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>> Meanwhile, I don't think she has any obligation to investigate terrorism in other religious communities at all. The editor might have an obligation similar t
by taway21 6y ago
>> Meanwhile, I don't think she has any obligation to investigate terrorism in other religious communities at all. The editor might have an obligation similar to do that, depending on newsworthiness. But I don't see how it applies here anyway. Once ISIS/L established territory in Syria they became the most newsworthy topic of the decade.
This is pretty circular logic. Her topics are newsworthy because she is covering them, and adjacent un-covered topics happen to become not-newsworthy because she is ignoring them. The NYT editorial staff is def at fault, but she is she, as their designated "Terrorism Reporter [who only covers a certain type of terrorism]" She literally gets to define terrorism by example and undefine it by what she ignores to cover.
As an example, most people in the US I've spoken to dont consider the 2011 Norway attacks "terrorism" because they have not been covered as such. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks) The coverage makes the news and everything else disappears into history when the supposed paper of record conveniently ignores part of the narrative.
As an another example, consider the Russian-Chechnyan conflict.
If the newspaper decides to cover only Russian atrocities, that becomes the news and that is how popular opinion forms and that is what drives US foreign policy.
If instead the newspaper decides to cover only Chechnyan atrocities, that becomes the news and that is how popular opinion forms and that is what drives US foreign policy.
- dalbasal 6y ago>>This is pretty circular logic. Her topics are newsworthy because she is covering them, and adjacent un-covered topics happen to become not-newsworthy because she is ignoring them. Who's logic is circular here? ..or do you mean that reality follows a circular logic? I totally agree that some news is "media generated" and newsworthiness becomes circular. Celebrity news, a lot of political news, some hard news cause celebre. Plenty of room for gray area and disagreement about which news issue qualifies as "media generated." OTOH, reality still exists. Not everything is media generated. The moon landing was objectively newsworthy at the highest level. A national election is objectively newsworthy. So is the rise of ISIS, the successful recruitment of so many volunteers from so many places. Practices within their territory. The scale, impact, etc of the "caliphate" story make it totally newsworthy. More than any other terrorism/radicalism/insurgency/cult story of the decade by a long mile. That's the topic of Caliphate. "Abu Huzafya" is not the story. He is a (false) character in the story. A detail. He wouldn't have been newsworthy in his own right even if he had been real. ISIS was the story. There was a "media generated" local, side narrative about "why is this guy free?" Canadian police couldn't clear it up straight away, because the investigation was still going. Unfortunate, technically "media generated.... but ultimately irrelevant to any big picture.