Chris Hayes points out the difference French and U.S. coverage
Chris Hayes described the difference in the manner in which the French and the U.S. are covering the attack in Paris. Anyone reading European newspapers or watching European videos would be shocked. America’s coverage looks like a hyperventilating fear mongering production. For the most part the Europeans have been circumspect.
One must ask a very important question. Is the 24/7 American coverage warranted? We have had many massacres in America and after a few days they are off to a different story.
Chris Hayes points out that in France the debate has little to do with the refugees from Syria. After-all, most if not all the assailants were European nationals. In the United States the misreporting lead many to believe that the assailants infiltrated the refugees and as such bringing refugees to America is some sort of danger.
Worse however is the narrative that one can stop ISIS by bombing the holy hell out of Syria and Iraq. The fact that the nature of the Paris attacks did not necessitate the existence of ISIS in Syria or Iraq never stopped the false narrative. The President in responding to reporter’s rather unintelligent questions said as much. If one finds that some attack seemed to have come from any of dozens of other countries, do you bomb them all? And what do you bomb?
It is mind boggling how easy it is for the neocon experts to manipulate the media into a frenzy and for the media to then scare Americans into a behavior that is neither practical, nor pragmatic, nor effective to solve the problems at hand. This type of frenzy is best applied to our American born mass killers than to terrorists an ocean away.
Chris Hayes closing statement is probative. “In the States on the other hand, all of the focus have been on the Syrian refugees despite the fact that the U.S. is removed by an ocean and a long bureaucratic process from the tens and hundreds of thousands of refugees that have been streaming from the Middle East up into Europe,” Hayes said. “You know sometimes in the wake of a crisis or a tragedy people say something must be done. And this is something. Therefore it must be done. And it is that kind of reasoning frankly that have gotten us into the most destructive debacles in recent memory. Let’s not forget that in the wake of the anger and grief people naturally feel at the hands of the mass slaughter that’s happen in the streets of Paris here.”
Well said.