Why Some Wars Get More Attention Than Others

Because of you, NY Times, because of you and your friends. You're literally the creators of attention to stuff, so please explain to us, why you chose to cover one war, and ignore another?

> You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!

- The Joker, The Dark Knight

Wars in some backwater country we've never heard of, or in somewhere that we've always thought of as 'one of those bad places that have wars'? That's not news, that's all in the script. Wars in somewhere we care about? Wars in our own back yard? They get attention because they're not in the script.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar et al. are able to hire high roller lobbyists and spread "wealth" to power brokers in DC. That much attention is given Syria with lot of propaganda on Twitter by PR agencies hired by Saudi et al. These same groups are also spreading "wealth" to suppress news about Yemen.

Wikipedia on Yemeni war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2015%E2%80%9...

There are three major sides in the war:

- Houthi, basically Shia Muslims

- Hadi, supported by Saudi Arabia (Sunnis) and the US

- al-Qaeda, ISIS etc.

"The Houthis have long been accused of being proxies for Iran, since they both follow Shia Islam. (Although the Iranians are Twelve-Imam Shias and the Houthis are Five-Imam Shias.) The United States and Saudi Arabia have alleged that the Houthis receive weapons and training from Iran.[87] The Houthis and Iranian government have denied any affiliation.[88]"

Detailed map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Yemeni_Civil_War_deta...

"A coalition led by Saudi Arabia[6] launched military operations by using airstrikes to restore the former Yemeni government and the United States provided intelligence and logistical support for the campaign.[4] According to the UN, from March 2015 to August 2016, over 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen, including 3,799 civilians.[58]"

No wars "get attention". The media, who makes money by manipulating the masses, puts them on screen and on paper. So the people talk about them. So they get attention. NYTimes should ask himself and its competitors, how they pick the wars they report about.

I think it's because American's media. They like viewership. Some stupid war gets coverage than other.

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Why Some Wars (Like Syria’s) Get More Attention Than Others (Like Yemen’s)

Damage in a house after a Saudi-led airstrike last month in Yemen, whose war has not gotten much attention. MOHAMED AL-SAYAGHI / REUTERS OCTOBER 1, 2016 The Interpreter By AMANDA TAUB It is a truth universally acknowledged by every war correspondent, humanitarian aid worker and Western diplomat: Some wars, like Syria’s, receive tremendous public attention, which can translate into pressure for resolution. But many others, like Yemen’s still raging but much ignored conflict, do not.

Some of the reasons are obvious; the scale of Syria’s war is catastrophic and much worse than Yemen’s. But attention is about more than numbers. The conflict in eastern Congo, for instance, killed millions of people and displaced millions more, but received little global attention.

Every country in the world has its own version of that dynamic, but it is uniquely significant in the United States.

The United States is the world’s sole remaining superpower, but Americans often seem so inward-looking as to be almost provincial. Foreigners often express wonder that American television news, for instance, spends fewer minutes covering the rest of the world than the rest of the world’s news shows spend covering America.

A result is that American attention seems both vitally important and frustratingly elusive.

But when the world asks why America has forgotten Yemen and other conflicts like it, that has the situation backward. The truth is that inattention is the default, not the exception.

Conflicts gain sustained American attention only when they provide a compelling story line that appeals to both the public and political actors, and for reasons beyond the human toll. That often requires some combination of immediate relevance to American interests, resonance with American political debates or cultural issues, and, perhaps most of all, an emotionally engaging frame of clearly identifiable good guys and bad guys.

Most wars — including those in South Sudan, Sri Lanka and, yes, Yemen — do not, and so go ignored. Syria is a rare exception, and for reasons beyond its severity.

The war is now putting United States’ interests at risk, including the lives of its citizens, giving Americans a direct stake in it. The Islamic State has murdered American hostages and committed terrorist attacks in the West.

And the war offers a compelling tale of innocent victims and dastardly villains. The Islamic State is a terrorist organization with a penchant for crucifixions and beheadings. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his patrons in Iran are hostile to the United States and responsible for terrible atrocities. And now Russia, which is at best America’s frenemy, is fighting on their side as well.

The Obama administration’s refusal to bomb Syria in 2013, and subsequently to intervene more fully, has also made this a domestic political dispute, giving politicians on both sides an incentive to dig in. This provided an appealing focal point for election-year political debates over Mr. Obama’s foreign policy and for how to assign blame for the Middle East’s collapse. Those debates have sharpened and sustained domestic attention on Syria, giving both the public and politicians reason to emphasize the war’s importance.

But it is rare for so many stars to align.

Yemen’s death toll is lower than Syria’s, and although Al Qaeda does operate there, Yemen’s conflict has not had the kind of impact on American and European interests that Syria’s has. There is no obvious good-versus-evil story to tell there: The country is being torn apart by a variety of warring factions on the ground and pummeled from the air by Saudi Arabia, an American ally. There is no camera-ready villain for Americans to root against.

A woman and child after an airstrike in Syria on Friday. AMER ALMOHIBANY / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES The war’s narrative is less appealing to American political interests. Yemen’s Houthi rebels pose little direct threat that American politicians might rally against. On the other side of the conflict are Saudi airstrikes that are killing civilians and targeting hospitals and aid workers, at times with United States support.

No American politician has much incentive to call attention to this war, which would require either criticizing the United States and an American ally, or else playing up the threat from an obscure Yemeni rebel group. It is little wonder that, when several senators recently tried to push a bill to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia over its conduct in Yemen, they found only a few sponsors and the motion was tabled in a 71-to-27 vote."

In a democracy, we're all morally culpable for what our government is doing. In this case, the idea that our government is using our tax dollars to arm an ally that is intentionally targeting hospitals and aid workers, is extremely concerning. As the holocaust has shown, pleading ignorance is no defense against such crimes against humanity. I can only wonder what future generations will think about us when they look back on our apathy and implicit acceptance of such abominable behavior.

They are obviously not isolated wars, and the reasons they give are transparently fake.

Look at a map. https://www.google.com/maps/vt/data=RfCSdfNZ0LFPrHSm0ublXdzh...

Yemen is a choke point.

Syria is in an extremely strategically important position both in terms of territory and it is an ally to Iran.

Iraq and Afghanistan are on each side of Iran.

Egypt was blocking the Libya invasion. That was a cyber-intelligence coup, not a 'democratic revolution'.

All of these are part of an extended military campaign that goes back decades. Or centuries. Or thousands of years, depending on how you count it.

It is amazing that people don't see the connection between ISIS -- a supposedly Muslim enemy that (currently) somehow all of our enemies conveniently fall under the umbrella of, and the other ones that came before it -- Al Qaeda.. all the way back to the Crusades.

Anyway, I am going to take an image of this comment. If it is deleted or flagged or something, that is how you know that Hacker News is also part of the propaganda party.