Friday, August 8, 2014

Islamic State knocks Ukraine out of top slot in news rotation

But Gaza is coming up fast on the inside!...

I've been switching back and forth between BBC and CNN coverage of today's events. The big story is of course the Obama decision to authorize attacks on IS in the country formerly known as Iraq. All the punditry neatly avoids any discussion about the culpability of "the West" in creating the Islamic State, destroying Iraq, and so on.

Now that a couple of rockets have been fired towards Israel, just hours before the ceasefire was to expire anyway, the Gaza story is once again heating up. No acknowledgement of our role in that disaster either.

Ukraine is barely an afterthought today, in spite of the ancillary narratives re: new protests and fighting in Kiev, and Putin's counter-sanctions aimed at the agriculture sector in the West. Ukraine is relegated to the inside pages, vying for column inches and page-views with the Ebola virus. No discussion of our role in Ukraine's tragedy, and the Ebola story, which is potentially more significant than any of the lead stories in the news today, seems to be out of sight because so far it's mainly claimed a few Africans.

Overall, a good-news kind of day for the merchants of death.

No comments:

Post a Comment