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.
) where the makers put together a film of all the stuff that
