Massacre In The Philippines

3:39 am EST November 25th, 2009 | Media | 7 Comments

I happened to hear of this story because I happened to be watching France 24. This is the kind of thing I thought should be mentioned in some detail on any one of the three twenty-four hour news stations we’ve got domestically. But no.

The discovery Tuesday of a mass grave containing 22 victims from the ambush of an election caravan the day before brought the death toll to 46 – an unprecedented act of violence at the outset of the country’s election season.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of emergency in Maguindanao province, sending extra troops and police to try to impose law.

Few think she will succeed. The impoverished, lawless region has been outside the central government’s reach for generations, and warlords there are backed by private armies and go by their own rules.

Authorities said the dead included at least 13 Filipino journalists who were accompanying relatives and backers of gubernatorial candidate Ismael Mangudadatu on their way to file his nomination papers for May elections.

Reporters Without Borders notes that this is the worst single-day murder of journalists, ever.

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7 Responses to “Massacre In The Philippines”

  1. anotherbozo says:
    November 25, 2009 at 10:00 am

    Network moguls here were aware of the story. They just couldn’t figure out any way to tie it in to holiday shopping…

  2. Parthenon says:
    November 25, 2009 at 10:06 am

    Serious. Dead Asians = uninteresting for the big American networks, unless it’s in the thousands. I had a project a few years back comparing two same-night broadcasts. The BBC’s lead story was a rather large terror attack in Varanasi, ABC’s was the death of Dana Reeve.

  3. Lonya says:
    November 25, 2009 at 10:17 am

    People spend so much time focusing on the relative political biases of MSNBC, CNN, and Fox that they often overlook how totally devoid of content they are. This is paritcularly acute in terms of international news. It is shameful actually.

    English-language French, Russian, Nigerian, Japanese, Dutch, Euro, and Mid-East broadcasts are available on my cable but I don’t know how available they are outside my (DC) area.

  4. Lonya says:
    November 25, 2009 at 10:27 am

    It is not just dead Asians that are ‘uninteresting’ (although I agree with that point)Parthenon but anything that doesn’t have a US connection.

    Global piracy? Huge problem for over a decade with huge implications for global trade etc. And not just off Somalia but the Straits of Malacca and more. Any attention to it before the M/V Maersk Alabama? Nope. Then it gets its 15 minutes.

  5. jr says:
    November 25, 2009 at 11:25 am

    “it’s so far away, it might as well be on Mars”-cable news

  6. Viceroy Matt says:
    November 25, 2009 at 12:09 pm

    The Newseum in DC has a large panel of photos of murdered journalists. Alarmingly, there is a massive amount of white space, presumably for future victims.

  7. Cory says:
    November 29, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    I heard about it on NPR. Is that more or less communist brainwashing than French TV?