According to the BBC:Koran protests sweep Afghanistan... Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across Afghanistan... Three people were shot when a protest near a Nato base in the north-east of the country turned violent.Wow. That's a lot of fuss about, literally, nothing - the Koran burning hasn't happened. So what are they angry about? The "Koran Burning" - the mere idea of it. That has happened, of course - it's been all over the news.
Why? Well, obviously, it's a big deal. People are getting shot protesting about it in Afghanistan. It's news, so of course the media want to talk about it. But all they're talking about is themselves: the news is that everyone is talking about the news which is that everyone is talking about...
A week ago no-one had heard of Pastor Jones. The only way he could become newsworthy is if he did something important. But what he was proposing to do was not, in itself, important: he was going to burn a Koran in front of a handful of like-minded people.
No-one would have cared about that, because the only people who'd have known about it would have been the participants. Muslims wouldn't have cared, because they would never have heard about it. "Someone You've Never Heard Of Does Something" - not much of a headline.
But as soon as it became news, it was news. Once he'd appeared on CNN, say, every other news outlet was naturally going to cover the story because by then people did care. If something's on CNN, it's news, by definition. Clever, eh?
What's odd is that Jones actually announced his plans way back in July; no-one took much notice at the time. Google Trends shows that interest began to build only in late August, peaking on August 22nd, but then falling off almost to zero.
What triggered the first peak? It seems to have been the decision of the local fire department to deny a permit for the holy book bonfire, on August 18th. (There were just 6 English-language news hits between the 1st and the 17th.)
It all kicked off when the Associated Press reported about the fire department's decision on August 18th and was quickly followed up by everyone else; the AP credit the story to the local paper The Gainsville Sun who covered the story on the same day.
But in their original article, the Sun wrote that Pastor Jones had already made "international headlines" over the event. Indeed there were a number of articles about it in late July following Jones's original Facebook announcement. But interest then disappeared - there was virtually nothing about it in the first half of August, remember.
So there was, it seems, nothing inevitable about this story going global. It had a chance to become a big deal in late July - and it didn't. It had another shot in mid-August, and it got a bit of press that time, but then it all petered out.
Only this week has the story become massive. US commander in Afghanistan General Petraeus spoke out on September 6th; ironically, just before the story finally exploded, since as you can see on the Google Trends above, searches were basically zero up until September 7th when they went through the roof.
So the "Koran Burning" story had three chances to become front-page global news and it only succeeded on the third try. Why? The easy answer is that it's an immediate issue now, because the burning is planned for 11th September - tomorrow. But I wonder if that's one of those post hoc explanations that makes whatever random stuff that happened seem inevitable in retrospect.
The whole story is newsworthy only because it's news, remember. The more attention it gets, the more it attracts. Presumably, therefore, there's a certain critical mass, the famous Tipping Point, after which it's unstoppable. This happened around September 6th, and not in late July or mid August.
But there's a random factor: every given news outlet who might run the story, might decide not to; maybe it doesn't have space because something more important happened, or because the Religion correspondent was off sick that day, etc. Whether a story reaches the critical mass is down to luck, in other words.
The decision of a single journalist on the 5th or the 6th might well have been what finally tipped it.
11 comments:
If a koran is burned and no one reports it, does it still make a fuss?
(No)
So it's all the fault of the media?
Islam is an interesting case of group psychosis and it breeds psychosis among its believers, "virus of the mind" indeed and a good strain at that.
Another interesting point is general Petraeus, is he such a doofus that he could not expect that he would fuel a media frenzy or did he do it on purpose to jack up the importance of his job?
Here in Canada, our prime minister spoke about his personal faith for the first time publicly, in response to the plans for Koran burning. Maybe he's wanted to get it off his chest for a while and seized a good opportunity?
It's not all the fault of the media, obviously Jones started it, but he couldn't have done it without them.
Jones was a nobody before this (except he had made into the local papers for similar stunts like anti-gay pride protests, chumming up to Fred Phelps, etc.)
There's no reason he couldn't have stayed a nobody. There was no good reason to publicize this, especially since it was nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Things like this happen all the time. They must do - there are 6 billion people and Jones is by no means the stupidest or most attention-seeking, unfortunately. But we don't hear about them because they're not newsworthy. This one happened to reach the critical mass and became news. It shouldn't have.
You say that it was all a fuss about nothing since no Koran had been burned. But something had happened, someone had had made a threat and threats are eminently newsworthy.
Then you say that the media are, in this case, only talking about themselves. Again, a key point but wrong. They were talking about the threat made by Jones to do something which could cause
significantly nasty results.
Then we have the claim that something became news as soon as it was news. This is only an amusing apparent tautology. Using words your way it is also true that something can be news well before it is news - as when an editor is delighted by a proposed article and says "Now this is news!". before anyone has gone to publication with the news.
You get my point. Now the stuff about Google hits is interesting and well explained. The logical problems return when you take up the idea of a 'tipping' point. All news stories have tipping points since they must reach a point of sufficient significance ... a tipping point.
That significance can be precicely that a sufficient number of people get the news such that other interesting events might then be triggered.
Yes, none of this would have happened had not the media become involved but that does not involve that this is a media creation. We should reserve that accusation for false reports by the media.
IT IS a media creation allied to the Obama administration, to take the heat off 911 mosque today. Are we sure it wasn't SMITH and not JONES? Why would any sane pastor publicize the Qu'ran burnings if not for politics?
You lose your ordinance, your career for that kind of vigilante beh. Sometimes the best defence against the dirty media is to ignore such sensationalized crap. You'd be surprised at how much CRAP they get away with.
I've sat in more than a few services with pastors debunking Islam, but why didn't theyyy get a media splash televised all the way to Afghanistan, goodness me to Indonesia? That Jones dude looks like a pedo. Who's in his congregation? His cell mates?
I still say that mosque was wrong. I get the desire for world peace, but there are some things that should be respected, and should be given the time to discover its own merit to peace. They should stop playing with people's psyche so much. It's just so overboard at the moment with team Obama.
The joke with Israel and Palestine to now this. Why on earth would Afghans care if Yankees burnt their holy texts? What was the point of Jihad? To hold hands and chant the Qu'ran together? Do they think Yankees shimmy their butts in the air 5 times a day in prayer like they do?
Hell no.
I smell some serious you're mine Afghan monkey, monkey do what I say or no bread for you. Sad.
Anon 2, pack beh. is not unique to Islam, and Petraeus probably takes orders from his pack too.
Peter March:
"They were talking about the threat made by Jones to do something which could cause significantly nasty results."
But it wouldn't have caused any results if no-one had heard about it. The actual threat was trivial, not newsworthy in the slightest, because no-one had heard of him.
It became newsworthy only once people heard about it, at which point, as you say, it became a threat to do something important.
Imagine that I released a statement to the media saying "If this threat makes it onto CNN, I will kill a kitten". Is that headline news? No, it's one guy's stupid stunt. And the kitten is in no danger.
But if some newspaper does make it news, for some reason... that kitten is suddenly looking worried.
Why doesn't anyone seriously question the kind of mind that gets upset over burning a book? It's a pretty useless act but to get your panties in a twist over that.
Anyone can adhere whatever bizarre ideology they want, but the buck stops at the point where followers of ideologies start to invade public space.
The idiot burning books is an idiot. The people prepared to do unbelievable violence as a result are beyond insane.
Get upset in your own house as much you want, just don't bother others with it.
Btw burning books is very hard. You have to shred them first or build a really huge bonfire.
So does Pastor Jones have a brain disease?
Also re: Peter March's comment
"The logical problems return when you take up the idea of a 'tipping' point. All news stories have tipping points since they must reach a point of sufficient significance ... a tipping point."
Not all stories are like this. Say China declares war on Russia. That's inherently news, and every news outlet will be rushing to cover it as soon as possible. There's no tipping point. It's going to be front page headlines.
The "Koran Burning" story is not like this because there was nothing newsworthy about the story itself; it was newsworthy in direct proportion to its coverage.
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