Imagine the wall to wall coverage the kidnapping of 200 white school girls would generate.

[arely staircase]

It is really stunning of how little concern it is when something horrific befalls a bunch of non-whites.

[malaise]

1. +1,000

It is shocking.

[pipi_k]

2. Actually, you know what?

I was thinking about that same thing earlier this morning.

And I believe you are correct.

[randys1]

3. Dont have to imagine

I cant remember the names now but when a white wife with child is murdered or missing, one woman, we had wall to wall for a year

When a white woman in DC thought to be involved with politicians went missing, wall to wall for a year, one woman

[arely staircase]

6. Indeed. One missing pretty white girl will get the "news" networks in full "breaking news"

we heard a rumor mode.

[theHandpuppet]

8. Case in point: Madeline McCann

I'm still seeing CNN news reports on this case, the latest just a few days ago.

[tblue37]

4. +1. nt

[Lasher]

5. I think you are right.

The lack of coverage is disgusting. If not for the internet I doubt if I would have ever heard of it.

[Louisiana1976]

7. Well said.

[davidn3600]

9. This is true...and...

...race may be a big part of it.

However it seems Americans (and much of the world for that matter) really don't have much care about what goes on in Africa. The genocide, the civil wars, the health issues, poverty, etc... Most Americans dont want to get American skin involved in what goes on there. And no president wants another Mogadishu on their watch either.

Africa is a complex problem. A lot of the issues revolve around political/religious rivalries and territorial disputes. Identifying the good guys and the bad guys isn't always easy because many times one side is just as bad as the other. For all we know, people in the Nigerian government was partially behind the kidnappings.

[justhanginon]

10. This should be so disturbing to anyone of conscience.

The lack of coverage by the media and a lack of outrage by the world at large is unfathomable to me. If you cannot imagine the terror these children are being exposed to you have no soul. How is it that these kids rate no more concern than almost just a passing interest. Unfortunately, it seems that if they were of a different color and on a different continent there would be a lot more action to try and rescue them.

[Ex Lurker]

12. The right doesn't care because, Africa

(Some on the) left don't care because, mustn't criticize Islam.

[alp227]

23. "(Some on the) left don't care because, mustn't criticize Islam."

Sheesh. Is that real or more straw liberalism?

[Ex Lurker]

25. Read enough DU threads, you'll see what I mean NT

[alp227]

28. Link to one, then. nt

[JI7]

36. not sure about this specific issue but there are some who get defensive when there is criticism of

Islam.

an example is the thread where some muslim rapper in some euro nation said he hates jews more than nazis and some got angry at a thread even being made about it. and claimed it was posted to bring hatred to muslims.

so there are some "liberals" who are that way. but i think these people are mostly just doing the "i'm more liberal and superior" thing.

[Bluenorthwest]

60. Nigeria is 50% Christian, and you can serach DU if you want to see the reactions of folks when

the violence inciting Bishops there or in Uganda are criticized, or when it is pointed out that Francis the Pope has not bothers to speak a word against the laws or the horrific words of his Bishops, who serve purely at his pleasure. Uganda is 90% Christian. The corrupt President of Nigeria is Christian. He's the guy who has responsibility to protect his people, but thus far has not done so. He is a monster, with a cross around his neck and boxes filled with blood diamonds and cash.

[Sunlei]

62. The girls religions do not matter! They were kidnapped from their school room!

[onecaliberal]

13. I've not heard even one sentence

On this story in the corporate press. Pathetic and disgusting.

[librechik]

14. not even a fraction of the coverage if one son (or daughter) of a very famous person is kidnapped.

and don't forget, thousands of unwanted girls disappear into sex trafficking every year in this country, and nothing much is ever said about it.

The incident in Nigeria is horrible and concerning, but really kidnapping is common everywhere. Wall to wall coverage would help but we're not going to get it unless we're royals.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

15. yep.

actually, I don't watch news (or tv at all, really), so I didn't even realize it wasn't being covered. I found out about it yesterday because of a petition I saw and posted on FB.

girls disappear every hour of every day for sex trafficking, and it's just background noise, not worth commenting upon....now a mass kidnapping, 200 girls stolen for sex, and the PTB don't care to tell us?...... what's happened to human beings?

[pnwmom]

27. It is being covered. When I googled, I got 59,000 plus stories in English.

But no, there is no wall-to-wall coverage in the US.

[pnwmom]

16. I agree that the event was an outrage, but it is being reported.

How can it be investigated -- in a way that would warrant "wall to wall" coverage -- without staff in that country to cover it? How many US reporters and investigators speak any of the indigenous languages? (English is the official language, but only a small minority speak it as their first language.) And what are the risks posed to anyone there who is trying to cover the story in a war zone?

The fact is that our NY centered networks tend to focus on stories on the east coast of the U.S. in general, because that's the easiest. When Washington state had a mudslide and hundreds were missing, that disaster got little coverage compared to the wall-to-wall coverage of any major hurricane in the northeast corridor. And those people in Washington are still struggling.

I'm not saying that this is a good situation, but in this case I think it's due more to the east coast U.S. orientation and staff rather than to a prejudice against black girls.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/03/world/africa/nigeria-abducted-girls/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/04/kerry-us-will-aid-in-hunt-for-kidnapped-nigerian-schoolgirls/

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/nigerian-leader-order-free-abducted-girls-23581400

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/27223689-418/276-schoolgirls-kidnapped-from-a-nigerian-school-are-still-missing.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigeria

Even though most ethnic groups prefer to communicate in their own languages, English as the official language is widely used for education, business transactions and for official purposes. English as a first language is used only by a small minority of the country's urban elite, and it is not spoken at all in some rural areas. Hausa is the most widely spoken of the three main languages spoken in Nigeria itself (Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba) but unlike the Yorubas and Igbos, the Hausas tend not to travel far outside Nigeria itself.

With the majority of Nigeria's populace in the rural areas, the major languages of communication in the country remain indigenous languages. Some of the largest of these, notably Yoruba and Igbo, have derived standardised languages from a number of different dialects and are widely spoken by those ethnic groups. Nigerian Pidgin English, often known simply as 'Pidgin' or 'Broken' (Broken English), is also a popular lingua franca, though with varying regional influences on dialect and slang. The pidgin English or Nigerian English is widely spoken within the Niger Delta Regions, predominately in Warri, Sapele, Port Harcourt, Agenebode, Ewu, and Benin City.[122]

[Fred Sanders]

18. Nigerians do not speak "Nigerian"' but you have illustrated some of the reason for the response.

[pnwmom]

19. Thank you for the correction. Can you respond to the rest of my post?

As far as I know, we speak English here in Washington but that did not give us wall-to-wall coverage when hundreds went missing here in the mudslide -- not like the East coast disasters have gotten.

[Fred Sanders]

17. But what about poor white Amanda Knox, is she doing Ok after being convicted? America wants to

know her fate more, you see.

[pnwmom]

20. It isn't an either-or situation. Amanda Knox shouldn't have to keep quiet about

her situation because there are other outrages in the world.

[Fred Sanders]

22. 200 outrages are worse, should be more coverage, is the point.

[pnwmom]

26. She's a U.S. citizen and our networks cover locally more than they do world-wide news.

They also cover more on the East coast than the west, as is evidenced by the relatively small amount of network coverage when hundreds went missing here in Washington due to the mudslides.

[JI7]

33. no, they report more on maedeline mccann than missing american colored girls

[alphafemale]

21. Yes. It is a horrible thing.

What precisely, are you suggesting we do about it?

[arely staircase]

32. I am suggesting you simply consider it. nt

[alphafemale]

38. I've considered it many times.

I feel for those parents and my heart breaks for them just like it did for those kids on the ferry.

But when there is absolutely nothing you can do?

Light a candle and pretend that makes a difference?

[arely staircase]

39. I dont know what I can do that really makes a difference

that just makes it sadder, not unworthy of personal contemplation and public acknowledgement.

[AverageJoe90]

24. TBH, it really does depend on the situation.

In all truthfulness, a bunch of girls being kidnapped in Russia or somewhere else in eastern Europe probably wouldn't merit much coverage either; it's because this is happening in a poor country with a particularly shitty reputation(Nigeria), that this hasn't gotten the level of coverage many of us (myself included!) would prefer. But if 200 girls, black, white, or Latino, etc. disappeared all at once, all of a sudden, right here in the U.S. or in some other "Western" country, now that definitely would raise a lot more immediate concern. Because things like that aren't supposed to happen here(well, nowhere, really, but I hope you understand my point).

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

31. I should have read the comments before posting.

Yours, just above where mine went, was pretty much exactly what I was thinking too.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

29. I dunno. you really think there'd be more coverage if, say,

it was 200 albanians, bosnians, kosovars, or chechnyans?

Sure, if it were 200 americans, we'd see 24/7/eternity coverage. Probably even if it were brits or canadians. But our 'world coverage' is almost always limited to either simply 'first world' countries or major political events. We briefly cover typhoons that leave thousands or tens of thousands dead, and quickly move on.

I'm sure some of it race, but some of it is probably also the grand old American self-absorption. If we can't place a country on a map, we generally don't give it more than a few moment's attention.

[JI7]

34. no, because missing american girls of color don't recieve same attention so it certainly has to do

with race.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

37. Some of it, sure.

But you don't think 200 missing black girls in the US wouldn't receive any attention? I think they would.

Individuals go missing all the time, both black and white, and most of them get very little coverage. Even the white girls who become media firestorms are few and far between compared to the number of white women who go missing every day, and show up on those late night prurient shows about trafficked sex slaves in the US.

But I think 200 schoolgirls who went missing in the US would be in the news a LOT, no matter whether they were all white, all black, or any ratio in between.

Heck, one planeful of missing people were THE news, 24/7 on CNN for more than a month, and most of them were asians, with only a couple of americans tossed in.

[JI7]

48. that was about the plane not the people

i think 200 missing white girls in south africa would have recieved much more coverage .

[arely staircase]

40. I don't think we disagree, if so it is only on the margin.

While a I agree that the closer to white America a goup of victims is, the more likely their harrowing situation will be given coverage , or at least the amount of coverage.

Speaking of Slavic folks I believe the trapped Russian submariners, the movie theater hostages and the kids that died when terrorists took over their school and the russian security forces ham handedly got a bunch of people killed. Those things were covered pretty non stop from beginning to end.

[tea and oranges]

30. It's Astonishing that Nothing's Being Done

If other countries put pressure on the gov't of Nigeria to find the girls, something might happen. If Nigeria faced the censure of the peoples of this round earth, something might happen.

To think that young women sitting for a test so they could go on to higher education were stolen & trafficked, & this isn't a world outrage, is despicable.

[WinkyDink]

35. I think it's the continent, not the color (although they are in this case related).

[Shandris]

41. Or, you know, it might be because they weren't American.

I seem to recall a metric stack of Russian schoolchildren being killed in a terrorist incident not -that- long ago, and they got virtually no coverage also despite being all white. But why consider that when we can make a racial incident out of it.

[arely staircase]

43. I remenber that getting a great deal of coverage. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. 8 recs, 10 replies for the orginal news story; 41 recs, 41 replies for a thread about lack

of coverage.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014780588

I think the US media follows its audience.

[arely staircase]

44. I am not saying there has been no coverage

If there had been none and I knew enough about it to write the short op I should be a suspect in the abductions. Of coirse it has been covered, the point is how does the attentiion given it stack up against the relentless and breathless coverage of individual pretty white girls/women.

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. What I'm saying is that DU ignored the story for 2 weeks as well

and therefore I'm not sure DU is in any position to slam the media for not giving it enough prominence. DU only seems to have got interested once the stories became "why isn't the media paying more attention?"

(It's not just your thread - on the Greatest page we also have:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/125542788
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11876783
http://www.democraticunderground.com/125542834
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024907065 )

[arely staircase]

46. again. my OP regards the relatI've lack of hysteria

compared to (all to well known) cases of missing pretty white girls.

[Bluenorthwest]

64. gee, I've been posting about the human rights crisis in Africa for months and let me tell you DU

has show very little interest. I have been trying to get people to advocate to their religious leaders to speak out, no one cares. For months on end. Kidnappings like this don't happen in a vacuum. It takes an entire world actively announcing that they are not concerned with your crimes.

[arely staircase]

69. with all due respect I was referring to the msm

not a postet on a relatively obscure message board.

[McCamy Taylor]

47. Same as Rwanda. And the ongoing war in the Congo. No one cares if its Africa.

[kelliekat44]

54. I believe you are sadly correct. Imagine if this had happened anywhere else in the world. nt

[Bonx]

67. Jeez. Of course people care.

They're just not surprised, considering the history of the region.

[Number23]

49. K& fucking rec'd

[IronLionZion]

50. We should tell Nancy Grace these girls are blonde nt

[giftedgirl77]

51. K & R for exposure

There have been multiple OPs on here as well, they all sink into oblivion.

[Exposethefrauds]

52. Same concern exists here when white children are gunned down on a almost daily basis in America

Sure lots of folks get all up in arms but the only thing that is done is to make guns even easier to obtain and the slaughter of the kids continues.

So if we do not give a shit about American kids, of any color, why should we give a shit about kids in another country?

[Recursion]

53. Can somebody tell CNN that Boko Haram hijacked the plane to put the girls on it?

Or something?

It's humiliating: the Indian news media (and I'll be blunt: India has a much worse racism problem than America) is covering the BH story pretty solidly. The underplaying of this from the American media is literally appalling.

[B Calm]

55. I was surprised that John Kerry spoke up about it

over the weekend!

[treestar]

56. I'm actually surprised it is not in that

it is a good opportunity to prove how terrible Muslims are. Just shows the M$M priorities.

[Jesus Malverde]

57. That our focus is Europe and the middle east is well established.

South and and Central America, Asia and africa are afterthoughts.

It's a bias thats well entrenched.

Do US networks even have a single correspondent in Africa, meanwhile they all maintain bureaus in Israel, London, Paris, etc.

[CJCRANE]

58. Boko Haram admits abducting Nigeria girls from Chibok

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11334739

[pampango]

59. Part of it is racial. Part of it is the "what happens it other countries is none of our business"

mentality. When you add the two together, as in this case, it is a deadly combination.

[Sunlei]

61. This such a horrible kidnapping, the families are in a panic, so frantic.

Why are their Gov. leaders not standing in public with the families 24/7 and demanding return of all the girls.?

[Bluenorthwest]

66. This is Nigeria, and the Government is corrupt. Read this link if you can stand it.

A woman leading protests over the abduction of more than 200 girls in Nigeria has been detained on the orders of the president's wife, activists say.

Naomi Mutah took part in a meeting called by First Lady Patience Jonathan and was then taken to a police station, they say.

Mrs Jonathan reportedly felt slighted that the mothers of the abducted girls had sent Ms Mutah to the meeting.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27283278#TWEET1119500

[riderinthestorm]

63. Link to a petition to sign for greater publicity for these girls

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/work-un-and-nigerian-government-bring-home-girls-kidnapped-boko-haram/fFcLj7s2

[Calista241]

65. CNN

Um, this is on the front page of cnn.com

[link:http://www.cnn.com|]

[karynnj]

68. A stronger case is made by the difference between blacks and whites of a missing girl in the US

In a foreign country, the US has less influence and it is possible that a strong reaction by the US could actually make things worse at the beginning of an abduction. This would clearly be the case here where the name of the group itself reflects that they are against Western education and influence.

At this point, when nothing has Nigeria has done has succeeded to get the girls safely returned, the State Department has repeatedly pushed for the release. The danger of the US military getting involved is that the first moves by them - before fleeing to avoid the Americans - could be to kill the children.

To my knowledge, there is no parallel episode where anywhere near this number of white girls (or children) have been held hostage. I would guess that the response of the community, the country, the US, the international community would in ANY case depend on what levers exist to try to get the kids released. Hostage situations - even much smaller ones that have no political or foreign component are always tricky because the number one goal is the safe recovery of the hostages - not the killing of those who did it. I assume that Nigeria (or the UN or US) COULD go in with heavy force, but I would guess that would happen only when there is a gap when they see they can grab the kids and get many out safely or when they really give up hope for ever getting them back safely. If this is done, there is near certainty that at least some kids will be killed and if the UN/US is the one involved, they could get the blame. ( Remember Waco - even though there are major differences.)

[arely staircase]

70. I am not talking about the US government doing anything - though I assume all our satellite/drone/

and human intel is on the case. I am taliing about media coverage. The closest comparison would be the Russian school children taken hostage a few years ago. It got a lot of coverage.