Nearly 2,000 people were killed in a terrorist attack in Nigeria this week . . . [View all]

[markpkessinger]

. . . and Western media have barely noticed, having chosen instead to focus almost exclusively on the Paris attacks, in which a handful of Westerners were killed. I don't, for one moment, wish to detract from the horror of the attacks in Paris, but we shouldn't view a terrorist attack as being uniquely horrific merely because its targets were primarily Western Europeans or Americans. Our news media, in their very selective coverage of incidents such as this, feed a sense of unique victimization whenever it is Americans or Western Europeans who are the victims of terrorist attacks. They certainly did this in the wake of 9-11, and it contributed, I believe, to the apparently widespread belief among Americans that the U.S. is somehow uniquely exempt from moral constraint in its response to terrorist attacks.

http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/nigerians-hit-by-brutal-terror-attack-382766659522