ABSTRACT
Recent developments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor, or older conflicts in Northern Ireland, Catalonia, and Kashmir, have been popular “news pegs” for media academics and journalists alike. But there is something striking about this calendar of conflict: these seem to be the only conflicts that are deemed worthy of sustained coverage by the news superpowers based in the West. There is a distinct sense of these being “our” wars, because “we” are interested or involved, while “their” wars—the numerous wars and conflicts that are taking place right at this moment in much of the developing world involving much violence and terrorism—do not really matter much. As Weimann and Winn concluded after analyzing conflict data involving hundreds of groups and over 5,000 events between 1968 and 1986, “less than one-third of all terrorist events are actually reported” (1993: 71).
