Yesterday brought 470 new immigrants to the Sicilian coast town of Pozzallo, from four different rescue operations in the Mediterranean. One trafficker was arrested not only for promoting clandestine entry into Europe but also for the death of one immigrant who died suffocated under the weight of too many people in one rubber raft. Can you imagine? After having spent years working your way up from sub-Saharan Africa, braving poverty, hunger, danger, the desert, thieves, killers and rapists, you finally get on a craft for your final destination and are suffocated to death by the actions of a greedy trafficker who wants to shove and beat ten more innocents aboard?
Among the rescued were a pregnant woman and fifteen children, the smallest of whom was three years old.
If they were white immigrants, say Caucasian Syrians, this would have made the U.S. news. But they were black African immigrants, and there was no mention of them in the New York Times. I am sure the members of the Rome bureau of the New York Times, and every other news organization over there, read the same Italian news I do every day. Guess it was not news that was "fit to print" for the ole USA. How do they choose what goes in the U.S. news? Are they guessing what their readers will be interested in knowing? Have they guessed that we are not interested in the plights and progress of the black African immigrants? Is it racism conscious or unconscious? I do not know. All I know is that it is happening, this disparity in reporting about African and non-African immigrants to Europe.
Among the rescued were a pregnant woman and fifteen children, the smallest of whom was three years old.
If they were white immigrants, say Caucasian Syrians, this would have made the U.S. news. But they were black African immigrants, and there was no mention of them in the New York Times. I am sure the members of the Rome bureau of the New York Times, and every other news organization over there, read the same Italian news I do every day. Guess it was not news that was "fit to print" for the ole USA. How do they choose what goes in the U.S. news? Are they guessing what their readers will be interested in knowing? Have they guessed that we are not interested in the plights and progress of the black African immigrants? Is it racism conscious or unconscious? I do not know. All I know is that it is happening, this disparity in reporting about African and non-African immigrants to Europe.