As we remember 9/11, let’s not forget world events that don’t get the same media coverage

When Afghanistan starts to slip down the news agenda again, remember to keep reading, keep looking and keep asking questions, writes Serena Tarling

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Centre site (Getty)

As the last troops withdrew from Afghanistan in recent weeks, pulling down the metaphorical curtain on the west’s involvement, there’s a jarring symmetry that we are just days away from commemorating the events that set the war in motion. It somehow implies a neat narrative, but the reality is far from that.

As the news unfolded on that September day, I was interviewing a water engineer at an NGO in Oxford about another crisis with devastating consequences in a different region of the world. Like the impact of 9/11, the ramifications of the 1994 Rwandan genocide are still being felt today. In just three weeks, 800,000 mainly Tutsis were massacred in an organised campaign of genocide by Hutu militia.

I was undertaking research for a journalism MA on British media coverage of the genocide, and how far it was defined by racism and stereotypes. How many column inches were devoted to it on average as the story unfolded? Where did it sit in national newspapers? And how far did tropes about “tribal violence” obfuscate the reality of what was happening on the ground?

Just before we were interrupted that day, the engineer had spoken of the horrors of what he had seen but he also left a further thought lingering in the air. He said: “Of course, there was a massive clean-up operation by the Tutsis afterwards in retaliation”.

As I slowly processed the grave implications of these words ​​– an assertion still hotly contested today that revenge attacks were carried out on Hutus ​​– the door was flung open. One of the NGO’s senior directors summoned us over to the TV to show us what was unfolding in America.

I often reflect back on that moment and on the nature of the news as it unfolded in the ensuing day. Pages and pages of national newspapers explored every angle of what was undeniably an extraordinary and horrific tragedy. But did the voluminous coverage help us understand much of what was at stake? What other stories were relegated to the back of the news run?

And amid 9/11 commemorations this week, it’s worth taking time to look beyond the news frame at stories that may have fewer column inches. When Afghanistan starts to slip down the news agenda again, remember to keep reading, keep looking and keep asking questions.

Yours,

Serena Tarling

Deputy foreign editor