In the first few days after Boko Haram\u2019s recent attack in the remote village of Baga, most of the news coverage I saw about it concerned the lack of news. Why, the media wondered, was the media not more interested? As many as 2,000 people had been slaughtered, a figure that, if true, would dwarf the number killed in Paris around the same time.<\/p>\n
A big reason the Boko Haram killings haven\u2019t gotten much press is that there isn\u2019t much press there. Baga is extremely remote, with little or no cell service, and it is, by all accounts, a war zone. Nor is the Nigerian government cooperative, or forthcoming, about what\u2019s going on: The military claims no more than 150 people were killed, including militants. President Goodluck Jonathan, who is in the midst of a reelection campaign, hasn\u2019t even publicly commented on the attack.<\/p>\n
But even if the western media had been more present, I\u2019m not convinced the western audience would have been more interested. Because, at bottom, there\u2019s a pervading sense here that what happened in Paris was decidedly not normal, while what happened in Nigeria decidedly was.<\/p>\n
And normal, unfortunately, doesn\u2019t make the news.<\/p>\n