This is the article section of Lang Lit written task under the topic Language and Power. I decided to take on the persona of a The New York Times Op-ed contributing writer and share my opinions on the whole fiasco.
Media Coverage on Beirut: A Massacre of Empathy
by Claudia Lui
November 16, 2015
Friday 13, 2015: The night of the Paris attacks. Anybody who owns a social media account can tell you that, because they received notifications from their Facebook friends through the newly activated safety check. Because “#PrayforParis” circulated Twitter-wide. Because Instagram was bombarded with photos of the Eiffel Tower and “#PrayforParis” was used over 70 million times in Instagram alone. The internet was united in sorrow for the victims of the terror attacks in Paris, and rightfully so… But this grief was nowhere to be found just the day before, when the city of Beirut was under a brutal terrorist attack.
Both the attacks on France and Lebanon were the aftermaths of the same malevolence. Both attacks were the most severe that France and Lebanon had witnessed in decades. And yet, the attacks were handled as complete opposites by the media: Paris as an earth-shattering attack on humanity, and Beirut as an everyday tragedy.
Take this headline from a The New York Times article covering the Paris attacks: “The night was chilly but thick with excitement as the big match between France’s national soccer team and arch-rival Germany was underway at the national stadium in a northern suburb of Paris. President François Hollande watched with the crowd as the French players pushed the ball across midfield.
Then came the sharp, unmistakable crack of an explosion, overwhelming the roar of the crowd. A stunned moment passed. Players and spectators seemed confused, and eventually the awful realization swept through the stadium: Terror, for the second time this year, had struck Paris.”
The article goes beyond mere reporting. The writers are telling a story, portraying the dreadful event as a romanticized tragedy. They humanize the victims, add a well-known French face to the list. It’s obvious: the writers feel sorry for Paris. They feel grief, empathy, and genuine sadness.
The Atlantic’s report on Beirut is incomparable to The New York Times Paris attack article, based on the sheer fact that in the amount of emotion expressed in each one cause the articles to be polar opposites. Note the comparative differences in the introduction of the Lebanese report: “Dozens of people are dead and more than 100 wounded after two explosions in the Shiite neighborhood of Burj al-Barajneh.
The Daily Star newspaper and the state-run National News Agency reported that 37 people were killed and 180 wounded. Al-Arabiya put it at 40.
The neighborhood is a stronghold of Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, and Al-Arabiya reported the blasts occurred near a hospital run by the group. The Daily Star said the explosions were set off by suicide bombers.”
The report encompasses the facts, figures and somewhat adequate context of the situation… In terms of an emotional response, there are absolutely no distinct feelings of sympathy for the victims of Lebanon who suffered the same horrific event.
Not forgetting to mention the dry, apathetic title of the article: “Twin Explosions in Beirut”, there are many others coming from well-trusted news sources such as The Wall Street Journal: “Suicide Bombings Kill Dozens in Beirut Suburb” with the same gist. In contrast, dozens of reports about the Paris attacks have their own poignant titles, naming the tragedy a “massacre” (CNN and The New York Times).
In light of the recent terror attacks in both Paris and Beirut, Lebanese blogger, Dr. Elie Fares, questioned the emotional indifference indicated by the language of the news coverage that followed the terrorist attacks in the city of Beirut just last Thursday. The article, titled “From Beirut, This Is Paris: In A World That Doesn’t Care About Arab Lives”, highlights the effects of this lack of emotional response from the media have on the international community. Fares sheds light on the silence regarding the attacks due to the global perception of attacks occurring in the Middle East to be “normal.” He expresses that as an Arab, he had already “come to terms with being one of those whose lives (didn’t) matter”.
The tragedies that have unleashed themselves over the past few days bring to light the trivialization of non-western catastrophes. It’s not the first time an African or Asian atrocity has been comparatively belittled in the media. There have been hundreds of victims of Turkish terror attacks over the last few months, a mass shooting in a Kenyan university with the death toll of 147, just this past April. What drives us to sympathize with a French innocent but not a Lebanese or Turkish or Kenyan innocent? The victims of each ISIS attack felt the same fear, and yet Western fear was deemed more important by the media. Perhaps we can blame our lack of sympathy for our non-western counterparts on the news sources we read, the newspapers that show up at our workplace every morning. But as the consumers of what the media, we stand at the root of the problem. Ultimately, we are the driving force behind media, and we have the ability to manipulate it; to either make it a force to unite people or divide them. Altogether, we can change what the media feeds us, how it chooses to use its powers, the language that sculpts what we read.
Claudia's TOK Blog 