The Bombs in Bombay
Jul. 13th, 2006 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieIt's been two days since multiple bombs went off on commuter trains in Mumbai, killing at least 200 people and injuring at least 700. My deepest sympathies to the victims, the families, and the people of India. It's a horrible act of terrorism, with the perpetrators currently unknown. There's been some finger-pointing at Muslim separatist groups, but so far they've denied involvment. The death toll is higher than the Madrid bombings and the London bombings.
Yet two days after the bombings, the story has pretty much fallen off the front page of most of the online newspapers I look at. It's certainly "below the fold" in Web terms; no picture-link, no graf lede. Now perhaps I'm misremembering, but I seem to recall that the London bombings were above-the-fold for at least a week after they happened, and the Madrid bombings were above-the-fold nearly as long.
So why so relatively quiet about Mumbai? This is a huge attack in one of the world's major cities. Surely it's worth some prolonged attention.
Perhaps the relative quiet stems from the fact that there isn't a clear culprit yet, unlike the other bombings, where terrorist groups were pretty quick to step up and say they'd done it and/or video cameras caught the perpetrators on film. Perhaps it's a time zone thing; India is about 12 hours ahead, although in this Internet age that doesn't mean as much as it used to. And perhaps the more cynical voices in the media are right, that we don't care as much because of some inherent racism or nationalism or whatever. Some or all of these factors are probably contributors.
But you know what I think? I think another significant factor is that most Americans don't know where Mumbai is - that it is the modern name for BOMBAY. Most of the news sites I read have been properly using its modern name (only the Washington Post has consistently used Bombay instead). But in this case, I think the near-exclusive use of the modern name has done the story a disservice, at least as far as really getting the news out to the American audience. Because I don't think most of the country knew (or knows) that Mumbai is Bombay. We don't have a catchy tune about it, after all. (If you've a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul...) And like most humans, Americans care more about the familiar; the impact is just that much greater when you can associate a name with a place you've heard of or visited or read about. Like it or not, most Americans are far more familiar with Bombay than Mumbai.
Yet two days after the bombings, the story has pretty much fallen off the front page of most of the online newspapers I look at. It's certainly "below the fold" in Web terms; no picture-link, no graf lede. Now perhaps I'm misremembering, but I seem to recall that the London bombings were above-the-fold for at least a week after they happened, and the Madrid bombings were above-the-fold nearly as long.
So why so relatively quiet about Mumbai? This is a huge attack in one of the world's major cities. Surely it's worth some prolonged attention.
Perhaps the relative quiet stems from the fact that there isn't a clear culprit yet, unlike the other bombings, where terrorist groups were pretty quick to step up and say they'd done it and/or video cameras caught the perpetrators on film. Perhaps it's a time zone thing; India is about 12 hours ahead, although in this Internet age that doesn't mean as much as it used to. And perhaps the more cynical voices in the media are right, that we don't care as much because of some inherent racism or nationalism or whatever. Some or all of these factors are probably contributors.
But you know what I think? I think another significant factor is that most Americans don't know where Mumbai is - that it is the modern name for BOMBAY. Most of the news sites I read have been properly using its modern name (only the Washington Post has consistently used Bombay instead). But in this case, I think the near-exclusive use of the modern name has done the story a disservice, at least as far as really getting the news out to the American audience. Because I don't think most of the country knew (or knows) that Mumbai is Bombay. We don't have a catchy tune about it, after all. (If you've a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul...) And like most humans, Americans care more about the familiar; the impact is just that much greater when you can associate a name with a place you've heard of or visited or read about. Like it or not, most Americans are far more familiar with Bombay than Mumbai.
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Date: 2006-07-14 03:19 am (UTC)