Did You Hear About This News Story?

                                  Briefing Report's underreported: The headlines that didn't quite make the cut

By Juliette Lyons & Christina Anagnostopoulos

This week, big news dominated the headlines. We all discovered that HSBC were the negligent bad guys, that a young American aid worker was killed in the Middle East, that today Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany are negotiating peace deals in Minsk, that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on trial for pimping, that the new Greek government discussed bailout conditions with European leaders, and shamefully, Kim Kardashian's new haircut made the headlines too. However, we found out about some pretty awful news; news that is far more worthy of being on the front pages than Kim's latest hairstyle. But this news received very little attention from the media. At least in its immediate aftermath and at the time of writing this post. How much have you heard about this story?

Yesterday, in North Carolina, three young Muslims were shot dead in their home (The Chapel Hill Shooting). Why? Because of their faith. Why have we not been bombarded about it like the Charlie Hebdo attacks? Because of the all too common, unfair partiality of Western media.

Sure, it's been reported, but although  #ChapelHillShooting is currently the first global trend on twitter, the reaction is quite different than that of the 48 hours following the Paris attacks. This raises a few questions about our way of valuing newsworthy stories. You can read about it here on various news sources:

THE INDEPENDENT: Three young Muslims gunned down in North Carolina family home

AL JAZEERA: Chapel Hill shooting and Western media bigotry

THE TELEGRAPH: Three American Muslims killed

THE BBC: North Carolina man charged

An image from twitter early this morning

Sky news reported here to know little about Craig Hicks, the murderer, and the correspondent claimed this to be generally a surprise in North Carolina where there are just some "outspoken individuals with independent thoughts". That's condemning.

The Independent's news page looked (quite rightly) like this:

The BBC News World homepage however, disappointingly buried the shooting deep among the page's smallest headlines.

Likewise, Reuters also reserved a tiny sub-heading for the event on their principal homepage, and the shooting does not even appear on their World news section:

The Guardian, however, did place the shooting high up on its front page:

We stand against unfair reporting of the news. 'Unfair' does not imply that other headlines, such as violence in Ukraine or migration issues, are less worthy of news. They absolutely are. But when strategic or political interest takes precedence over just reporting, then then media as a whole loses its value. These three, apparently carefree, motivated and happy young people were killed in an abhorrent act of violence. The North Carolina killer might be a lone wolf, but he is just as lone a wolf as the Kouachi brothers in Paris. Double-standards should not be tolerated, and not giving this news the attention it deserves is not only insulting to the victims and their families, but deters from meaningful discussions that must take place in defence of muslims who find themselves victims of Islamophobia.