Corporate Media Buries Story of US and Israel Killing 168 in Girls School Attack
No front-page stories in NYT, WSJ, WaPo. No mention on NBC and CBS Sunday Shows. No stand alone segments on Evening News shows. A death count on par with the OKC bombing is relegated to the back page.
It’s difficult to scientifically measure relative media importance or emphasis, but there are some benchmarks one can use as a reference point for objective media priorities: Sunday Morning News shows, the front page of major newspapers, and Nightly News broadcasts. These aren’t exact metrics, but they’re a useful window into corporate media priorities, not just what is covered but what is highlighted, blared at media consumers, what is deemed worthy of national attention.
Using these as a guide for what US media finds important, it’s clear that the US-Israeli airstrike on a girls’ school in Minab, which, as of now, has the exact same death count as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, is of little importance.
The February 28 US-Israeli attack did not merit a single front-page story from February 28 to March 4 in The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal. These outlets did cover it, but relegated the story to the back pages, as in A11 for The Times. It was an afterthought to a much grander narrative of “Decapitation strikes” and “Iranian counterattacks”.
The network Sunday news shows displayed a similar indifference.
Only one of the three network Sunday News Shows, ABC’s This Week, mentioned the Minab bombing. NBC’s Meet the Press and CBS’ Face The Nation did not despite it happening more than 24 hours prior. Meet the Press did find time to center Israeli victims of an Iranian strike however, interviewing reporter Richard Engel from the blast site. “Richard, you’re at the site of an Iranian missile strike,” Meet the Press anchor Kristen Welker threw to Engel. “We can see some of the damage behind you. Tell us what you’re learning this morning.”
“This was a single ballistic missile according to an Israeli official and at least nine people were killed here,” Engel tells viewers. “They are still looking through this site trying to secure the area. There was so much damage. They do not — they do not know if the victims were men, women or children. The bodies were that disfigured.”
CBS’ Face The Nation not only did not mention the Minab bombing, it didn’t mention Iranian civilian deaths at all, instead only noting US and Israel “targeting Iranian air defenses, launchers and missile stockpiles and Iranian regime infrastructure.” But, like Meet the Press, they did manage to center Israeli victims. “An Iranian missile strike overnight in the heart of Tel Aviv left a woman in her 40s dead and more than 40 injured, including seven children,” Charlie D’Agata reported to anchor Margaret Brennan.
The evening news programs did not fare any better. None of the three major evening news programs have dedicated a stand-alone segment to the mass killing event or done any original reporting or in-depth coverage at all, instead only mentioning the Minab attack in brief throw-away lines as part of broader war recaps, before quickly centering US and Israeli denials and framing the upwards of 168 deaths as mere “state media” “claims.”
CBS Evening News relegated the story to three throw-away mentions in its four broadcasts, centering Israeli and US denials and framing the deaths as “Iranian state media claims.”
“Iranian state media said more than a hundred were killed at an elementary school,” CBS’ Charlie D’Agata told viewers on March 1, before quickly cutting to happy crowds of Iranians and adding, “Some Iranians cheered in the streets at the news of the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”
“Over 500 people have been killed,” CBS’s Matt Gutman said on the March 2 broadcast, “according to the Red Crescent, including at a girl’s elementary school where Iranian state media claimed more than 100 children were killed.”
CBS News’ March 3 broadcast again mentioned the mass deaths in passing, but this time they doubled as IDF PR rep, immediately pivoting to anchor Tony Dokoupil interviewing, in person, an IDF spokesman who denied any involvement. “In Iran, the Red Crescent says nearly 800 have died in 4 days of bombings. And today in the city of Minab, a mass funeral was held for what the regime claims were girls killed in an elementary school. Rows of graves seen awaiting coffins,” Dokoupil says over b-roll before cutting to him chatting with an IDF spox. “I don’t think war is inevitable,” IDF spokesman Adaf Shosani tells Dokoupil. “IDF spokesman Adaf Shosani denied Israel is responsible.” Dokoupil somberly adds before letting the IDF get the final word: “We’re doing everything we can to be as accurate as we can and making sure that we are not targeting the civilians because they’re not, we’re not at war with them.”
NBC nightly news also did not dedicate any segments to the Minab bombing, only managing two throw-away mentions in its general “war” update in its Feb 28 and March 2 broadcasts. “[Iranian] officials say a girls school was hit this weekend, with dozens killed. The US says it’s investigating” Richard Engel mentioned in his round up of events.
ABC World News Tonight also gave the attack two throw-away mentions in its February 28 and March 1 broadcasts. In its brief mentions it, like CBS and NBC, centered US denials and alleged investigations. “Iranian state media claiming an airstrike on a girls school in the southern city of Minab left dozens dead,” ABC’s David Muir tells the viewer, “the US, now investigating, working to verify that report, saying it would never deliberately attack civilians.”
Grieving in Iran was either framed by ABC News as ideological ranting or secretly supportive of the bombing. “Protesters across Tehran shouting Death to America,” Muir tells his audience, “while others in Iran are quietly celebrating, hoping for a new future”.
If 168 people, overwhelmingly little girls, were killed in a school bombing in Israel, there is little doubt it would have been plastered all over major newspapers, led nightly broadcasts, and been asked about on the Sunday News programs. But—as the over 20,000 dead Palestinian children killed by a US-backed, Israeli genocide in Gaza affirm—Muslim and Arab life is simply not important, their children’s deaths are simply factored in, they’re collateral damage in a noble War on Terror, a perhaps regrettable “claim” that’s always “being investigated” but never held to account, much less elevated to moral outrage or sustained media scandal. The box is checked, a reporter does a write-up, aspersions are cast with “Iranian state media” or “Hamas run health ministry” qualifiers, and everyone moves on. Just another faceless three-digit number of Muslim children extinguished from existence and relegated to A11 in the US and Israel’s seemingly endless Middle East “wars.”