A mere four days after the mosque massacre in New Zealand, MRC Culture managing editor Matt Philbin had had enough. He was clearly tired of hearing about murdered Muslims, and he wanted in on some of that massacre coverage action for his own religion.
That seems to explain the whataboutism in Philbin’s March 19 piece demanding alleged atrocities committed by “Islamists” against Christians in Africa:
People in and out of media are having a useful discussion these days: Since it’s clear terrorists like the animals in Christchurch want recognition, what is the appropriate way to cover their outrages? How much information should be available about the murderers and their intentions?
When it comes to more routine outrages that happen across the Third World, the question for the media is simpler: Should we cover it at all? Most often, the answer is no. Certainly not if the perpetrators are Muslim and the victims Christian. But really, no combination of aggressor/aggrieved is of much interest to the media because, for all their one-worldly pretensions, they don’t much care about violence outside developed Western nations. ABC, CBS and NBC have all ignored the extreme violence against African Christians occurring in the last month.
Varying reports say that anywhere from 120 to 280 Christians have been slaughtered by Islamist militias in Nigeria since Feb. 9.
Philbin then slipped into MRC conspiracy mode, complaining that the media had insufficiently covered “violence against Christians in majority Muslim countries” and whining that “Islamist violence hasn’t disappeared, the networks have only gotten worse at covering it.
Philbin’s point is all too obvious: Dead Christians are inherently more newsworthy than dead Muslims, and even more so when Muslims can be blamed for it.