Yesterday, Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted: “The White Home has acknowledged that Hamas is holding almost 500 People hostage in Gaza.” To be clear, they’re People not allowed to depart Gaza (NYT), they don’t seem to be being held in a compound. As for the hostages within the strict sense of the time period, there appear to be round ten. Nor are they cases of freedom, nor safe positions. Personally, I’d contemplate each teams will probably be hostages.
No matter definition of hostage you favor, I do not see that many main mainstream media articles about these hostages. I keep in mind the a lot earlier Iran hostage disaster, when many People even knew the identification and historical past of every hostage. It was a front-page story nearly day-after-day. As I write this text (the day earlier than), I do not see it on the entrance web page of the New York Occasions in any respect. Similar with WaPo, though they’ve “Biden Welcomes Trick or Treaters to the White Home.” In case you contemplate this story from the New Yorker, properly sure, it covers the American hostages slightly, however it’s under no circumstances what I’d have anticipated. They aren’t even answerable for the article. So why so little protection? I’ve a number of candidate hypotheses, which can or is probably not true:
1. The mainstream media desires Biden re-elected, and so they don’t desire him to finish up being portrayed as “one other Jimmy Carter” who cannot save the hostages.
2. The younger Woke staff at MSM don’t need to give too dangerous a picture of Hamas, nor to present too good a picture of Israeli reprisals.
3. These hostages themselves aren’t “The Present Factor”, even when the battle itself appears to be The Present Factor. Has “The Present Factor” develop into so narrowly circumscribed?
4. For causes of nationwide safety, our authorities advised MSM that protecting up an excessive amount of of the hostages would endanger their eventual launch or rescue.
5. The Biden administration is pressuring main media retailers to not cowl an excessive amount of on the hostages, lest home pressures for America to intervene develop into too sturdy.
6. It simply hasn’t occurred but, due to the noise within the system.
What else? I am not saying any of those claims are true, and a few of them are extra conspiratorial than the sorts of explanations I often discover convincing. So why aren’t the American hostages getting extra consideration?
