I look at media centres and media peripheries, in this article in the DNA. What makes certain events more important than others?

Let us look at the difference in response to the killings of journalists from Charlie Hebdo in Paris,  and the killings by Boko Haram in Nigeria

Early this year, while the world was watching the events in Paris unfold, as Islamist terrorists, part of the Yemani al Qaeda, murdered 12 people in cold blood, the extreme Salafist terror organisationBoko Haram attacked and killed 2,000 people in the fishing town of Baga, Nigeria. While the former received acres of newspaper coverage, hours of air time, and terabytes of Internet outrage, the latter passed without even a blip in popular consciousness.

Within India too, there are clear differences between regions and states that make the headlines, and those that are ignored.

If you do a Google search for “floods in India 2014”, you will see a list of articles and sites that look at the human devastation caused by nature’s fury. Assam, Bihar, Odisha and J&K were all impacted by floods — hundreds of villages were submerged, thousands of people were displaced, and scores died. Yet, when it comes to both media attention and public consciousness, the one we would remember is the floods in J&K.

This is primarily because

The media centre tends to be aspirational, and aspirational is defined in terms of success, wealth, power, colour, caste and religion — and other things that we all like to believe are no longer relevant. The world is more concerned about people dying in European countries than it is about death in Africa; India is more interested in the states that are close to Delhi and the further away a state is from the national capital, the less important it becomes. Also important is the social class, caste and colour.

The full article is here – do read and let me know what you think