sophistry | (no subject)

I wish I could say I was surprised at the current outrage that's taking my flist by storm - the neglect of American media to report the beating, murder, and concealment of the body of Aaron Hall; the intent of his murderers to claim 'gay panic defense' in court.

But I'm not. Here, have some news links about what goes on under the noses of US citizens every day, and what the Americans on my flist never quite seem to have seen reported in their local dailies when I bring it up. Only the first two I've found, because I appear to have poisoned myself with bacon at lunch, and should probably be horizontal.

At least 78 people have been killed and another 218 injured in a truck bomb attack near a Shia mosque in the centre of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The bombing came as US forces began a major offensive against militants linked to al-Qaeda north of Baghdad. Around 10,000 troops are taking part in Operation Arrowhead Ripper in and around the city of Baquba in Diyala province, a centre of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

24 boys have been found starved and neglected at a government-run orphanage for special needs children in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Discovered last week by a US military advisory team that was out on patrol with Iraqi soldiers, the emaciated boys, some near death, were left naked and covered in their own excrement on concrete floors for more than a month in a staffed orphanage. The US soldiers found fully stacked kitchen shelves and new clothes in nearby rooms.

Surprised?

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Not so much on the first one, because I read about it in the paper this morning. The second one though, that...that's new.

Sometimes I wonder how effective a sick nurse is while working on an ICU ward.

Wow that totally reads as if I was the one working on an ICU Ward, which it's not supposed to. I'll just be over here learnin' some English.

Insert applause for Boston newspapers! I wonder whether the inclusion of things like the first link in newspapers is dependent on where you are - blue state versus red state, maybe? Or maybe it's just dependent on what other news there is that day. I remember talking to Josie about a much, much worse bombing - bugger me if I can remember when, but I think it was one of a barrage of marketplace bombings that all killed well upwards of 100 each - and she'd had absolutely no idea, because not one of them had made it into the news.

It's possible, though I'm pretty sure it had more to do with the fact that it was the Boston branch of an International news corporation.

See, I'm torn here. Because on the one hand I don't know that a country that can't equally protect its own citizens should be out attempting to bring "democracy" to the world.

But on the other sits that story about the orphanage.

Bah!

Having lived in Boston for a few years, I can say that the Boston news sources are pretty consistently better than most in the U.S. I still include the Globe's website in my morning and evening news sweeps.

I did hear about the first this morning, on the radio while driving to work. Not the second, though.

That's pretty heartening to hear, actually, compared to the last time I shocked some Americans with similar news (see above). Maybe now that the elections are rolling ever closer, the news is starting to rediscover all things Iraq. Which, sigh platform pieces, but at least people might start to hear about these things, again. Which they really, really should, being that this is, you know, a country the US military has charged themselves with safeguarding, and all.

Yes and no: shocked that these things happen in the world, but not shocked because I had already read both these stories today (and had therefore already experienced the initial wave of disgust, which is what I should probably say instead of "shock"). Much of the reason the Hall story is spreading is that it's not being covered at all. These things, on the other hand, have gotten press - international press, no less. All three are hate-based atrocities; all three deserve to be broadcast. It's simply a shame that one of them, for various sordid reasons, has been suppressed.

That's part of my point, though - that things like the above links are more likely to be reported by international news organisations than the mainstream media of the nation whose soldiers are actually out there. A lot of American mainstream media (with all due respect for bastions of the good fight like Boston &c.) is not a first-time offender as regards just flat-out not reporting things.

A lot of American mainstream media (with all due respect for bastions of the good fight like Boston &c.) is not a first-time offender as regards just flat-out not reporting things.

Oh, of course it isn't - which makes the case for passing along all three of these stories very much the same indeed. As a general rule, northeast-coast newspapers and west-coast newspapers are far more likely to carry the stories showing up on international news sources than those papers in the vast midsection(s) of the country. However, you do get the odd major city in there (Chicago, for example, and some of the other major Great Lakes urban centers) that will have some papers astute (or as the case may be, concerned) enough to carry them.

(To be honest, the Americans on your flist, speaking as one of them, are especially up in arms about this story because most of us are of the variety who feel it reflects particularly badly on our country, given the circumstances of the case. There are a lot of arrows pointing to the fact that this man wasn't actually gay might be the reason it's not getting covered - and therefore sends the subliminal message that means this wasn't actually a hate crime. It's probably not as simple as that, but when there are large stretches of your country that will agree with this kind of implied rationale, it's terrifying to think that the silence will only help perpetuate it. It begs the question: how can we go about getting those parts of the country to care about international atrocities if we can't even get them to care about what happens in our own collective backyard!)

* ! should be ? I need tea.

Yes, actually, but more by this post than by the links you're sharing, as I'd seen both of them when I checked BBC.

I'm surprised to find someone whose intelligence I regard very highly making such sweepingly general assumptions about the "Americans on your flist" and what supposedly goes on under our noses. Yeah, our mainstream media ignores a lot of stories, negative ones about the war in Iraq being a huge number of them. However, many of us are very aware of that and do what we can to read alternative news sources, such as BBC, or to spread stories that shouldn't be ignored when we come across them, like people have been doing with the Aaron Hall story.

I just don't think it's necessary to make that kind of assumption about your flist in order to share things that may or may not have been overlooked.

I was about to comment with basically the same thing.

I think this post was meant to be a commentary on the vast majority of mainstream American media, which certainly deserves to be commented on, but it comes out as being a commentary on the Americans on your FList instead.

what the Americans on my flist never quite seem to have seen reported in their local dailies

As Mir said, I'm actually out to point out the American media's widespread tendency to just... not report things, as opposed to trying to prove that Americans don't read the news - which is the last thing I want to imply.

(You are interrogating my text from the wrong perspective!)

Sorry.