On 17 July, late afternoon, Al Jazeera English already had one big
story, the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine. By the end of the day,
however, this was replaced by another story which required round the
clock coverage (involving much repetition and conjecture). After
several days of exchange of rockets into Israel and airstrikes into
Gaza, Israel launched a full-scale ground offensive on the strip. By 6
August, more than 1850 Palestinians had been killed, together with over
50 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
For days, the BBC's coverage took up 10 minutes (of a 30 minute bulletin),
Channel 4 News' 20 minutes (of a 55 minute bulletin). On 29 July, AJE spent all of one of its
Newshour programmes on Gaza.
In Libya there were
dramatic developments that were largely unremarked (
'Dozens of bodies' at captured base in Benghazi). Some places that had their moment in the spotlight,
such as the CAR, now receive less attention. Others have never had much attention:
Eritrea is only mentioned when refugees from there are drowned or, sometimes, rescued, trying to reach Italy.
And then there's Syria: in one week at the end of July,
it is believed that more than 1700 were killed.
True, while the barrel-bombs no doubt continue to fall on Aleppo and
elsewhere, many of the "extra" deaths seem to be due to greater
intensity of fighting, between ISIL and other rebel groups, between
ISIL and the regime.
To some extent, this is due to resources:
where they are scarce, they are focused on "the big story" of the
moment. But mainly it is a question of access. As C4News made clear on
a couple of occasions, journalists are able to get into the Gaza strip
via Israel ("eventually"). Hamas, after the 2007 kidnapping of the BBC's correspondent, Alan Johnston, also now sees its interest in allowing the story to be reported.
In
contrast, as one BBC man put it, western journalists who go into
ISIL-controlled areas will be kidnapped and held for ransom. This is
one reason, amongst others, that,
pace Benjamin Netanyahu and various Israeli spokesmen, Hamas is not ISIL.
Eventually,
the spotlight moved on: while violence resumed after the end of the
first 72-hour ceasefire, it was at a lower level (
more than 1,900 Palestinians now killed);
on 3 Aug, ISIL ("the Islamic State") captured Sinjar in Northern Iraq
and the Yazidi population, faced with a choice of convert to Islam or
die, fled to the mountain, where many died of thirst (
Yazidis 'buried alive').
Few could argue that Israel matched
this barbarity.
