Well asked
An anonymous individual on the Medialens forum posts his or her letter to the editor of BBC News that asks the question I have wanted answered too.
“I congratulate you on the level of compassionate outrage expressed in the headline Children massacred in Iraq bombs. The incident described in the piece is quite horrific and no decent person could view it as anything other than a massacre.
However, might I invite you to survey the headlines below, the results of a BBC news website search for the word “Falluja”, and tell me if you can find any hint of a similar expression of outrage? “Fresh raids target Iraqi rebels”, “Falluja under further US attack”, “Falluja hit by deadly US air strikes”, “Bloodshed in US raids on Falluja”, “US bombards Falluja ‘militants’”, “Heavy US attacks on Iraqi towns”, “At least 17 die in Falluja raid”.
I certainly can’t find any, despite the fact that each of those headlines relates to attacks upon a poverty-struck town in a country with a population more than half of whom are children. Does the BBC operate an official policy of regarding certain actions as outrageous and comparable actions as understandable based on whether they have been carried out by an official enemy, or is this just something that your journalists do without thinking?”
Other Splinters posts of interest:
