SLAUGHTER AT FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC IN MUBI NIGERIA

October 2,2012

Do you remember the Columbine High School massacre in 1999? Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting spree that cost the lives of 12 students and one teacher; they then killed themselves. Or what about Virginia Tec? Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people there before turning the gun on himself. If you had been old enough to understand what was going on, the chances are that you would remember these stories, as the papers were full of the news for many days after the events.

On Tuesday night, about 26 students were gunned down by unidentified gunmen while they were in their dorms in Nigeria's north-eastern town of Mubi in Adamawa state. Reports say that the students were called out by name before being shot. The incident could have been a revenge attack by the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, as some of their operatives had been arrested in the area a few days earlier, or it could have been linked to political feuding following student elections. Whatever the reason, the story has so far received low-key coverage in much of the world press. The tragedy happened too early for many of today's front pages, but it will be interesting to see where the story will be placed in tomorrow's papers. So far coverage on the web has been minimal.

Is it that the media is responsible for people's ethnocentric interests when it comes to news, or does the media simply reflect existing attitudes? I suspect it could be a bit of both. Nevertheless, the media does have a responsibility to report what is newsworthy in an equitable way and a tragedy is a tragedy, wherever it takes place.