Attacks in Beirut -- all but ignored

[N9IWP]

On the eve of the Paris attacks there attacks in Beirut. It wasn’t quite as deadly (43) but still significant.

Here is the NT Times article:

Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten (Published 2015)

Has any major news outlet mentioned this? I wouldn’t expect equal time, but a 1 minute blurb wouldn’t be too much to ask. (I did find it on the CNN web page, but I had to search)

Brian

[JKilez]

If CNN and the New York Times are not major news outlets, what is?

[Frank]

@N9IWP

Has any major news outlet mentioned this?

Yes. It’s been mentioned by The New York Times and CNN.

[2gigch1]

I think, sadly, that attacks in places like Beirut are considered normal, for lack of a better description. History and geography play into it. I suspect that the story was reported but didn’t create a conversation like Paris has.

[Loach]

@2gigch1

I think, sadly, that attacks in places like Beirut are considered normal, for lack of a better description. History and geography play into it. I suspect that the story was reported but didn’t create a conversation like Paris has.

I think that is a lot of it. Many would probably be surprised it is not a daily occurrence.

[ivylass]

There was an attack in Kenya on Thursday that I didn’t see covered. Of course, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t covered, but I’m seeing All Paris All The Time. I’m saddened this attack, with a greater death toll, isn’t getting the same treatment.

[Stanislaus]

@ivylass

There was an attack in Kenya on Thursday that I didn’t see covered. Of course, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t covered, but I’m seeing All Paris All The Time. I’m saddened this attack, with a greater death toll, isn’t getting the same treatment.

The attack on Garissa University was in April (see date in your link).

[Stanislaus]

@2gigch1

I think, sadly, that attacks in places like Beirut are considered normal, for lack of a better description. History and geography play into it. I suspect that the story was reported but didn’t create a conversation like Paris has.

This is in part down to the way these stories are reported:

@reuters

At least 43 people were killed and more than 240 wounded on Thursday in two suicide bomb blasts claimed by Islamic State in a crowded residential district in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of the Shi’ite Muslim group Hezbollah.

The explosions were the first attacks in more than a year to target a Hezbollah stronghold inside Lebanon, and came at time when the group is stepping up its involvement in the Syrian civil war – a fight which has brought Sunni Islamist threats and invective against the Iran-backed Shi’ite group.

Hezbollah has sent hundreds of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in the four-year-old conflict over the border. Government forces backed by Hezbollah and Iranian troops have intensified their fight against mostly Sunni insurgents, including Islamic State, since Russia launched an air campaign in support of Assad on Sept. 30.

Reading that initial report from Reuters, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that this was essentially a military attack - ISIS targeting Hezbollah - and not terrorists murdering civilians. As the link in the OP makes clear, this is not the case:

@NYT

li Awad, 14, was chopping vegetables when the first bomb struck. Adel Tormous, who would die tackling the second bomber, was sitting at a nearby coffee stand. Khodr Alaa Deen, a registered nurse, was on his way to work his night shift at the teaching hospital of the American University at Beirut, in Lebanon.

All three lost their lives in a double suicide attack in Beirut on Thursday, along with 40 others, and much like the scores who died a day later in Paris, they were killed at random, in a bustling urban area, while going about their normal evening business.

And all credit to the NYT for reporting it in this way. But the inital story is framed in such a way as to minimise the horror of what happened and to present it as part of an armed struggle between two terror groups. None of that is likely to engender sympathy.

[N9IWP]

The CNN story required me to drill down to “World” and drill down again to “Mideast”
So not buried, but not prominent either

Brian

[ivylass]

@Stanislaus

The attack on Garissa University was in April (see date in your link).

:smack:

[mbh]

Poets and artists have spent the last thousand years telling everyone how wonderful Paris is. Western journalists all have fond memories of the last time they visited Paris, or fond fantasies about someday visiting Paris.

Beirut and Garissa, not so much.

Attack Paris, and journalists have a visceral emotional reaction. Attack Beirut or Garissa, and it is an intellectual abstraction.

[eenerms]

This bothers me when these sort of attacks happen and people say…what this wasn’t this reported, Wheres the outrage?! I guess you aren’t looking in the right places. Having lived in the ME for almost 15 years I look at the ArabNews or AlJezzera, and there is reporting of these things. Bias at times(mostly) and not necessarily 100% true. But that’s the cynic in me.

France was a big thing brought the refugees to the forefront. Showed what most Western European countries have been dealing with since the Arab Spring.( and before)