Do Black Lives Really matter?

 Do Black Lives Matter?  Of course they do!  But not equally for all people, in all nations, and in all newspapers.  According to the Declaration of Independence, the Bible, Quran, the Torah and every other major religion’s fundamental scriptures every human life matters.  What follows is a relatively detailed analysis of two major US newspapers with contrasting political agendas.

Context:  The mass atrocities of blacks in Africa are usually relegated to the back pages of major US newspapers, if they are covered at all.  Even during the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and at its peak.  But it was spreading to other nations as some papers indicated.

On December 16^th, 2020  the news coverage from two different news papers did cover a renewed troubling trend in Africa (at least one of the trends).   Both the Washington Post and the Washington Times gave significant coverage of the kidnapping of “more than 330 students from the Government Science Secondary School in Kankara” Nigeria.  It occurred nearly a week ago.  

The Washington Times: Our nation’s largest and our nation’s capital’s largest conservative newspaper placed an Associated Press article on page A7 with about 20 inches of print column space and one picture (about 10 sq inches of graphics in one photo).  Together totaling about 13% of a full sized newspaper page.  It’s website didn’t list any reference to it on it’s long list off issues on the first screen. Looking under “World” news…again no link to this story scrolling down 24 stories. Moving to the next screen (#2) under “World” and 14 news stories…nothing.  And moving on to the last (#3) screen options there was nothing except 19 more news story links. 

Searching its website using the word “Nigeria” the story is found the third story down. 

Boko Haram claims abduction of students in northern Nigeria - Washington Times

But I was unable to get a story word count because of its subscription Popups…regardless of my having a paid paper and web subscription.

The Washington Post: The moderate Washington Post (liberal, socialist, lying newspaper according to the Washington Times) appeared significantly more interested in Africans that are still in Africa.

The WPost story received front page coverage, top of the bottom fold, and was continued on A-7 with a total word count of 1129 covering approx. 36 inches of print column plus over 100 square inches of graphics (three pictures and a map). Together these totaled approximately 70% of a full-sized newspaper page.

It was nowhere to be found on the Post’s leading webpage…unless you looked under “World” and then “Africa” and then scrolled one story down (under the ‘French Military use of Facebook’ to mess with Africa).  This story was covered by the Posts own in house journalist. 

I don’t think either paper would print this for obvious reasons.  For the Post it is too long.  For the WTimes it could be too embarrassing.  Or, for either, it might be because it’s about Blacks that don’t life in the US and their lives just don’t matter enough – to them, their readers, their advertisers, or maybe even the US BLM movement.