Media 39: all killings are shocking – but coverage is biassed

As CNN reporters wrote, earlier this year, “since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far rightwing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology”.

A reader draws our attention to the New York Times, in which the former deputy director of the CIA Michael Morrell called the storming of the Charlie Hebdo headquarters “the worst terrorist attack in Europe since the attacks in London in July of 2005.”

But the worst terrorist attack in Europe between the 2005 London bombings and today’s Paris shootings was in 2011 when a white right-wing Norwegian ‘political extremist’ named Anders Breivik killed 77 people during a rampage through Oslo and a nearby summer camp; this seems to have been ignored.

Thom Hartmann comments: ‘If Breivik’s name were “Omar” and he said that he acted in the name of Islam as opposed to “Europe” and Christianity, I doubt people like Michael Morell would forget who he is or what he did.’

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