BEHEADINGS AND THE NEWS MEDIA: WHY SOME CONFLICT ATROCITIES RECEIVE MORE COVERAGE THAN OTHERS
- BY VIRGIL HAWKINS
In August 2014, a captive of an extremist militant group was beheaded by his captors. Authorities in the victim’s home country described the action as inhumane and an act of terrorism.
The incident was covered by the local press and in brief by a select few international news agencies, but did not attract any degree of global media attention or signs of widespread indignation. The victim’s name was George Mwita. He was a Kenyan truck driver, who had been abducted in Kenya by the Somali rebel group, Al-Shabaab. His death came three days after a similar incident that attracted massive media coverage worldwide, and that seemed to send shockwaves across the globe – the apparent beheading of United States (US) journalist James Foley by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. In response to the latter case, US President Barack Obama stated that the incident was “an act of violence that shocks the conscience of the entire world”. Numerous heads of state, including those representing Australia, Gabon, Indonesia and Uruguay (just to name a few), made statements expressing their outrage at the killing. A large number of media corporations throughout the world also seemed to agree that this event had “shocked the world” – and their heavy coverage of the incident certainly contributed to ensuring that such shock was indeed widely felt. According to one poll, 94% of Americans had heard about the incident – a level of awareness higher than that for any other news event polled in the past five years.But in a world in which an estimated half a million people die violently each year, what made this death so particularly shocking – not just to those who loved him, knew him, or even to other people in the country that gave him citizenship, but to ‘the world’? The act of beheading is indeed a reflection of a particularly brutal and intentionally symbolic means of killing that should be expected to cause shock among those who witness or learn of it. The complete removal of the head from the body demonstrates that the act of taking life in itself is deemed insufficient by the perpetrators in making their point. This, in some ways, could be considered as an aspect that sets this form of killing apart from some others. But even in today’s world, beheadings are not necessarily as rare as we might hope they would be. The government of Saudi Arabia, for example, beheaded 19 people in August this year alone after convicting them of a variety of criminal acts. A considerable number of non-state actors from the Middle East to Africa and Latin America, including belligerents in armed conflicts and drug cartels, have also used beheadings as a brutal way of instilling fear in their opponents and making their point. But what made the case of James Foley so much more shocking and infinitely more newsworthy on a global scale than any other beheadings that occurred under similar circumstances, such as that of George Mwita, for example?
Examining the Factors that Determine Newsworthiness
There are a number of factors that can be considered to make ostensibly similar cases different in terms of the attention and indignation they generate. James Foley was a journalist, a non-combatant whose profession involved seeking and sharing facts on the ground. George Mwita, while also a non-combatant, was a truck driver making a delivery of miraa, the mild stimulant widely used in the region. The profession of James Foley may have had some impact as a factor, but it must also be noted that 51 journalists have been killed in the line of duty throughout the world since the beginning of 2014.
If we consider the level of innocence of the victims to be important, it is also worth noting other cases as well, such as those involving children, who inherently possess a high level of perceived innocence and who should be those most in need of our protection. At least two children have been beheaded and mutilated, for example, during the ongoing conflict in the Central African Republic by the predominantly Christian anti-Balaka militia, simply because they were Muslim. The geopolitics of the place of the killing could also serve as a factor. Foley’s death happened in Syria, which hosts a conflict with major implications for regional stability in an oil-rich region. Yet the conflict in Syria has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since 2011, 40 of whom have been journalists, and the conflict has long since merged with that in Iraq. No other victim of this conflict has attracted a comparable level of attention or indignation in the past.
IN A WORLD DOMINATED TO A LARGE EXTENT BY THE IDEOLOGY OF STATE-CENTRISM, WHETHER OR NOT A DEATH BY VIOLENT MEANS IS SEEN AS BEING NEWSWORTHY OR NOT DEPENDS LARGELY ON THE NATIONALITY OF THE VICTIM
Another difference is the availability of footage. No footage was released showing the final moments of George Mwita, but in the case of James Foley, we could actually see a very deliberate and provocative scene of brutality (although not the killing itself). Yet the IS has already, on numerous occasions, gone public with footage of many other killings, of combatants and non-combatants alike, including mass executions. Similarly, footage has been released by the militant group in Nigeria, Boko Haram, of a number of beheadings of their captives – most recently that of a wing commander in the Nigerian Air Force, which also included a final statement by the victim. It should also be noted that footage released by the IS of its beheading of non-Western victims, and by Boko Haram of its beheadings, typically shows the actual act of the killing, unlike that released by the IS of its Western victims.
Without belabouring any further what is painfully obvious, these factors were not key to the levels of coverage or global indignation. Clearly, the fact that James Foley was a US citizen played a huge role in the attention generated. In a world dominated to a large extent by the ideology of state-centrism, whether or not a death by violent means is seen as being newsworthy or not depends largely on the nationality of the victim. Hence, strong US media interest in the death of a US victim was a certainty. But the fact that the victim was a US citizen had powerful implications for the news media beyond the borders of the US, for a number of reasons. Research to date has found that an audience’s perceived ability to identify with a victim – based on racial, cultural, linguistic, religious, socio-economic and other forms of affinity – contributes to the level of media coverage.
The selective focus on and indignation against the recent beheadings of US, British and French citizens throughout the Western media in places as distant as Australia, for example, in stark contrast to non-Western victims killed under somewhat similar circumstances, would appear to support such findings. The power that the US government and major US media organisations have in influencing the global news flow must also be noted.
Events that attract saturation coverage in the US are inevitably picked up and followed closely by a large number of media organisations outside that country, both Western and non-Western. Finally, and equally importantly, the execution video of James Foley was designed to serve as a direct challenge to US foreign policy. Although the video portrays an attempt to use US hostages to stop US bombings against the IS, it has been widely interpreted as representing a threat to the US itself. The expectation that this would lead to an expanded bombing campaign against the IS by the world’s most powerful military force has also served to enhance the prominence of the incident. All these factors could be considered to have contributed to the perceived newsworthiness, and the unparalleled level of attention and indignation regarding this incident beyond the borders of the US.
Creating a Media Event
But it is not only a question of which incidents the media chooses to focus its gaze. Another important matter concerns the impact of those choices. The international media itself played a major role in giving the James Foley incident the impact that it had – a role that was expected of it by the makers of the video, and one that the media willingly accepted. The fact that the supposed executioner spoke in English and directly addressed President Obama, the symbolism of the orange prison suit worn by the victim, the fact that the video was filmed in multiple takes and was heavily edited, and the use of a lapel microphone on both the victim and the hooded man holding the knife to ensure the quality of sound – all of these factors suggest a very deliberate and calculated attempt to maximise media attention and shock in the outside world. It was produced with the intention of creating a media event. It would appear that in its release of online footage, Boko Haram is attempting to do the same, although the production values fall far short of those seen in the James Foley video and those of other Western victims that followed.
In the case of Syria and Iraq, the media in the outside world helped fulfil this intention. The event instantly became the top news story for a great many media outlets, and to highlight this particular atrocity, the media worked to invoke grief, sympathy and outrage among its audience, and impress upon it the gravity of the loss of this particular life. With so many tragic and violent deaths in the world, the context that gives meaning to a particular death is of critical importance. Reports of deaths, even in great numbers, cannot compete with context in this regard. Joseph Stalin’s famous observation that a single death is a tragedy, while a million deaths is but a statistic, has a certain truth to it. The failure of the media in the outside world to make a concerted attempt to arouse substantive indignation in response to conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), even as the rise of the unparalleled death toll, counted in the millions, was repeatedly revealed, finally reaching 5.4 million, is evidence of this uncomfortable reality. But by the same token, even a single death can only become a ‘tragedy’ in a far-reaching sense if it is given substantive context and a deeper meaning. This means giving a victim a name, a human face, a family, a life story in news reports. It means interviews with colleagues and loved ones, and anecdotes from happier times emphasising their love for their family, kind deeds done and good intentions, aspirations, innocence and the weight of loss that their death brings to others.
WITH NO FOLLOW-UP REPORTS BY THE MEDIA OUTLETS THAT DID CHOOSE TO REPORT THE INCIDENT, IT IS CLEAR THAT THERE WAS NEVER ANY INTENTION TO PROVOKE AN EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT AMONG THE AUDIENCE REGARDING THE INCIDENT
African victims of such tragedies are not given this context in media reports in the outside world. The African victims of groups such as Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or the anti-Balaka in the Central African Republic are rarely given a name, let alone a face or other humanising features or personal details. An examination of the content of the small number of news articles returned by a search of English language media sources using the LexisNexis database with the search term ‘George Mwita’ revealed almost no personal information about the victim beyond his name and the fact that he was a truck driver. With no follow-up reports by the media outlets that did choose to report the incident, it is clear that there was never any intention to provoke an emotional engagement among the audience regarding the incident. We see a similar lack of detail, and of attempts to seek out detail, regarding the reports on the two children beheaded by the anti-Balaka – although admittedly, limited access may well have hindered further investigation not just regarding the crime, but the identities of the victims.
Why does Outside Media Attention Matter?
There is a yawning gap between the levels of worldwide media coverage of conflict-related atrocities. Certain atrocities attract lengthy, sustained and emotive media coverage and worldwide indignation, while other similar atrocities – if they are covered at all – appear fleetingly, and in a succinct and matter-of-fact manner on the media agenda. Atrocities in Africa almost invariably fall into the latter category in media coverage outside the continent. This trend with regard to individual atrocities mirrors a larger and long-standing pattern of entire conflicts on the continent that are largely ignored by the media, including some of the world’s deadliest. In 2014, for example, ‘chosen’ conflicts in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Syria and Iraq have dominated Western media coverage, while ‘stealth’ conflicts in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia and the DRC have tended to garner only sporadic coverage.
USING THE LEXISNEXIS DATABASE WITH THE SEARCH TERM ‘GEORGE MWITA’ REVEALED ALMOST NO PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE VICTIM BEYOND HIS NAME AND THE FACT THAT HE WAS A TRUCK DRIVER
Clearly, the disproportionately heavy coverage of certain atrocities when compared to others that are similar in nature is problematic, not least because it invalidates the ostensibly ‘humanitarian’ emphasis of the response – humanitarian concerns only apply if they are applied to humans without distinction according to skin colour or nationality. But the quantity and content of media coverage of distant atrocities as a whole is something that needs to be carefully considered. If beheadings are filmed, and the footage is edited for effect and actively promoted to the outside world by the perpetrators, then one might be justified in assuming that their objectives are related to a desire to terrorise their opponents and gain infamy, with a view to attaining a status in the global arena that might not otherwise have been possible, by virtue of actual military, political or economic levels of power. In such a case, heavy foreign media coverage of such incidents could be considered by the perpetrators to be empowering.
WHAT THE NEWS MEDIA CHOOSES TO COVER AND HOW IT CHOOSES TO COVER IT CONTINUES TO DESERVE OUR ATTENTION, PARTICULARLY WHEN IT PERTAINS TO THE VIOLENT AND SENSELESS TAKING OF HUMAN LIFE
But at the same time, the indignation that is generated by such public displays of brutality can also mobilise the outside world to take measures aimed at curtailing the activities of such militant groups. This may include steps taken to limit the flow of weapons, funding and recruits; galvanise diplomatic pressure; and/or even some form of military intervention. Perhaps of equal importance, dispassionate and nuanced media coverage of the actions of such groups can give the public and policymakers outside the region a better understanding of the problem being faced, and thus put them in a better position to make decisions that have a higher likelihood of being effective in ameliorating the situation, when compared to knee-jerk reactions aroused by emotive coverage.
In a world in which virtually unlimited amounts of information flow freely on the Internet, and in which powerful online social networking services facilitate user-to-user sharing of information on a massive scale, it is tempting to think that the traditional news media has become disempowered. But although major changes have occurred in the dissemination of news, there is no question that the news media retains an exceptionally powerful role in news-gathering and in agenda-setting. What the news media chooses to cover and how it chooses to cover it continues to deserve our attention, particularly when it pertains to the violent and senseless taking of human life.
- Conflict Trends, Issue 4, 2014