Eight year old Martin Richard, before his
death in the Boston Marathon
attacks: Why is it that Western victims get all
the media attention, while
non-Westerners killed abroad seem more like
statistics than real people?
Asymmetrical Horror: Media Double Standards on Victims of War and Terror (News,
Switzerland)
"Once we see the image of Martin Richards (especially parents of
young children), it brings a lump to our throats, as we imagine what his death
means to his father, his mother and his sister. ... It would just be too
cumbersome and costly, risky and time-consuming, and above all, hard to cover
the costs, to take a stand for the memories of any Muhammads,
Saidas, Abduls and Aishas
who were collateralized by a drone when playing somewhere in the Hindu Kush."
After the Boston
bombings, media were horrified, headlines were gigantic and the name of the
8-year-old victim, Martin Richards, was soon widely known. But especially in
local social media, the question was immediately asked, "Why aren't we even
more horrified about the children killed by U.S. drones in Afghanistan, terrorist
victims in Iraq and the dead children of the Syrian conflict." Yes indeed - why aren't
we?
Just because there is a
quote often attributed to Stalin that he never said: “The death of one man is a
tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic,” doesn't by a long shot mean
that it doesn't correspond to a deeper truth. Just as this little boy stands
out as a terrible sacrifice, fatalities that are mentioned briefly in the media
over and over again blur in our minds into a kind of anonymous mish-mash, a
number on a table, the total of which is presented to the public concerned at the
end of the year.
One might argue that
racism and xenophobia are also at play here, but these can only explain part of
our indifference. For a while IRA terrorist bombings in Great Britain were
reported and perceived in almost exactly the same way: Dead again, injured
again. Yes, even with the rather unique attacks of September 11, the number of
victims didn't really manage to affect us. It's about crying over one coffin,
not 4,000.
What touched us after
9-11, however, were recordings of desperate phone calls from trapped people who
could no longer escape from those god-forsaken towers. What really shocked us
were the images of office workers who, to avoid being burned alive, jumped out
of windows, falling to their deaths in front of everyone to see.
The parallels are quickly
obvious. As soon as we recognize a person as a victim, not only intellectually,
but emotionally, a purely abstract exercise becomes a personally moving
experience, and this says a lot more about us than the victims.
Stalin's false quote
(which was probably derived from a quote by Kurt Tucholsky) shows that it isn't only today's
image-obsessed society that has a problem with absorbing the abstraction of a
tragedy. The emotional areas of brain just cannot seem to grasp the human implications
of “anonymous” catastrophes, because the figures do not effectively relate to our
personal lives, our experiences, or our life histories.
However, once we see the
image of Martin Richards (especially parents of young children), it brings a
lump to our throats, as we imagine what his death means to his father, his
mother and his sister. Even if, fortunately, we are unable to really picture it
ourselves, the entire tragedy plays out in our minds, and we see a life at its
inception, ended violently and thoughtlessly.
The objection to such
a genuine portrayal of things comes quickly: media shamelessly fuels emotions to
crank up magazine sales and generate clicks on news portals and social
networks. That may be true, but it is also true that a child lost his life and
a family lost their child.
Meaningless conflicts that
result in large numbers of civilian causalities are in fact only possible as
long as the victims are, in the eyes of the public, dehumanized as numbers, and
perceived perhaps not as people, but as enemies - and in the case of children,
future enemies. The faces, stories and feelings behind these deaths must be denied.
Because if terror is at any time reflected in real faces and destinies, the acceptance
of casual killing with burgeoning “collateral damage” and brutal acts of
terrorism would drop on all sides.
But that wouldn't be
in the interests of governments, weapon manufacturers, commodity
multinationals, religious fanatics, terrorists, and the oppressors and
murderers whose duty is to maintain the gap and deep alienation between
cultures. And this remains to be the case because even here, where it is
actually possible to publish this type of information about the victims,
interest remains low. It would just be too cumbersome and costly, risky and
time-consuming, and above all, hard to cover the costs, to take a stand for the
memories of any Muhammads, Saidas,
Abduls and Aishas who were collateralized by a drone
when playing somewhere in the Hindu Kush.
Posted By
Worldmeets.US
But even if one were
to attempt to put a face on all of the innocent victims, it would be on the one
hand almost completely impossible, and on the other, it would be unbearable for
media consumers, because at some point one turns it off, feels drained, and wants
to (and does) give in to the illusion that things can't be as terrible as all
that. Simply put, the horror of the world is too much for a brain.
The assymetry of
terror is here to stay, we will continue to look at a few of its victims and
feel connected to them and their composites, while in the future, others will
anonymously disappear in brief reports and will make up columns of statistics. Meanwhile,
people will weep at the site of these deaths and curse
their killers.
So there may be only one
conclusion to be drawn from future reports on the victims of the next
inevitable attack: One cannot over-report about victims like Martin Richards;
and it seems, underreporting so many others knows no bounds.
