Concerns Regarding the Coverage of Beirut’s Attacks

Letter To The Editor
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
The New York Times

Dear Mr. Serge Schmemann,

I am writing to express my concern regarding the coverage of Beirut’s terror attacks of November, 2015. I recognize the inconsistency between the coverage of the the similar terror attacks in Beirut and Paris and I see that the Beirut attacks were underestimated by The New York Times. The gap in the public’s empathy towards the attacks in Beirut and Paris can be strongly correlated to the unequivalent coverage that the two incidents have received. A more consistent coverage between similar events taking place in the West and the East is necessary to fill the empathy gaps and construct bridges between the two cultures.

The two terrible terror attacks in France and Paris line up so clearly, offering a comparison of how the New York Times chose to cover two events that are very similar in content, but different in location. In Paris, the coverage of the New York Times focused on the human nature of the attacks. In Beirut, the coverage of the paper focused on the ethno-religious divisions of the region. The stories on Paris were able to present a picture that the audience are able to relate to and empathize with, but the stories on Beirut weren’t able to do the same.

The Beirut attacks took place on November 12, 2015. That day, The New York Times covered the attacks on page 6, in one article, under the title “ISIS Claims Responsibility for Blasts That Killed Dozens in Beirut.” The article presents the attack as an event aimed on “Hezbollah stronghold” areas rather than “civilian’s area.” The use of the term “Hezbollah stronghold” presents the victims of the attacks, who are in fact nothing but civilians, as a different and complicated ethno-religious group whom readers can hardly relate to. The article then goes on into great detail to explain the relations between ISIS, Hezbollah and the United States. Thus, the article doesn’t focus on the human aspect of the story, but chooses to cover the attacks through telling a complicated political story that even experts on the Middle East can hardly understand. The usage of many terms in the article, such as “Hezbollah stronghold, “embraces the construction of the Lebanese society as an “Orientalist” one that Western audiences can hardly relate to. It also presents the victims affected as the “others,” who are much different than “us.”

On November 13, 2015, the Paris attacks took place. That day, The New York Times covered the tragic incident in six articles, three of which were front page stories. The first article, “Paris Terror Attacks Leave Awful Realization: Another Massacre,” began with a beautiful, romanticized description of the night of the attack. The introduction reads “The night was chilly but thick with excitement as…” The romanticized tone and word choice, such as “massacre, “strongly opposes the rhetoric of “the blasts that killed dozens in Beirut’s Hezbollah stronghold” used in the previous mentioned article on Beirut. Contrary to the article on Beirut, this article is beautifully written in a way that humanizes the victims of the attack and present them as people who are just like “us,” who we are able to relate to and empathize with.

In “Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten,” published on November 15, The New York Times succeeds in presenting the victims in Beirut as innocent civilians who were going about their daily lives. The article used a very similar romanticized tone to the one on Paris, shedding a necessary light on the human aspect of the story. The publishing of this article was important and appreciated to many. However, the article was published two days after the attack, was hidden in the Middle East section online, and didn’t have the power revive the forgotten story. By November 15, the general public was already engaged with the news on Paris. Beirut was already left behind by then.

This April, Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of the New York Times, followed up on the November attacks in Beirut through an opinion editorial titled “Are Some Terrorism Deaths More Equal Than Others?” The op-ed portrays the paper’s commitment to a fair and balanced coverage while addressing the fact that the Times does not tell the stories of terrorist victims with complete fairness. My question of concern is why is the Times still debating the quality of the event’s coverage five months later? The Times did not debate nor revisit the coverage of Paris. In fact, the Paris attacks are still receiving an in-depth coverage until today. Usually at The New York Times, events are covered thoroughly and fairly, so no op-eds or follow ups articles are necessarily to address what went wrong or was missing. Why didn’t the Times cover the attacks on Beirut and Paris using the same standards? The op-ed raises the question of “Do Western lives get a better coverage because they matter more?”

“Western” lives do matter more. More importantly, the geographic location of the victims in a certain story is what matters most. The attacks on Beirut killed three American citizens, but the fact that they were three American citizens in Beirut made them less newsworthy. Their geographic location prevailed over their nationalities. Only certain aspects of the audiences multi-layered identities are spatial or geographic. Thus, the role of the media, especially in global events like this, is to use the audiences multi-layered identities to move beyond geographic proximities and reach cultural ones.

The two attacks present two global events where the pain is similar, the victims are similar, and the enemies are identical. Thus, the two attacks provide a great opportunity for the media to draw on cultural proximities. However, cultural proximities were only drawn upon in Paris, but not in Beirut. Thus, the generated buzz in the media and the excellency in the coverage of Paris created a global audience that stood in solidarity with Paris. The media invited global audiences to relate to other people by developing a ‘mediated intimacy’ for those who are at distant. The global audience formed an imagined community that was able to perform more than 30 million interactions on social media during the first 24 hours after the Paris attack. Individuals from more than 200 countries joined this imagined community to stand in solidarity with France, but not with Beirut.

Margaret Sullivan, ended her op-ed with “..It’s part of The Times journalistic mission to help its readers not only know the importance of all human life lost to terrorism in an intellectual way, but feel it in their hearts.” I hope that the editors and authors of the New York Times work by this journalist statement during their next coverage on the Middle East, whether on a fortunate or unfortunate event.