ZERO

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade comments on the Virginia Tech massacre in A HIERARCHY OF DEATH.

"Thirty-two die in American university shooting. Result? Huge media coverage in the US and Britain. In Iraq, almost 200 die, arguably the worst day of carnage in that beleaguered country since the coalition invasion. Result? Coverage so restrained as to be, in many cases, totally negligible."

Greenslade tells us why this is so but first puts forward his theory that the media operate according to a hierarchy of death. The closer to home the victims, the more interest there is in a story. Further, deaths in ongoing conflicts receive less coverage than unexpected deaths elsewhere because they are unpredictable in nature and rate more highly in their newsworthiness.

But wait, there's more to this theory.

"The deaths of non-of non-white people in foreign parts - and, I would contend, often at home - are never accorded equal status by the white, western media. The deaths of Arabs and Muslims (and, in many media eyes, there is no difference) are overlooked because they are, variously, anti-western, anti-Christian or anti-capitalist, or all three, and are therefore undeserving of sympathy. By virtue of their religion and their ethnicity they cannot expect the same treatment as the people in the west (who, of course, are also more civilised, better educated and altogether more wholesome). In other words, it's racist."

An interesting theory, and I wonder if it can be adapted to explain some of the contradictions in the media's treatment of the victims of Arab violence? Was racism inherent in the boycott imposed by the British National Union of Journalists against Israel? Was that why the union ignored the threats and violence of Hamas and Hizbullah and condemned only the Israelis in its recent resolutions? Does it also explain why Israel alone was censured and not other nations like Sudan which sponsors murderous Arab militias? I guess that's why we read so little about the abduction of Alan Johnston and even less about the lawlessness in Gaza and the West Bank which has seen Palestinian killing Palestinian on an ongoing basis but with almost zero publicity?

[ADDENDUM: Ed O'Loughlin's reporting on events in the Middle East always seems to set the example. In this morning's Melbourne Age, O'Loughlin covers the weekend's violence which saw the deaths of eight Palestinians, mostly "armed militants" (including a so-called "policeman" killed in a raid on a village near Jenin), in various operations in the West Bank and Gaza. He concludes with a now obligatory (for O'Loughlin) reference to alleged Israeli brutality by reminding readers that this was the "highest one day death toll since January, when four Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops who opened fire in a food market in the centre of the West Bank town of Ramallah." No mention however of the hundreds of Palestinians, many of them civilians, killed by fellow civilians in violence between their own "militant" groups or the deaths of Israelis at the hands of such "militants" during that time.]