Boston Marathon Bombs

[needawin]

Can we now call a halt to the minute by minute coverage day after day about the Boston bomb.
Hundreds are killed almost daily by bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan in wars started by USA and Blair. A few seconds coverage is all we see of them.
I am sick looking at whooping and hollering Americans.

[Brenden]

Don't look then needawin - you have choices.

[emmie]

i think the reason that they were whooping and hollering was out of sheer relief that it was over. the place had been in lockdown, the citizens were told by the police to stay home as there was an armed and dangerous man on the loose, what would you do. Personally i would have cried for the three who were killed, and over a hundred injured. To equate this to those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq seems wrong. We don't know why these two young brothers planted those bombs, if indeed they did, it makes no sense at all. They had lived in the US for years, what was the grudge?

[needawin]

The USA has sent out a dangerous message here.
If you want 5 days of non stop coverage on worldwide TV for your cause then one bomb in America will guarantee you that.

[emmie]

you surely don't believe that.

[paddywak]

While I sympathise with victims of this act of terrorism I wander how many Bostonians think back to the days when they willingly contributed to NORAID, effectively funding the IRA in it's bombing campaign against civilians on the streets of Britain.

[Zacs-Master]

What about the message: bombing (or attempting to) the US will probably result in your death

[emmie]

it's news, the coverage for 9/11 was massive, this will recede, perhaps it's on here so much is because the London marathon is on today, so shortly after, and that many of the runners do it for charity, perhaps that is lost on some.

[emmie]

many Americans didn't know about that Paddy. Some still refuse to accept it.

[jim360]

I like the part where Blair is the only person from this country blamed for Iraq along with an entire country of 300 million people.

News of tragedies in Iraq is always going to be less close to home than anything similar in the US or UK. Even if it is smaller.

[emmie]

jim, most who were aware of what was going on didn't want to go to war, what makes you think that 300 million Americans did, nor many here in Britain. People took to the streets to protest as i recall. Politicians cause wars, as do dictators, it's just the people are the ones who pay the price for their idiocy.

[Prudie]

Totally agree with paddywak

[jim360]

It was meant to be a sarcastic comment about the Original post, though that's probably been lost in the text as usual. Sorry for the confusion.

I think about a million people protested against the war in the UK, probably many more were also against it but didn't/ couldn't/ didn't want to protest that day. But there are also quite a few others in the UK who supported the war, or who helped it to happen. And in the US, too, there's going to have been some division between for and against. Maybe a greater number for, but still not the whole nation. So I was having a go at needawin's generalisation rather than supporting it.

[bridi]

Perhaps the citizens of Boston USA now know how all the contribrutions they made to the IRA were spent & the heartache & death that it caused in Northen Ireland !!!

[needawin]

Zacs master, speaking of killing Americans. Are you aware that since the Connecticut school shootings not so long ago there have been over 3000 people shot dead in USA by their own gun toting communities!

[Zacs-Master]

Completely different subject.

[Gromit]

On the April 7th, a US airstike on Afghanistan killed 17 civilians, 12 of them children. But the newsrooms don't have live pictures to fill their 24 hour screensaver they call news coverage. If they did have footage, it would probably be too grusome to show anyway.

In contrast, the US beams us a saturation of images from Boston. There isn't really anything to see - police cars in the dark, an interview with a man who sdidn't see anything, a man in uniform giving updates. But all this pap is "live", unfolding, ongoing and fills the screens with a rotation of dofferent images.

The result is an entirely disproportionate amount of airtime to one story, and almost non of the other.

The Boston bomb was a big story to Americans. Less so for us. The British TV news media over did this story.

[DTCwordfan]

You are forgetting the linkage, Gromit, not the 'special relationship, but that 72000 feet in London are pounding the pavements, cobbles and tarmac this morning.....and hence the security and emotional issues behind that. That's what drove this story and I bet the London organisers and Met Police were mighty relieved when it came in that it was two Americans, albeit immigrants, that were at the heart of it - and the bombs did appear to be relatively crude to Al Qaeda ones.

[Gromit]

I disagree DTC. I believe the coverage would have been the same if the London Marathon was not this weekend. It was not that fuelling the story for the BBC and ITN, in fact there was very little comment about the London event today.
The British news agencies have access to US rolling news networks and it is like watching a live episode of CSI. The news editors can't resist.

[FredPuli43]

These bombs killed and injured Americans in America. No other explanation is necessary. Wars and invasions have been started for less ! And the public there is happy and relieved at the captures, and the citizens of Boston can go about without fear for the moment. That seems reason enough for hollering.