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by imbiased 1214 days ago
The Iranian government was already known to be terrible to its people. The Saudis ordering an assassination _abroad, using their embassy, in such a violent way on a dissident_ made a lot of people aware of the problem that was the new Saudi regime which had some Western alignment. It’s not that this death was more important, it’s just revealed a big change in Saudi Arabia
1 comments
adventured 1214 days ago
Which ignores the vast gap between coverage in the one murder vs the thousands of murders. The bias was on open display, and it's a perceived political alignment issue (Saudi Arabia is quite friendly with US conservatives traditionally and far more hostile to US liberals; ~95%+ of journalists in the US vote left and they're rarely shy with their bias in the Trump era; Saudi was relatively friendly toward Trump and it's openly hostile toward Biden; all of this is quite obvious).
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rtkwe 1214 days ago
It's a pattern repeated in many places. Single large events, a school shooting, the Khashoggi murder, big chemical spills, always get more coverage than repeated/ongoing or smaller events. IMO it's less a judgement on importance than a result of novelty or shock. Over time as events fall into routine people get bored of them so news naturally moves on. Look at the coverage of the Ukraine war it's dropped off a cliff since the early days of the invasion because we're in both the winter lull and there's not much novel to report about it every day.
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toast0 1214 days ago
The news media is looking for new news, not old news. An ally killing someone in their embassy is new news; a regime of disrepute killing protestors is the same old story.

It's the same reason why election fraud in the US or Europe gets coverage when it's just a couple votes, but Russia's elections don't get much coverage. Everyone knows Russia's elections are a joke, but someone getting arrested for voting their deceased relative's ballot is unexpected.

It's not a measure of importance, it's a measure of newness.

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imbiased 1213 days ago
exactly, it's what I wanted to point out but you did it better
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