’s key
industrial cities.
Moreover, it is not
as if India is not
on the world’s media
map these days.
Indeed the 60th
anniversary of
Indian and Pakistani
independence has
generated vast
amounts of coverage
on both sides of the
Atlantic. Everyone
from
Time,
to the BBC, to the
Financial Times
(and of course, the
most recent issue of
NR’s
“The Week”) has
commented on the
festivities, as well
as the triumphs and
trials of this
nascent democracy.
And yet, within the
fortnight of such
coverage, this case
of paradigmatic
anti-democratic
hostility is
relegated to
mid-paper
triviality.
Certainly, the
bombing was not one
of those quotidian
subcontinental
disasters— train
crashes or ferry
sinkings — in which
unfathomable numbers
of South Asians die.
Rather, it was a
terrorist bombing of
the cruelest kind,
one akin to the
slaughter of holiday
makers in Bali, one
aimed purely at
innocent civilians.
The elected setting
was a wealthy,
peaceful,
economically
important metropolis
(not confusing,
hard-to-get-to
Kashmir, or one of
those remote Indian
provinces convulsed
by Maoist
insurrection or
ethnic insurgency.)
Furthermore it was a
terrorist incident
with genuine
international
implications. Indeed
it could have a
poisonous effect on
already tense
relations between
two hostile, nuclear
armed-states: Indian
officials have
blamed Pakistani
intelligence for the
attack. So it’s not
an unimportant or a
boring story, or one
without wider
implications. And
these days there are
plenty of readers
and viewers in
America and Britain
who come from that
part of the world
and who care about
incidents like this.
Why then has it been
relegated to the
inside pages along
with the death of
former French
premier Raymond
Barre, and the
stalling of war
crimes trials in
Liberia? One
plausible
explanation for the
minimal coverage is
that the Western
media’s pace-setters
somehow regard
murdered Indians as
of lesser value than
dead people of more
favored ethnicity.
Not just less
important than
Americans,
Europeans, and
Japanese, but less
important than
Palestinians,
Iraqis, Israelis and
so forth. If 42
people were killed
in the West Bank you
can be dead sure it
would be front-page
news.
But I suspect that
the true answer
follows a different
line: it is simply
that the men and
women at the front
of the media herd
have invested their
resources in certain
places, for reasons
that are a mixture
of politics and
practicality.
Everywhere else
falls into the
category of
backwater.
Hyderabad is
backwater simply
because it is far
away. Editors don’t
have hundreds of
reporters on the
spot waiting and
hoping for action.
More importantly,
they don’t have any
pre-packaged
opinions of causes
or solutions to
whatever problem
prompted the
bombing. They don’t
vacation in
Hyderabad, and they
don’t understand
that South Asia is
strategically at
least as important
as Israel/Palestine.
It’s too bad for the
people who were
blown up there and
for the relatives
who mourn them, and
it’s too bad for the
cause of good
journalism.
— Jonathan Foreman,
a former film critic
for the
New York Post,
was an embedded
reporter with U.S.
troops in Iraq in
2003 and 2005.