What stories do the media ignore?

[davidbfpo]

I am sure in the 'free' world there are agendas and priorities, hat tip to the linked Australian Lowy Institute item below; which acted as a catalyst for my question.


An extreme case was in 2007 when Cyclone Gonu struck Oman. It was a category 5 super-cyclonic storm, in a desert country where such things are unknown. 600mm of rain fell in a day in Muscat, the capital, and there was 5-metre sea surge. Officially, 50 people were killed, but the real number may have been much larger. Gonu was the biggest natural disaster in Oman's history. There is a nice YouTube description of the event by a British teenager:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlWIakaVLis . There are plenty of other graphic Youtube entries, like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWp8Vx-YZOs. Wikipedia has a good account.

What did our media report? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It just didn't happen. I heard by e-mail (I have some connections there) and saw a story on the BBC, but our media chose not to report Gonu at all. Contrast this with the blanket coverage here of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, which was a category 3.

Link:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/05/28/Reader-riposte-The-US-tilt-in-our-media.aspx

I am just curious what SWC members have spotted.

[Steve Blair]

Riots in Stockholm spring to mind as a recent example, as least for the US media.

[Wyatt]

They were only partially described as being "teens", not muslim immigrants. Irritable teenagers is so much easier to dismiss...

[Bill Moore]

I am sure in the 'free' world there are agendas and priorities, hat tip to the linked Australian Lowy Institute item below; which acted as a catalyst for my question.



Link:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/05/28/Reader-riposte-The-US-tilt-in-our-media.aspx

I am just curious what SWC members have spotted.

This is why I find reading over foreign news sites so helpful in gaining a broader awareness and often different perspectives on issues. Al-Jazeera for example covers interesting events in developing nations globally that other major news outlets don't cover. BBC covers a lot that CNN and other major U.S. news channels don't cover and I assume the opposite is true. I don't necessarily trust any of the sites and their reporting, but at least you're aware there is an event happening that you wouldn't be aware of otherwise. In the case of the cyclone in Oman, I wonder if the government prohibited or limited reporting on the storm for political reasons? The reason I ask is after doing a Google search for news articles I didn't find much period, not just in Western news, but globally.

We get a lot news coverage on the violence in Mexico tied to the Cartels, but most Americans are unaware that the several countries in Central America are facing greater levels of violence.

[slapout9]

Bill Moore,
I imagine there are a lot of them and some are really important. My suggestion is to follow "local" newspapers and publications. The problem is(at least it has been my problem) you have to know the names of the local pubs before you can look up local stories on the internet, but once you know the names of the pubs you can read in depth stories or just scan local headlines.

As an example, not to long ago the impact of budget cuts on how Law Enforcement was going to deal with the mentally ill in my area was becoming so severe that they had to call a statewide conference to find other ways and funding resources to deal with it. It has become a big problem but you would have never see it as a national issue even though it is one.

This Dosen't fit into the Big Lib Agenda, so stuff gets spiked by editors at the Big level IMO. Don't know how widespread this is but I have seen it done before at the National level to. Used to have some pretty good contacts in what was called the Print Media in the old days. But they have mostly retired or have gone 10-7. Seems everybody has gone Blogging now days. I am going to have to start one:eek:

Don't know it this will help any but I have grown to "trust local ,not global" (just invented that)!

[carl]

A further example perhaps is the ongoing murders of white farmers in South Africa, or crime in South Africa altogether.

[Steve Blair]

I like watching the international news lag on some US outlets. I tend to check BBC every day while my wife relies more on network news. Typically the major networks are about 3-8 days behind on international stories that don't have a high body count or some other "high interest" angle. That lag is often reversed when it comes to BBC covering things in the US. And the German coverage is quite different on its own.

[davidbfpo]

Slap,

You posted earlier (in part):
My suggestion is to follow "local" newspapers and publications. The problem is(at least it has been my problem) you have to know the names of the local pubs before you can look up local stories on the internet

There is a v.good website that shows what papers are where globally, with details on websites, language spoken etc. I thought I had posted a while back, after a RN speaker referred to it an academic/practitioner conference.

(Added). Found it! Not added to SWC, tut-tut:http://newspapermap.com/

[slapout9]

Slap,

You posted earlier (in part):

There is a v.good website that shows what papers are where globally, with details on websites, language spoken etc. I thought I had posted a while back, after a RN speaker referred to it an academic/practitioner conference.

(Added). Found it! Not added to SWC, tut-tut:http://newspapermap.com/

Great find!!! and that is exactly what I am talking about.

[Fuchs]

Germany is experiencing the second "flood of the century" within a few years.
I didn't see this much (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/06/05/europe-flooding-germany.html) in mainstream U.S. media so far.

[davidbfpo]

A lengthy article on a conservative website, which I've not seen before, but apparently is causing ripples. Hat tip to the Lowy Institute's newsletter (again).

Link:http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-american-pravda/

It cites many examples, this is from the national security realm so is cited (including corrections, DHS not DNI) and the final sentences are pithy - so my highlight:
Or take the strange case of Bernard Kerik, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s police commissioner during 9/11, later nominated by President Bush to be America’s first director of DHS. His appointment seemed likely to sail through the Republican-controlled Senate until derailed by accusations he had employed an undocumented nanny. With his political rise having been blocked, the national media suddenly revealed his long history of association with organized-crime figures, an indictment quickly followed, and he is currently still serving his federal prison sentence for conspiracy and fraud. So America came within a hairbreadth of placing the DHS under the authority of a high-school dropout connected with organized crime, and today almost no Americans seem aware of that fact.

[slapout9]

David,
I will have to find the book and the history show I just saw recently. The greatest Intelligence Operation ever conducted in the USA was done by British Intelligence:eek: during WW2 in order to convince America to enter the War and it was done with FDR's consent and against FBI director Hoover's vehement objections. And it still has ramifications to this very day. The operation was massive and the total extent of operation was never truly known. It has been in the papers fairly recently and there was a lot of UK help in the production of the TV show so you may have seen what I am talking about.

[slapout9]

Here is a link to the book called The Secret History of British Intelligence In the Americas 1940-1945...........truly fascinating


http://www.amazon.com/British-Security-Coordination-Intelligence-1940-1945/dp/088064236X

[davidbfpo]

Slap,

I read the book 'A Man called Intrepid' many, many years ago. It was a good yarn, but I thought it overplayed the role of the mission's head, the book's author. IIRC there remains an element of doubt over his claims.

[slapout9]

Slap,

I read the book 'A Man called Intrepid' many, many years ago. It was a good yarn, but I thought it overplayed the role of the mission's head, the book's author. IIRC there remains an element of doubt over his claims.

David, must be something to it as the book I listed is not just some type of personal "Tell All Story" but a declassified British Government Report on the Operation.

[J Wolfsberger]

Germany is experiencing the second "flood of the century" within a few years.
I didn't see this much (http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/06/05/europe-flooding-germany.html) in mainstream U.S. media so far.

I saw one article on the Fox News website - nothing on TV (Fox or CNN).

Also, if your news source is U.S. television news, everything in Turkey and Sweden is happy sappy, hunky dorry, multi-culti bliss.

[Dayuhan]

Americans have a most peculiar relationship with their media. Among politically active Americans, particularly those leaning left or right, it's often taken for granted that the media serve some agenda opposite from their own, which explains why their pet stories aren't covered. Conservatives speak of "the liberal media", liberals speak of "the corporate media".

What people forget is that media are first and foremost business, and like every other business the bottom line is the bottom line. The point is not to advance an agenda, the point is to make money, and that means pushing the stories that bring in the viewers. That's particularly true of television, where the merciless dictatorship of the ratings decides where the advertising money flows and which executives keep their jobs.

So a quick answer to "what news stories do media ignore" would be "anything that they think will not grab and keep the attention of their outlet's target audience".

[Fuchs]

So a quick answer to "what news stories do media ignore" would be "anything that they think will not grab and keep the attention of their outlet's target audience".

...and more.
"The media" is a large bunch of actual people, and these people have biases.
The powerful amongst these people (the ones who choose the stories) are usually the better-paid ones. The celebrities amongst them are often millionaires.
Millionaires tend to have a millionaire point of view, so the U.S. media's distribution of attention between the topics of poor people's problems and the top marginal income tax rate should not surprise.


The media is "too left" if you sit far right and it's "too right" if you sit far left. It's mostly relative. Nevertheless, some of its biases are well-researched and founded in human nature. And those go well beyond revenue maximization.