[Published on Left Hook]
As the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Katrina left the Gulf Coast reeling with power outages, floodwaters, thousands of refugees and a thousand dead, another tragedy unfolded on the other side of the world, as more than 800 Iraqi Shiite pilgrims were trampled or drowned to death in a stampede caused by fear of insurgent attacks and severe overcrowding.
But it appears that the Shiite tragedy in northern Baghdad was a mere blip on the radar screen among some news organizations, revealing to any impartial observer the true depths of bias and prejudice among some mainstream media outlets — and the audiences that depend on them. Below is a brief overview of the online coverage provided by domestic and international outlets when the news first broke; at the end of this article is a link to what these homepages looked like at specific times.
On Wednesday afternoon EST, the online coverage provided by most of the large American media was, relatively speaking, acceptable enough: prominent space was given to the massive domestic emergency crisis in Louisiana and Mississippi, along with some kind of clearly visible notice about the pilgrimage incident in Iraq. The top, immediately visible part of the website homepage for The New York Times, for instance, contained several stories about the hurricane’s effects, the fate of its victims, and a related photo. At the very top, though, there was a news alert about the Iraq stampede with a small explanation. Yet the “liberal” Times’ homepage was actually weaker in giving space to the tragedy in Iraq than two of its competitors.
On the MSNBC website, the homepage featured two large images: one of the “nightmare” in New Orleans; the other of the “Baghdad Stampede.” Most of the links below the images were concerned with the hurricane, but the Iraq photo was clickable for a story. Again, in the same time frame, the Washington Post website homepage presented a main image and story titled, “Houston Astrodome Opened for Flood Refugees,” flanked by feature stories about the crisis. The stampede in Iraq was somewhat prominently placed below this section, in the middle of the homepage.
Fox News, however, was an entirely different story. Its homepage featured a gigantic image of rescue efforts in New Orleans, flanked by a “latest headlines” section which featured various links about hurricane-related events. Underneath this part of the homepage, one scrolls down to see the rest: two more articles on Katrina, along with some celebrity, entertainment, and sports coverage, followed by business coverage and stocks statistics. Had Fox News forgotten about the Arabs — at least when they could not be featured as demons of the day? Well, not entirely. Tucked away in the second half of a right-hand column, in small type, underneath all the secondary Katrina links, was one, four-word link about the death of hundreds of Shiites in Iraq.
Guesstimating with the eye, one could fit approximately fifteen links of the size Fox provided for the mass death in Iraq into the box which appears in the upper-left corner of its homepage. That box reads: “Fair & Balanced.”
A look at the international coverage also proves revealing. On the website of the British daily, The Independent, the top story was ” ‘More than 600 killed in Baghdad bridge stampede’” and the top photo was of a grieving Iraqi woman. Directly underneath this story was one titled, “Katrina, America’s ‘greatest natural disaster.’” Another British daily, The Guardian, followed a similar line. The top photo, story, and map pertained to the Iraqi disaster; the ones immediately below it, of the same size, were about the American one.
The French publication, Le Monde, featured a top photo and title about Baghdad on its homepage. The next story on that page, immediately below, was about New Orleans. Another French paper, Le Figaro, ran the Iraqi and American tragedies side by side; the Iraqi one was in bold title and text, and the American one was a large photo of damage caused by Katrina.
Of course, all four papers mentioned above are thousands of miles removed — indeed, not even on the same continent — as Iraq, yet each of them devoted significant, priority space to what happened to those Shiites on pilgrimage in northern Baghdad.
It is illuminating, then, to look at the coverage provided by two papers from a country that is only a couple hundred kilometers away from Iraq, one that sits in the center of the Arab world: Israel. The website of the Israeli daily, The Jerusalem Post, contained a top story titled, “American immigrant sets himself on fire in Jerusalem,” apparently in protest of the Gaza pullout. The homepage photo was of a settler rally. Underneath this were two related pieces about the pullout. This was followed by an announcement of the new school year. Finally, the next link was about the Baghdad stampede.
Then there is Haaretz, Israel’s largest “left” daily paper. The main photo on its website was of a corpulent Sharon presiding over some Knesset vote. The top story read, “MKs okay Philadelphi deal on Egyptian deployment.” Underneath this story were three other stories, none of them having anything to do with the stampede in Iraq. To the right was a small section titled “More Headlines,” where, at the very bottom of the list, after mundane news about comptrollers, political bickering, and settler protests, there was a note about the rising death toll in the Shiite procession in Baghdad.
In the evening EST, the English version of Israel’s largest tabloid, Yedioth Ahronoth ran a top story and photo about some recent statements by Mahmoud Abbas. This was followed by two big links about Israeli politicians meeting in Jerusalem and kids going back to school. After all this, in a set of small links, and underneath the self-immolating protester story link, is one titled, “Iraq: Eyewitness recalls bridge disaster.” Also, the top four scrolling news alerts on the website were as follows: Bush releases oil; Islamist indicted for attack; Bush calls Katrina disaster historic; Shalom sends condolences to America (no one in Israel apparently bothered to send any condolences to Iraq). Indeed, the Iraq incident is not even mentioned in the scrolling update list.
Is this not telling? The four leading papers a continent removed devoted front and center space to hundreds of Shiites, mostly women and children, killed in a stampede of fear and desperation. And yet, in a country a stone’s throw away from Iraq, its three leading papers offered a paltry and pathetic mere inch or two of online web space to the tragedy.
Where was Israel’s supposed vast reservoir of humanity and sympathy at this hour? Alas — where was Elie Wiesel?
These signs of disregard for Arab life in the right-wing American press and the entire Israeli press are a small but unmistakable reminder that, for all the Western bluster about democracy and freedom, there doubtless remains a kind of global apartheid, in which the racial Other is worthy of not pity, not sympathy, but only abuse — including the abuse of indifference.
Download the print-screens of the media online homepages as they appeared on Wednesday at various times EST: http://www.lefthook.org/News.zip .
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Difference in reporting can be seen here to.
These two photos I saw them yesterday, today one of the photos is gone. The photo that is gone had two white people who had “find” food, the other a photo of a black man who had “looted” food. I hope the links work, not so familiar with the link tags :)
White people find things. Black people loot things.
This is where I got the information from.
One reason that US media might be giving top coverage to Katrina aftermath is because it is potentially the LARGEST CATASTROPHE EVER TO BEFALL THE US, and perhaps North America.
An entire major and beloved US city has been rendered uninhabitable.
There are potentially up to 1 million long term refugees.
Dozens of smaller coastal towns have been decimated. Many are just gone. The decimation covers a huge swath of several states.
Roads are gone. No power. No communication.
They really haven’t begun to calculate the dead because primary efforts are still search and rescue. In most cases it looks like up to 80% of the people got out, and while the physical damage is probably worse than the tsunami, casualties will be a tiny fraction because we had days of warning that it was coming. Tsunami victims had zero warning. Katrina’s damage happened along the coast as well as dozens of miles inland.
This is a BIG story for the US media Nadia.
PS — You might ask the arab media where they stand regarding the brutal terrorist tactics used by insurgents in Iraq.
Has the arab media reached out in heartfelt solidarity? Urged action from their leaders to help Iraq and help stabilize situation?
Do Arabs think Arabs are human?
Charles and Ladybird,
Well, I think mention of a stampede that killed over 800 people is certainly newsworthy and a news org that failed to give it sufficient weight has dropped the ball.
However, there are 1 million people who are refugees from the Gulf coast right now. Over 1000 dead *recovered*. No one knows how many are left to be reclaimed but there are still a lot of bodies in the streets of New Orleans and still bodies in their houses and attics to be found. and the number is rising. They can’t get in to rescue the people because criminals are taking potshots at police, doctors, rescuers, and rebuilders (just like the terrorists Iraq). This is reasonably the bigger story no matter where you are.
It reminds of the Tuesday of 9–11. That night a ship crashed into a major tall bridge in Texas in the middle of the night. Dozens of cars drove in to the ocean before the police could get there and shut down the road. There was no mention on the national news of this event, because something bigger was going on.
On the other hand, the Iranian news mentioned ONLY the people killed in Iraq until yesterday, when they began pubishing editorials blaming the hurricane on Bush.
PS As for Israel, as you point out, they didn’t cover the US catastrophe much either. Clearly, Israelis don’t read their newspapers for international news. But, when Arabs start crying in sympathy at tragedies in Israelis perhaps THEIR attitudes will change as well.
According to this report in an Israeli newspaper, Katrina happened due to the “fist of G-d” because of the lack of support the USA gave to the illegal Israeli settlers in Gaza.Katrina — The fist of God?
http://www.jnewswire.com/library/article.php?articleid=676
By Stan Goodenough
August 29th, 2005
Today is going to be a terrible day for millions of people in the United States as Hurricane Katrina comes roaring ashore on the northern Gulf Coast of the country.
Hopefully, prayerfully, despite the worst-case scenarios being predicted by many weather experts and others in the media, there will not be an enormous loss of life.
But even if no one dies, the thought of hundreds of thousands of people having to leave their homes in the last 48 hours to stream out of the hurricane’s path, not knowing what they will come back to – what will happen to their neighborhoods, their houses, their possessions, almost everything they hold dear – is a terrifying thought indeed.
Untold numbers of people are about to be made refugees. Life, as many in the south-eastern USA have known it for generations, is about to change, painfully and dramatically.
Katrina has forced oil workers to evacuate rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, stopping the production of 600,000 barrels of oil a day. Seven oil refineries and a major oil import terminal have been closed.
Oil prices have already gone through the roof, soaring to a record high of $70.80 a barrel of crude since last Friday. Things could get much worse.
The US is particularly sensitive to oil price hikes. While comprising just five percent of the world population, Americans daily consume 20 million barrels of oil – 25 percent of the world’s total.
Two weeks ago, the monster Katrina was not on any radar screen, although the 2005 hurricane season, which began in July and will not peak until September, had already seen a record number of hurricanes.
On August 14, citizens in the United States, like people around the world, heard about the issuing of an order for the forced evacuation of Jews from parts of Israel’s biblical land.
For six days they watched as thousands of weeping people were pulled and carried from their homes, forced to leave their gardens, parks, communities, schools, towns and synagogues, everything they had spent decades building; banned from ever returning again. Those scenes were soon followed by pictures of bulldozers and other earth-moving machinery pulverizing the just-vacated homes into heaps of dust.
While this was taking place, a small tropical depression was forming near the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean. Slowly, as the air began to revolve, the nonthreatening weather system began moving in the direction of Florida.
As today unfolds we are bracing to see wind and water pounding homes, whole communities, into the ground.
Is this some sort of bizarre coincidence? Not for those who believe in the God of the Bible and the immutability of His Word.
What America is about to experience is the lifting of God’s hand of protection; the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel.
The Bible talks about Him shaking His fist over bodies of water, and striking them.
In the context of the last 12 years of peace-process history, and not withstanding the desire of many on Israel’s left to go ahead with this process, the Sharon disengagement plan was something that was forced on Israel, primarily by the United States.
On the cover, a grim-faced President Bush is shown looking warily at a massive hurricane threatening his country.
Koenig writes, in a book listing major natural and man-made disasters experienced by the USA during its peace-process efforts in the Middle East:
Our prayer is that He will.
Many in America couldn’t have cared less about Jews being forced out of their homes and losing everything they have built. Here in Israel, many Jews will be feeling for the Americans who are now facing similar tragedies, tragedies brought about by the forces of heaven rather than through the political power of men.
Can’t you see the link, America? Won’t you see the link?
The reason Katrina was so bad is because it didn’t rain near my house for over a month. No seriously. She should have died in my back yard but didn’t because there hadn’t been any rain to cool off the everglades or florida bay.
When she hit Lauderdale she dumped her load and was on her deathbed. But since it hadn’t rained in so long, the everglades and the gulf were like hot bath water. If the water in the everglades had not been so hot there is no way she could have survided the broken terrain and trees. But the everglades water was HOT and it kept her alive — barely. When she passed 30 miles south of my house it was breezy with moderate rain. But then the incredible happenned. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was clear that she was no Charlie, Andrew, or Ivan. This girl was hopped up on hurricane amphetimines. The gulf was so warm that Katrina grew much faster than she was moving. Even though she had already passed us over and was moving away .… her effects got stronger with each passing day. That is unprecendented. By the time she hit the keys she was cat3. Incredible. As she fed herself in the gulf, we locals were privately wondering if they had a cat6 classification. That girl was eating rocket fuel.
Yeah, well it took Al Jazeera three days to even post a major story about Katrina, before that it was just a tiny notice in the top right corner. News organizations don’t properly represent the significance of certain events. Wow. What an insight.
Thousands of people are probably dead down there, a million homeless. Hundreds of thousands without water and food. Thanks for the condolences. I can certainly see how in this case news organizations have their priorities all wrong! The Shia stampede is indeed very tragic, and if news organizations had covered a football game instead, that would be awful, but this article above is just stupid. Not to mention the fact that the reason this American tragedy is getting such heavy worldwide coverage is not sympathy; it’s another way to piss on America a little more, and to revel in the fact that Louisiana looks like the Sudan and America couldn’t do anything about it, or just screwed this up. It’s all retribution for Kyoto, wrath of God, oil (Michael, you’re thrilled about that no doubt, I know how you love oil) etc., etc. How does all of that add up to “are arabs human”? Get over youself.
Are Arabs human beings? DNA evidence would suggest yes, so not going to bother reading that article.
//BEGIN RANT//
I have no sympathy for people who suffered the wrath of God in New Orleans. They knew for days ahead of time that a hurricane was coming and way too many of them waited until the last hours before getting on the road out of town. And do those people pull together and help each other out? Nope. They go on shooting and looting sprees. How civilized.
Maybe a hurricane is the fist of God. If it is, it looks like God’s attacking the center of the Red States and heartland of Christian Supremacy. Maybe those people should stop voting for powerhungry ignoramuses.
//END RANT//
Have a nice day. :-)
In comments on Thursday, President Bush said, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”
Lies on top of lies until the lies are so thick I can’t even breathe anymore.
Jon, you sound like a liberal, which means you’re a stupid liberal. Many of the people in New Orleans are poor and, given that New Orleans is largely a walking city, they didn’t even have cars. And when you’re poor it’s rather difficult to jump on a plane and jet off to a hotel, leaving your job, for a few days, in anticipation of a disaster that might or might not happen. Use your brain. And have a little sympathy.
One good thing that will come out of this is that Environmental questions about our planet and how to save it will be the focus now for more U.S people too, people who have let the Bush administration get away with not joining the rest of the world in this important work. This will also make the millennium goals the one thing we must all work for.
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
I don’t think Liberals are stupid, certainly they always strike me as being far more intelligent than the fools that elected Bush.
Bush failed to fund the necessary work to strengthen the levees because he preferred to use the money to finance the oil war and to give tax cuts to his buddies.
Nobody has any ill feelings for the American people per se. And in any case, the worse sufferers during such tragedies are always the weak and the poor, not the elite, who cause much suffering themselves. But I wont donate anything from my pocket on the simple logic that if a country can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on subjugating defenceless nations abroad, it ought to allay the miseries of such people at home too.My very sincere prayers and good wishes for all my American friends for the safety of their lives as well as their properties. May this suffering be a short one!
Michael I fully agree with you.
A message from a friend in Baghdad, Iraq which I received today. The English is not perfect but I think that anyone with a molecule of intelligence can understand what is being said;
It’s quite rediculous and shame to talk about the humanity or the humanterian help of America outboard,If we retrospect American behave, just against Iraq only during two dacades we will find so many prove positive incriminating documents of violation of jeneva vention, I’m going to mention some of them with out plunging or permeating into details because they are absured and may be the atrocities which have been done in Iraq are over the imagination of any one , simply because no one can believe that people could reach that level of mercyless and relentless„so let us just in the titles which were apparent and have been announced in promonent channels
1– the duration of sanction which last for 13 years, and reaped in conclussion the death of half million kids because of lack of milk and medicine!! more over it caused high inflation while iraqi dinar[I.D] was worthing 3.33 $ turned to be 3000 ID equels 1$ !! I think no need to explain what that means simply it means economical break down, me my self I was earning as proffeshional engineer 6000 ID with simple calculation it means 2$ a month!! so contemplating about that enough to explain how we were living and in which circumstances!!It’s funy when our country is the richest but we were living in abject poverty depending on food rations
2– we have had the daily potion of US jets ceasless raids, bombing here and there, not excluding even the civilian centers or schools, that was before the war under the pretext of there are WMD hidden at those locations!!
3-before the invationUS jets demolished all infrastructures, industries,petrol defineries electricity resources,drinking water stations and so on.….
4-US jets didn’t exclud even the civilian shelters,and they bombed Alamiria shelter which caused to die more than 400 innocent civilians burning to death !!
5–100,000+ died at the invation, and multiplied of deformed and crippled people whom lost their might to be useful afterwards.
6– adelebrate Arsons and intensivly in falluja , hadeeth and so on
7– The Abughraib atrocity and abuse
8-Daily detonations and random shootings here and there which caused myraid of civilian victims, simply because of immence chaose, and copmlete incompetance of US army to secure civilians,how the could do that if they are themselves pregnable and pron to resistance attack??!!
So isn’t it a shame to talk such nonsense of humanterian help of America outboard??isn’t ashame when Bush showingoff that he is a christian,??
however I honestly condone by heart all Americans, and my only hope that they convert to real christianity one day, and it’s about time while they are seeing the specters of katrina hurricans impact ‚all that are copy of parts of what we have suffered porolong and still suffering
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Ken– “Jon, you sound like a liberal, which means you’re a stupid liberal… blah blah blah… And have a little sympathy.”
Ken, you sound like a stupid Republican. Ever heard the term “bleeding-heart Liberal”?
bleeding heart
n. 2. A person who is considered excessively sympathetic toward those who claim to be underprivileged or exploited.
I am what you’d call a cold-hearted Libertarian. I have no sympathy for people who sit there waiting for impending disaster in order to save a job that keeps them in poverty. I knew about Katrina three days before it happened, so people in New Orleans must have known too. It doesn’t matter that people don’t have cars. In three days, I can walk over a hundred miles. Add hitchhicking to that and I could have made it to New England. I saw the news video of the miles-long lines of SUVs and motorhomes trying to leave the city at the last minute, so I’m not even going to believe that this was all a bunch of poor folks either. Face it. Everybody waited until it was too late and, as far as I’m concerned, to bad about them.
And another thing… if those that weren’t poor and elderly blah blah blah had left the city when the hurricane alert came down, it would have been one heck of alot easier for the local governments to evacuate or shelter the rest.
And then, when the rescue effort started, those poor people start looting stores and shooting rescuers, etc., which makes me even more unsympathetic.
I say let them fend for themselves. I won’t donate one thin dime to that cause. Especially after the government has already forced me to donate a third of my paycheck.
So, get an education Ken. Figure out what a liberal is. Figure out what a conservative is. And maybe then you’ll realize that you’re getting screwed by both of them.
So michael you are a racist against blacks too? I thought it just against white americans and jews…
The Black people of America thank you for your help…
I’d have to agree with Jon on this one… They all had 3 or more days notice. And most of the pre-hurricane coverage I saw, some of the people of New Orleans said they wanted to stay and ride it out. Including the very rich and famous “Fats Domino”.
Sure, and before he was murdered by the religious fanatics in Basra, so thought Steve Vincent: “Generally, though, the Brits — who patrol the city in lightly armored vehicles — are tolerated, and in some quarters, liked.… As for America, the general feeling is gratitude for the removal of Saddam, tempered by disappointment in the slow progress of Iraq’s reconstruction.”.
Hey, Comrades — here’s how: You spend all night setting up your very own blog, but in short time you realize nobody is coming to read it. Furthermore now that you have a blog what do you do next? http://www.blogexplosion.com/index.php?ref=blogexplosion&SignupID=google
Jeff-“So michael you are a racist against blacks too? I thought it just against white americans and jews…”
What in the world are you talking about? In what way are you reading racism into ANY of Michael’s posts? Becuase he’s not going to be charitable to a nation that attacks other nations without cause? What’s racist about that? Or were you just grasping for some insult and racist was the first thing that popped into your mind? Get real.
Also, because someone is anti-Zionist doesn’t mean that they are anti-Semite.
And I also have the impression that Michael isn’t against white Americans as a whole. From what I gather, he seems to be mostly against the fascist ones. I’d tend to agree with him on that.
No, you don’t get it Jon. Michael is against Americans and, if you scratch the surface a bit, Jews; but he’s not against anybody else. At least, not that he’s letting on to in this blog. He is therefore obsessed with the Americans (and with the Jews if you scratch the surface)as a “race” — we know that word doesn’t have any very substantial scientific meaning — and in my book he is therefore a racist;i.e. mindless generalised hatred of specific people. But although he exhibits these “racist” characteristics to the exclusion of most others, he appears to be behind that hand which is rather short of aces some kind of a stalinist or national socialist; put more plainly, someone whose political allegiance is given to any group that likes to push people around without having to be held accountable. What does he admire? We don’t know; we’re not told’ he’s not saying’ he has orders not to say’ he’s reading from a script; he is dangling from someone’s strings; he is playing someone else’s tune; he has no individual voice; he has merged his individuality into the anti-american stereotype; he does not really exist as an individual; he is Comrade Michael the Marionette.
…and P.S., the infallible sign of the Comrade: no sense of humour.
If you are tired of the three Comrades on this crummy blog, here is a wealth of alternatives: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/ “The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling ”
Fight the Comrades’ blog today! Go somewhere else!
Hank–
Frankly, I haven’t detected a single note of racism from Michael. What I think is that you believe yourself to be a patriot and it upsets you that someone would criticize your government’s actions.
I would guess that Michael does have socialist tendencies, but that doens’t mean what you seem to think it means. It is probably that he is just a soft-hearted person. But I have found his criticism of the US action in Iraq to be pretty much on the money.
“any group that likes to push people around without having to be held accountable”
Buddy, that sentence perfectly describes the US right now.
Bush ‘Unsigns’ War Crimes Treaty
Wake up!
Hank :) You really are weird, carry on like this and you will have a break down.
I was just reflecting this morning on the clear fact that there’s such a huge disparity between rich, average Americans even and the huge “underclass”. How long has capitalism had to correct this deficiency, because clearly it’s not working. The ideal situation is a combination of capitalism and socialism such as most of Western Europe enjoys.
Still you can’t tell these dumb Americans anything, they hear the word “socialism” and images of Stalin’s death camps come into mind. :)
Well damn Jon, Me being a libertarian myself would think that people like you would see through the bullshit that is Michael…But I guess I would be wrong. You’re just as much of a piece horse shit as he is. If I want insult someone, I’ll come right out and do it, you fuck.
You and michael can suck my goddamn cock asswipe…how’s that.Or better yet, how about letting your mother suck my cock. Is that a better insult for you?
You seem to be a pervert as well as an alcoholic Jeff(rey)
Michael, did you have a chance to check out this great movie clip yet…?
Click Here!
Ladybird-Now that Jef(rey) has gone to sleep it off, I think you need to be concerned about his choice of language. He’s obviously got personal problems, but I don’t think we need to read about them here.
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