Remember Egypt? Remember the protests? Remember the 'round the clock news coverage? Anderson Cooper looking as handsome as ever, even when he was getting pelted in the head?
I think all the North American news cycle can handle is one revolution a year. Maybe a decade. There are other revolutions going on, and one became extra deadly today:
At least 88 people are reported to have been killed in Syria in the bloodiest day since the uprising began, as security forces use live ammunition and tear gas to quell anti-government protests across the country
The AlJazeera story also contains a video with footage from several cities of protests getting fired upon, included blurred-out footage of a kid with his head blown apart. It's not hard to find videos posted by individuals on YouTube too, like this one:
We have an excuse for not paying attention here in Canada. The NHL playoffs are on. Oh, also that election thing.
They probably have good excuses for not paying attention south of the border too. Let's just see what the headline story is on CNN.com. "Lindsay Lohan jailed for violating probation". See there you go. It's not like Syria being ignored completely. On CNN's NewsPulse meter, it's right up there, only 9 spots back of "Snooki's diet plan".
I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to accomplish with this post, except maybe to remind you that there's still stuff going on out there. Stuff that's at least as dramatic as the events in Egypt. Maybe it's also a criticism of the media, and the lack of coverage relative to the Egypt revolution.
But is it really a problem? The media shows us the stuff we want to see, because if they show us stuff we don't care about they'll lose viewers, advertisers and money. If we want to see Lindsay Lohan's ass getting carted off to jail, so be it. It's not the media that's the problem ... it's our priorities. Actually, it's the America's priorities. Our priorities here in Canada are just fine. Hey look, Selanne just got an assist laying on his back!
*** UPDATE ***
Jesus. Apparently Syrian forces are now killing people at funerals of people they killed. This isn't looking promising.
4 comments:
I completely agree.
Thank goodness for foreign services like BBC or Al Jazeera to cover that 'other world' what N America worries about.
I was thinking just this morning about how little progress the "revolutions" had actually made. Strictly speaking, only Tunisia has really escaped anything "fully" so far, and even there, it remains to be seen whether some sort of democracy will take root or not.
@Brian: The situation in Yemen looks promising, but still has a long way to go. We need some kind of scorecard to keep track of everything that's going on.
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