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?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.