When it comes to tragic events in the news, why do we care so much for some people, and not so much for others? Huffington Post Good News editor Riddhi Shah asks this question in a recent blog post, Sikh Temple Shooting: Why Do the Media Care Less About This Attack? She writes:
On Sunday night I turned on the TV to find that only CNN was covering the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin that killed six. Fox News had a program about a prison in Latin America, and MSNBC, something else that was equally irrelevant. Compare this to the coverage of an incident that happened only two weeks ago, the shooting that killed 12 people in Aurora, Colo. Networks devoted themselves round-the-clock to the attack: Who was the shooter? Why did he do it? There were entire segments dedicated (rightly) to covering the vigils and a community in mourning. This time, there was none of that. Instead, TV commentators asked tentative questions about religion that few had heard of. There was none of the sense of outrage that followed the Aurora massacre, none of the national heartbreak and grief that seemed so pervasive only two weeks ago.
Joining HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill and Riddhi Shah to discuss the issue are Huffington Post media editor Jack Mirkinson, Aseem Chhabra, board member of SAJA and columnist for Mumbai Times, Narinder Singh, Chairman of the board of the Sikh Coalition, a national educational and advocacy group, and Rowaida Abdelaziz, a student and activist from New Jersey.