The siege of the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi was awful. With Muslim terrorists having killed around 70 people (at the most recent count.) The story was given a lot of coverage here in the UK. And even today The Daily Telegraph and The Times are both running stories about the event.
Two awful events. And yet the media in this country treated them very differently. The event in Kenya was front page news and the top story on TV news. The Pakistan bombing was barely mentioned – apart from in the innermost pages of newspapers.
Why the difference?
Three possibilities as I see it
Firstly, the Kenya atrocity involved British victims. So therefore our media was interested. The Pakistan bombing had no Britons so no interest.
The 1980s satire series “Not the nine o’clock news” noted this tendency for our media to ignore foreign disasters if no Britons were involved with a spoof news report “Today an earthquake happened in Africa. No Britons died.”
Secondly, I can’t help but feel that 80 dead Christians just isn’t considered newsworthy – even if killed by Muslim terrorists (a favourite topic of the media normally.)Christians and Christianity aren't "cool." The only time the news media is interested in Christianity is when some Christian extremist spouts off about homosexuality.
Thirdly, there is the Neville Chamberlain attitude that it is a “ … quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing”
I would like to be able to ask a newspaper editor or TV news producer why the difference in coverage between the two stories.
In The Daily Telegraph today there is a half-page analysis of the aftereffects of the Pakistan bombing – on page 15. The Times has a report of around 300 words on page 49.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/10340175/Pakistans-Christians-fear-for-their-lives.html
Well maybe the news people feel they can ignore Pakistan but 16 miles away from Swindon a family living in the small town of Pewsey know all about it. The Saraj family attend Pewsey Methodist Church. All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan was their home church. Among those killed and injured were cousins as well as friends.
Even if the news media ignore what is happening to our Christian brothers and sisters in Peshawar the people in the Swindon & Marlborough Methodist Circuit won’t forget. The Christians of Pakistan are in our prayers.
Picture credits: Nairobi = Daily Telegraph web site Pakistan = The Guardian web site
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