Somehow missed this one in the press?
Lionel Shriver
30 March 2019
9:00 AM
I just came back from a book tour in Italy, where I’d no access to English-language TV news. So over my last breakfast, in Piacenza, my editor related the horrifying story dominating the Italian headlines. The day before, an ethnic Senegalese bus driver had kidnapped the 51 12-year-olds in his charge and poured petrol down the vehicle’s centre aisle. He forced the three other adults to bind the kids’ wrists with zip ties. He confiscated everyone’s phones. Yet one student snatched a phone the driver missed. The child surreptitiously rang his mother, who contacted the police. When the cops corralled the bus, the driver rammed their cars. After carabinieri forced open the bus door and broke a back window to begin to release the children, the immigrant ignited the petrol. The bus went up in flames. The children managed narrowly to escape, as the bus cremated to a black shell. The driver claimed to be protesting against migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.
When later that day I return home to London, my husband mentions that he’s seen the story in the breaking news section of the New York Times website. So I go to my NYT app, and oddly find no mention of this extraordinary near massacre. I resort to the website: absolutely nothing on the paper’s long, extensive home page — where I note that the vandalising of five Birmingham mosques (ugly, but at least life and limb were never at risk) enjoys pride of place up top. I go separately to the ‘world news’ section. I scan down about 20 articles. Nothing. But a button at the bottom says ‘more’. I hit that. Several more articles down I finally locate ‘Italian driver sets school bus on fire after kidnapping students’.
And get this! After two tiny, one-sentence paragraphs sketchily thumb-nailing the incident, the article spends all but one of the following six paragraphs detailing the terrible statistics for migrant deaths in the Med, effectively making the driver’s case for him. We only get the full lowdown on what happened beyond the article’s midway point. You get the gist: the New York Times didn’t like this story, didn’t find it politically convenient, and buried it the digital equivalent of six feet under.
Yet since we’re dwelling in the realm of the counterfactual this week, imagine the same news item with the roles reversed. A white, right-wing, native-Italian Salvini–supporter kidnaps 51 black immigrant children to protest against migration from North Africa, has the kids tied up, attempts to burn all the children alive, and very nearly succeeds. Now. Where does the Times put this story, and how hard is it to find?
Interestingly, after all the furore over the mosque vandalism in Birminham it turns out that it had nothing to do with 'hate-crime' and it is just another nutter now detained under the Mental Health Act. Vandalism against places of worship is unfortunately all rather run of the mill and a daily occurrence in the UK. Here's the figures just for Nottinghamshire:-
https://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/document/recorded-incidents-vandalism-against-churches-last-5-years-foi-00021614
Not to worry. Sold loads of newspapers as we all wondered if this was yet another example of the rise of the far-right and rampant Islamophobia.
Fortunately I feel suitably smug having had a 'one minutes silence' at last weeks Deal Town Council meeting for all those killed by a nutter with a gun in New Zealand where their Prime Minister quite sensibly, and whilst in fancy dress, refuses to say the name of 'Lord Voldemart'.
(Though I can't actually remember any minutes silences for any of the bombings or stabbings by Muslim fanatics in the UK over the past years, in fact the last one I remember was for the Grenfell Tower fire. Funny old world)