What made the Paris attack more newsworthy than Boko Haram's assault on Baga? | World news | The GuardianWhat made the Paris attack more newsworthy than Boko Haram's assault on Baga? | World news | The Guardian










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What made the Paris attack more newsworthy than Boko Haram's assault on Baga?









Why were the Paris terror attacks given more column inches than the Boko Haram attack on Baga in north-east Nigeria? We round up some of the key pillars of the reader debate 

















This photo from 2013 shows the remains of a house in the remote north-east Nigerian town of Baga, in Borno State, following clashes between Boko Haram Islamist insurgents and the army. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images




Maeve Shearlaw






@maeveshearlaw





Tuesday 13 January 2015 09.46 EST







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Why did the world focus on the Paris terror attacks, which left 17 dead, but pay little attention to a Boko Haram assault that may have left as many as 2000 civilians dead in the north-eastern state of Borno?
Reporting from the area is notoriously difficult and dangerous, and residents often lack basic communication infrastructure. But are there bigger reasons why the assault on Baga received less media attention than the attacks in Paris? 
Do media houses in Africa and across the world have a responsibility to ensure that events like those in Baga don’t go unnoticed? These are not easy questions to answer, and in the last few days, they have been widely debated online.
We’ve rounded up some of the key pillars of debate among Guardian readers from Nigeria, France and beyond.
The Nigerian view: ‘failed by our leaders’
For many of our Nigerian readers, the blame lay at home. 



  



 Irokosu 


12 January 2015 2:36pm


I think the Nigerian Press have the primary obligation to report the news. They failed the Nation and themselves. People treat you the way you treat yourself. There was an outrage in France over the deaths but not in Nigeria. It's unfortunate. It's either they've been compromised by the political class or their sense of outrage is now numb. I am a Nigerian and we need to sort ourselves out. I would spare the western press.




Others felt let down by their political leaders. Ehi Ekhator (NCN) said: “the lives of Nigerians are not important to the leaders and the ordinary citizens”. Ekhator added that “people are now used to the news of death.” 
This was backed up by Nigeria journalist Joel Nwokeoma who took to Twitter to say that “the world ignored #BokoHaram’s #Baga attacks because Nigerian leaders themselves never showed any concern.”


— Joel Nwokeoma (@okoromajoel)
January 12, 2015
@GuardianAfrica @MaeveShearlaw The world ignored #BokoHaram's #Baga attacks because Nigerian leaders themselves never showed any concern.



NgunanMo “a Nigerian, currently in Nigeria” gave a few thoughts on what lay behind the lack of media coverage. Firstly, they said they believe “the presidency controls everything going on here,” including the media, and that Nigerian journalists are too a scared to report in the region. “Nigeria’s situation is seemingly hopeless. The only good that can happen to this nation is a change in leadership,” NgunanMo added.

As a Nigerian I would say it boils down to our leaders not valuing the lives of the citizens

Zizou007 who said they had “just got back from Nigeria yesterday” pointed to what they see as a “bigger issue of inaction” in tackling the Islamic militant group, which has fought an insurgency since 2009 that is believed to have claimed more than 13,000 lives. “While these horrific crimes are being committed [in the north], there is a perception (in my view) that Nigerians in the south almost see this as happening in another country. So while they are sympathetic to the victims, they don’t feel as affected.”
Ogunleye Segun said: “As a Nigerian I would say it boils down to our leaders not valuing the lives of the citizens. In the western world a life is valued and the leaders would do anything to uphold it but sadly same cannot be said of Nigeria in particular and Africa as a whole.” He also pointed to a “power differential in terms of control of global media” – the west controls the big media houses so if something happens in Paris it make sense that it would be more widely reported. 
‘Our thoughts extended beyond Paris’
We also heard from Brian Milne, who said he had taken part in one of the unity marches held across France at the weekend. He said that for some, the march commemorated more than the Paris killings; it was about a broader struggle for rights and freedom of expression. Reader AnonForNowThanks reported seeing homemade signs referring to events in Nigeria, Pakistan and Gaza at the demonstration he attended. 



  



 Brian Milne 


12 January 2015 8:07pm


This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate


Some of us did not. We included Nigeria, Raif Badawi and Waleed Abulkhair, Pakistan and other important events in our march here in this part of France. Others did in Paris and elsewhere. However the main focus was on the Charlie Hebdo killings for the French, that was entirely emotionally their limit and probably understandable, but others including some French folk thought beyond the single event. Moreover, it was for us not about Islam only because we included journalists in Russia as victims of an oppressive regime that will not allow freedom of speech and other comparable things worldwide.




The targets
We then heard a wide range of views. Some felt that the main target of the first of the Paris attacks – the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo – gave the mainstream media more impetus to report it. Others blamed a deductive western narrative of Africa which has roots in colonial history; a few echoed the problems with reporting in areas controlled by Boko Haram; and in a nod to the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo, some shared satirical cartoons attempting to depict the areas of debate.



  



 Michèle Fulford 


13 January 2015 7:01am


The outrage in France wasn't just about 12 anonymous people; more than one generation grew up with the cartoons and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo. More though, it was fundamentally directed at defending the right to freedom of expression, in France and elsewhere. The marches and newspaper coverage were essentially defending this right. 
Of course, people are also outraged about the atrocious massacres instigated by Boko Haram but feel powerless to act. Could similar marches and newspaper coverage help the situation in Nigeria?







  



 secretpeople 


13 January 2015 10:43am


I was under the impression the massive coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attacks was down to most victims being journalists. MSM writing about its own; fearing where terrorists' attentions would turn next and the quandary of whether they ought to modify their own output to appease them.







  



 sanhedrin 


12 January 2015 5:50pm


This comment has been chosen by Guardian staff because it contributes to the debate


The answer is highly complex. Mainstream media reporting is tied into a wider geo-political system of global power through which a range of ideas about places such as Nigeria are implanted into the minds of millions. These associative ideas are deep-rooted, dating back to presentations of Africa in British, Dutch and French journalism and literature as primitive and savage in nature. Their influence has grown in the 19th and 20th centuries through developments in mass production and distribution of print media, as well as the rise of cinema and television. Not only have they implanted reflex responses to the various crises of African countries throughout the 20th century, they have shaped the attitudes of millions of Africans to themselves, cultivating pathologies of inferiority that occasionally manifests itself in irrational rage. In sum, to answer this question, go back to Chinua Achebe's brilliant novel of traditional life in Nigeria and its breakdown in the colonial era - 'Things Fall Apart'.




Problems with reporting 



  



 Akhabue 


13 January 2015 10:33am


The Nigerian Union of Journalists and Nigerian researchers on the Kanuri Boko Haram and Fulani Jihad should be contacted by foreign news media to provide accurate background information and update on the current civil war.







  



 goingbroke 


13 January 2015 11:00am


Agree. But there is a small problem (read: big problem). There is too much corruption in N government and the army is poorly equipped and the morale is low. So the govt does not want reporting! It would expose all the people living on backhanders and corrupt wheeler-dealers etc. Anyone reporting such shameful facts about Nigeria's system would become a target. So no one wants to report on these things, except maybe from distance. It is just incredibly unsafe to work there for the truth. We need an army of brave Nigerian reporters to do it.




In satire 


— Harry Burton (@HBtoons)
January 13, 2015
#Nigeria2000 @wearerabble pic.twitter.com/8YP7PyRSEi





— David Walker (@DavidCWalker)
January 13, 2015
#bagatogether #jesuisbaga ht @WolfOfNewStreet @GuardianAfrica @MaeveShearlaw pic.twitter.com/tWE8WS4cKp






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