[OP] Gaza vs. Congo: A Tale of Media Double Standards

[The Grim Squeaker]

Gaza vs. Congo: A Tale of Media Double Standards

While the conflict between Israel and Hamas unfolded in Gaza over the past few weeks, many innocent Gazan civilians stuck in the middle have no doubt suffered much. Meanwhile, another group of civilians further south has been going through a nightmare of no lesser proportion. You may be forgiven if you haven’t heard about the dire situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where over 1,000 civilians have been killed by a Ugandan rebel group since Christmas (Source: [1] ResolveUganda). After all, the papers were so filled with coverage of the situation in Gaza, they had left little space to report this story; the late-night news devoted half its time to scenes of death and destruction in Gaza, running out of time before they had the chance to update you on the massacres in the DRC.

There are longstanding complaints about mainstream media bias in its reporting on Israel and websites such as [2] honestreporting.com and [3] bbcwatch.com seek to highlight this ongoing phenomenon. The contrast in reporting between the coverage of Israel’s war on Hamas and the massacres of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) presents an interesting case study in media bias, and a disturbing one at that.

There are a remarkable number of similarities between the two conflicts:

* Hamas is a radical Islamic militia headed by an imam with the aim of creating a state under Sharia law. The LRA is a Christian militia headed by a “spokesman of God” with the aim of establishing a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments (Source: [4] GlobalSecurity).

* Hamas and the LRA have both refused to sign peace agreements with their enemy, a U.S. ally. Both are designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. Department of State.

* Following the end of a negotiated truce period and responding to ongoing Hamas rockets, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on December 27, 2008. The ongoing conflict has lead to the deaths of 1,000 people to date, a third of whom are civilians. Meanwhile, two days earlier on Christmas Day, following the end of a UN peacekeeping mandate, the LRA attacked civilians with machetes, sparking the current conflict. To date, there are reports of 1,000 dead, all of whom are civilian.

* The most newsworthy anecdote of the Gaza conflict has been the reported deaths of 40 civilians, including women and children, by an errant Israeli shell as they gathered to seek shelter at a safe haven, a UN school. Meanwhile, in the village of Doruma, more than 100 people, including women and children, were hacked to death by the LRA as they sought refuge in a safe haven, a Catholic church. Body parts were scattered all around the church and village (Source: [5] The Monitor; [6] ABC News).

Given the similarities, one would expect to get an equal level of media coverage on the two conflicts. I must admit that until yesterday, I knew nothing about the situation in the DRC and I think it would be a safe bet that most of you have not heard about this conflict until today. Here’s why.

A Google News search I ran on a mix of keywords relating to the two conflicts, the respective terrorist organizations involved, and the newsworthy anecdotes of the conflicts showed that reporting has been evidently skewed. When adjusted to factor in the newsworthiness of the story, as measured by the number of civilian deaths involved in the incident, the bias is beyond just proportion.

Coverage


Ratio


Adjusted

Hamas: LRA


67:1


202:1

Gaza crisis: Uganda crisis


136:1


409:1

UN School bombing: Church Massacre


242:1


807:1

Without getting into a debate about the morality of the operation in Gaza (see my other article on that subject), surely you would have to agree that a story about a civilian killed by an errant shell (aimed at rocket launchers 30 meters away) is not 807 times more newsworthy that a civilian hacked to death in a church on Christmas Day. While admittedly a higher standard of responsibility is rightly applied to a democratic state than an African terrorist group, surely the responsibility for the safeguarding of civilian life in enemy territory is somewhat mitigated by its right to defend the citizens of its own territory.

Confronted with two crises of a similar scale evolving over the same timeframe, the media chose to devote its full attention to one while blankly ignoring the other. Looking at these statistics, the mainstream media has little right to preach the doctrine of proportionality.

So, what makes a reporter decide to write yet another article about the crisis in Gaza rather than break the news from the DRC? The only plausible explanation for this disproportionate coverage is racism. It seems that while no one wants to read about another thousand dead Africans, everyone wants to read about those “warmongering Jews.” And so a pogrom of media reporting begins.

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

Posted without comment.

[Guardsman Bass]

This is nothing new. Tom Friedman wrote about this type of thing in the book From Beirut to Jerusalem back in the 1980s, about how Israel drew disproportionate news coverage.

Part of it here in the US is probably because Israel is familiar, and the political ties to Israel are known and prominent in discussions of international politics. Whereas the Congo is much less well-known, with less connection to the US, and, unfortunately, it is easy to dismiss it as "just another African shithole."

It's a pity, really, how this type of thing can be marginalized. Like the war in the Congo from the late 1990s until 2003 (although it has been on and off since then) that cost 5 million lives.

[Morilore]

Posted without comment.

sigh

So, what makes a reporter decide to write yet another article about the crisis in Gaza rather than break the news from the DRC? The only plausible explanation for this disproportionate coverage is racism. It seems that while no one wants to read about another thousand dead Africans, everyone wants to read about those “warmongering Jews.” And so a pogrom of media reporting begins.

Horse shit. Western countries have invested millions of dollars of military aid in Israel. That's a plenty good reason to pay more attention to what goes on there than to what goes on in Africa.

I'm not saying it's not a pity that we don't pay attention to atrocities elsewhere, mind. But the "Critics of Israel are anti-Semite!" slant in this article is obvious, old, and stupid.

[Bounty]

Posted without comment.

Okay then, permit me:

"To hold Israel, which prides itself on being a modern and enlightened nation, to a higher standard of conduct than a fundamentalist terror group is racist. For the press to cover a concentrated military campaign in one of the most volatile and historically, not to mention religiously, significant regions of Earth, an ongoing conflict which has caused untold suffering on both sides, can only be explained as persecution of the Jewish faith"

Is that the comment you were hoping for? I'm sorry if I got it wrong, but the article is such a shit piece of hack whining it's hard to draw any sort of sensible conclusion from it.

[thejester]

And as the intrepid plumber demonstrated, it's a lot easier getting to Israel/Gaza than the mountain wilderness of the Congo.

[Illuminatus Primus]

[snip]

Yeah, there really isn't equal attention here. Its really unfair. Not only should we redirect our media, but also the foreign aid budget so disproportionately awarded to Israel. I'm sure it would love to share.

[Darth Wong]

I don't know if I would call it "racism", at least not on a conscious conspiratorial level, but one would have to engage in willful self-delusion to pretend that there is no (perhaps subconscious) element of "Oh well, that's Africa, what do you expect from those savages" in the way we cover (or fail to cover) atrocities there.

And of course, there's the religious aspect in Israel coverage. Americans are still almost all Christian, so they believe that this little bit of sandy blood-soaked land in the Middle East is "holy", and everything happening there is automatically important. Even if you could rewind the news by two decades and the headlines all look the same.

[Coyote]

Posted without comment.

Okay then, permit me:

"To hold Israel, which prides itself on being a modern and enlightened nation, to a higher standard of conduct than a fundamentalist terror group is racist. For the press to cover a concentrated military campaign in one of the most volatile and historically, not to mention religiously, significant regions of Earth, an ongoing conflict which has caused untold suffering on both sides, can only be explained as persecution of the Jewish faith"

But the media coverage in Gaza isn't about "rightness and wrongness", it's about the civilian casualties being a tragedy-- or so they say. They ignore the civilian casualties in Congo, which are killed in far more brutal means (I'd rather play football with an artillery shell then get hacked to death by machetes, but that's me), but the media ignores them.

It is racism, I think, but more along the lines that Darth Wong pointed out: it's not "picking on Jews", it's "what do you expect from them savages?"

[Sea Skimmer]

Several factors at work. The biggest one being, Gaza has video cameras and is safe enough for the media to report from, most of the time. At worst they usually get held hostage for a few days; then they can write a book about it. In the Congo they might get eaten 500 miles from the nearest useable airport. This makes it expensive and difficult for the media to put people on the ground in Congo. Without that and the video it brings they don’t have a story they can get ratings with. The modern TV media is a business, not a portal for information; they want viewers to make money, end of story. Indeed, most of the world media has even pulled out of Iraq now, too expensive, not enough return on the investment now that they can’t film five suicide car bombs per day from a hotel balcony in Bagdad.

Meanwhile as hopeless as the situation in Gaza seems to be, one can at least formulate plans which would lead to a peaceful resolution, even if implementing the plans is absurdly unrealistic. In the Congo, having the equivalent of Hamas in the first place would be an enormous step forward in progress. Even most of the foreign armies fighting in that hell hole are mostly less well organized. It’s just not a place that is going to stop fighting, its like Afghanistan, its place that was never really colonized nor had any central government (Belgium = worst colonial rulers ever) and simply operates under rules that fell out of style several centuries ago in the rest of the world. The groups fighting don’t have much in the way of media skills either, Hamas has no shortage of people to throw in front of camaras and has been caught making fake videos time and again, while Israel anit too honest either. In the Congo, people still use magic amulets to ward of bullets, no joke.

So all that combined with its inherent trait of it being in Africa means people just don’t care. Yeah sure religion and racism may be factors, but they are secondary. The real reality is just that the media doesn’t see money to be made reading text only stories about a never ending conflict that can’t even blow up buildings, because all people have are mud huts.

[Darth Wong]

That's a really good point; the Gaza Strip is quite "media friendly", whereas the Congo is not.

[Edward Yee]

Not least because both the IDF and Hamas clearly get the concept of information operations. The IDF Spokesman's Unit YouTube channel and blog, for starters.

[weemadando]

I think anyone who denies that racism (however casual) plays a part is deluding themselves. The combination of people's apathy towards Africa and the consequent media apathy towards covering a story that very few will care about means that people just don't give a shit/don't know shit about what happens there, unless of course it's somehow going to affect their petrol prices.

[Bilbo]

I think anyone who denies that racism (however casual) plays a part is deluding themselves. The combination of people's apathy towards Africa and the consequent media apathy towards covering a story that very few will care about means that people just don't give a shit/don't know shit about what happens there, unless of course it's somehow going to affect their petrol prices.

The last part of what you wrote hits is on the head the best. What goes on in Gaza and the Middle East in general can have an economic effect on the rest of the world. In addition while small there is always the chance that one of these Mideast flairups could turn into a war if one of the neighboring Arab states decides to step in on the side of Hamas.

On the other hand is there really any way that what is happening in Congo can affect you or me? It is not going to raise the price of gas, nor is it likely to explode into a world impacting war.

Human suffering alone is not enough reason in the minds of the media (or most people in general unfortunately) to do anything about it much less report it fully and consistently.

[Edward Yee]

Amendment to my suggestion (re: info ops and the Gaza being media friendly). I am not suggesting that somehow no one in Africa gets these either, and I don't know their capability or lack thereof. I do admit though that I tend to be quite apathetic about Africa insofar as reporting there tends to give a sense of "same old, same old." The only part of Africa I follow these days is the Horn of Africa/Gulf of Aden, due to the whole piracy thing.

[Rye]

Frankly, when Africa is not at war and committing the worst crimes imaginable it will probably make the news. As it is, it may indeed be racist, but Skimmer is exactly right when he says that Africa is a shitload more difficult to report from than the Middle East and the "human interest" aspect is so established and repetitive it's lost all impact, morally and viscerally (certainly compared to those huge fuckoff bombs the israelis use). If by some chance an LRA attack was filmed, it sure as shit wouldn't be shown; western news wouldn't air mass dismemberment and rape in the name of the Ten Commandments.

Add to this the media trends of "big stories" where the memes are very little to do with what's fair, only what's big; what's popular.

[Pablo Sanchez]

(I'd rather play football with an artillery shell then get hacked to death by machetes, but that's me)

When American tax dollars paid for that artillery shell, and America's vote in the UNSC (ostensibly on my behalf) further enables Israel to shoot it, well, that tends to ratchet up my interest. Maybe I'm weird.

Frankly, anybody who fell for this hand-wringing bait-and-switch ought to see a doctor for a more complete diagnosis. A search of pajamasmedia itself shows that its only coverage of the Congo issue was performed by one poster (a Bridget Johnson) in a desultory fashion so as to attack the UN and the ever-hated liberal celebrities. Here's a search for the term "Gaza". Brilliant work, PJmedia! So if the MSM is wrong for focusing on 1200 Gazans while a similar number of Congolese have died, is PJmedia even more wrong, because they've been focusing on 13 dead Israelis while 2200 brown people have died? Logic would seem to indicate this.

Answer me honestly, DEATH... did you give a fuck about this disparity yesterday, before you saw this on Pajamasmedia? Do you really give a fuck about it, even now? I actually find it less reprehensible to simply ignore the massacre in the Congo, than to bring it up solely for use as a smokescreen for Israel. Am I wrong to feel this way?

This is truly a great find. Maybe for your next try you can post something from Townhall.com!