People only find things out through the media...depending on which source you follow...influences what you find. Maybe had they been informed on bbc news24 on a rolling channel. They would be aware. Unfortunately many people in this world are still under the illusion that a news channel delivers news...so when there is some..they will find out...or so the theory goes. At least they make noise once they do find out. I certainly don't do social media of any form....so I stay clear of mass hysteria..not606 is as bad..or as good as it gets for me and interacting with those that I don't know in person.
The thing is that they would've known about it if they watched al-Jazeera, which is on Freeview channel 133 - but apparently that is the "wrong" type of news compared to News 24 or Sky News, which are channels 130 and 132 respectively. The real problem is that those pointing the finger have zero understanding of news values, which determine the newsworthiness of a story...while I do, since I've got an MA in this stuff. Here's a breakdown for the different levels of coverage Unexpectedness: Coordinated mass shootings and suicide bombings are not something that happens in Paris - yet a suicide bombing in the Middle East that kills dozens is a far more common story, and has been for the past dozen years Cultural proximity: People from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Italy, Germany and China were either killed or injured in the Paris attacks - while, with the exception of three Lebanese-Americans, the Beirut bombings have no effect on people from other countries. Going further, the average westerner is far more likely to visit or have visited Paris than Beirut, or for that matter France instead of Lebanon. At the most base level, there is also the issue that French people are caucasian, while Lebanese people are not References to elite nations: France can be considered an elite nation, Lebanon cannot References to elite persons: Francois Hollande was in attendance at the Stade de France when the suicide bombers struck, the Lebanese equivalent was nowhere near the Beirut bombings Fitting a narrative: News vendors like stories that fit their agenda, which is why if Man City win back-to-back games in mid-September they'll be champions while if Leicester City lose back-to-back matches in mid-September they'll be relegated, yet if the roles were reversed not one paper or pundit would say City are going down or Leicester would win the league. From this standpoint, the Paris attacks fit the narrative the media have stuck to for a long time about how we should be bombing Syria until it is a smoking crater, for example look at the prominence given to reporting that Syrian passport at one of the scenes - a similar narrative can't be fixed to the Beirut bombings as it is unknown where the attack originated from Continuity: There are a lot of stories that can be tied in to the Paris attacks: the Charlie Hebdo shootings from January; the mastermind of the attacks was also behind the failed Thalys train shooting in August; the ongoing story about what action western nations will take in Syria; certain right-wing sources have also attempted to tie this in to anti-immigration rhetoric...until it turned out many of those involved had lived in France or Belgium for several years rather than just pop over from Syria. In comparison, the Beirut bombings can be tied to various ISIS/ISIL/IS/whatever we're calling them this week bombings in the Middle East and North Africa this year, but there's no name or face to connect them all Composition: There's a finite amount of space in a newspaper and a finite amount of time on a news broadcast, but that's not all - editors want a balance between home and foreign stories, so if there's eight stories to fit into the Six O'Clock News but six are foreign, those considered "less important" are dropped. Look at the other foreign news stories reported last Friday: the IAAF suspending Russia from athletics, the Myanmar election, the plane shot down over Egypt, Jihadi John being killed in Syria, the eight dead babies discovered in plastic bags in a house in Germany, plus the ongoing stories about Syria and the European migrant crisis - each of those stories would be considered more newsworthy than the Beirut bombings based on the various criteria outlined above. The real issue isn't that editors decide what should and should not make the front pages based on these criteria (and the various other news values I left out, there's twelve in total) but the audiences go a long way in shaping them. British journalists will say that articles about the Middle East don't generate as many page views as articles about Europe or the US, so the readers are placing one continent above another in terms of importance - which is reflected in the difference in viewing figures between al-Jazeera compared to News 24 or Sky News.
The Beeb made a documentary allegedly (really want to see it but don't know the name ) where the makers put together a film of all the stuff that had to be cut from various news reports about the Middle East in order to fit into the news programme time constraints. The other issue is the current affairs reporting programmes. Panorama and C4 Dispatches are what, 30 mins long now, when they're actually on.
OK HBIC that all makes perfect sense and explains how stories are chosen. What I find puzzling however is your condescension towards people who highlight the fact on social media that Lebanon lost 43 people the day before and the people in Lebanon feel we don't care. What people are saying and in fact what you have confirmed is that European deaths are more important than Middle Eastern deaths and that is not something we should accept or tolerate, despite the need of our media to panda to our tastes.
That was the second best rendition of "La Marseillaise" after the one in Casablanca. It's a classic film remembered for all sorts of things, but that scene is rarely mentioned. For me it makes me proud to be French, and I'm British. Don't forget the film was made during the war, with a lot of France under German occupation.
That's not what I said at all, I outlined why the story would be deemed more important. It has nothing to do with the people killed. As for those wagging their finger, the issue there is they don't care about the Beirut bombings either, they just want to get on their high horse and the Beirut bombings is an excuse for that. After all, they're being just as selective with which tragedy to bring up, as there's no mention of the Metrojet flight 9268 bombing over Egypt - which has received less coverage than Malaysia Airlines flight 17 despite the stories having many similarities, but the latter got more coverage as it helped the media's anti-Russia narrative while the former doesn't. Also, when taken to its logical extreme, you see how idiotic the stance is. Can you imagine if social media existed in 1914, and people were posting messages demanding to know why the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand got more media coverage than the Empress of Ireland sinking? That's the level it's at.
So what do you think people should do HBIC? Should they just accept what the media gives them and shut up?
No, I'm saying people shouldn't be so monumentally dense as to play Tragedy Top Trumps on social media when they were just as guilty of showing complete apathy to the tragedy they are suddenly so interested in - and they should take responsibility for their actions, because it's not like they were demanding to know why the Beirut bombings had less coverage than Russia being suspended from world athletics 24 hours before.
Thurrock's manager Mark Stimson said: "Romford's goal was something you can only describe after seeing." Er, yeah. That's true of most things, isn't it?
Hopefully singing the French National Anthem at the Lane on Sunday will drown out all the hissing sounds from the West Ham louts.
For me, news is news, and should be just that. As Joe Friday used to say, 'the facts, just the facts' As most of us are not personally present at these events, we have to rely on media and other sources to give us their individual interpretation of what passed. As for political comment, I'm open to read any and all. I like different opinions, slants on things. ultimately however, I'll form my own opinion.
That's all very well but the media's interpretation is often biased one way or another. So you might think you are getting facts , but are they all the facts and are they correct. So when you go to form your opinion , have you got all the facts?
When I watch or read the news about a subject I have greater knowledge of than the reporter (for example re aspects of my job), I often spit feathers at their failure often to understand the issue, report it accurately and mention facts which are pertinent. So why should I be convinced that the news is accurate when it comes to matters I am less knowledgeable about?
I love that scene. Apparently a number of the extras in the scene were fleeing persecution at the hands of the Nazis.
Sorry, I don't see you point. Surely, you're just reiterating what I posted? I said quite clearly that it SHOULD be the facts. I also said that we have to rely on media and other sources for their interpretation. I form my opinion about political,comment, as I clearly stated, also.
a.Limiting bullet availability is a very good idea b. France has 15 constitutions and we have one? That must be why France is so superior in all things to do with organization and government. More seriously, your suggestion is sensible in itself, but it leaves out something most people in this country rightly agree on: we happened to have one group of people in control of our society who were so utterly superior in governmental intelligence than the cretins and slobs who have come to dominate the country since that our best hope is to ride their collective wisdom for as long as it will carry us. As flawed as they were, and surely trafficking in human beings is a terrible flaw, they were brilliant on the nature and problem of government. They did so well that a document they themselves thought should be revamped if not cast aside in a few years has been easily the best friend people in the US have ever had, with the Bill of Rights deserving special praise. Every US soldier swears allegiance not to the country or the president, but to that piece of paper, ensuring it’s the thing that endures. You have good government due to an accumulation of national intelligence over the centuries. We have good government thanks to one outstanding document keeping our collective idiocy at bay for centuries. The fact that we are moving away from it significantly now certainly looks like a step into the abyss.
