The bombing of a Coptic church recently in Cairo produced a lethargic response from CNN and other major news conglomerates and largely failed to produce any sort of outraged response on American social media.
This isn’t unusual for a terror attack on a non-Western nation. Though terror attacks claimed by IS offshoots occur with significantly more frequency and generally prove more fatal outside Europe and the Americans, they rarely achieve Western outrage. Why? Where are the coveted “solidarity filters” on Facebook for Cairo or Istanbul or Maiduguri? The twitter hashtags? Should we blame media agenda setting or our own lack of empathy for peoples removed from our narrow window of unity?
The fact is that media attention is significantly biased towards terror attacks on Western nations such as the attacks on Orlando, Paris and Brussels. The War on Terror is fed on Western outrage and relies on our continued fury and fear to self-perpetuate. Furthermore, Western media provides fodder needed for these groups to radicalize previously moderate Muslim youth as we saw with the perpetrator of the attack at OSU. It’s time for us to examine our part in the process.
Susannah Goodale
Leverett