Hierarchy of death is a phrase used by journalists, social scientists, and academics to describe disproportionate amounts of media attention paid to various incidents of death around the world. [1]
Definitions of the hierarchy of death vary, but several themes remain consistent in terms of media coverage: domestic deaths outweigh foreign deaths, deaths in the developed world outweigh deaths in the developing world, deaths of whites outweigh deaths of darker skinned people, and deaths in ongoing conflicts garner relatively little media attention. [2] [3] [4] [5]
The phenomenon has been linked to a variety of factors, including stereotypes about different groups of people, familiarity with the deceased, and several psychological theories, such as collapse of compassion, psychic numbing, and disaster fatigue. [6]
British media commentator Roy Greenslade has been credited with coining the term while writing on the newsworthiness of those who died during the Troubles. Greenslade also critiqued the phenomenon in media reactions to the Boston Marathon bombings. [7] [8]
NPR discussed the disparity in media coverage between the 2015 Beirut bombings and the November 2015 Paris attacks, which happened within a day of each other. [9] [10]
Scottish journalist Allan Massie has also written on the topic. [8] [11]
The hierarchy of death has been compared to missing white woman syndrome. [12]
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. Its armed strength was assessed to be equivalent to that of a medium-sized army in 2016.
Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, also known by his nom de guerre al-Hajj Radwan, was a Lebanese militant leader who was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah's chief of staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s, and was described as a skilled military tactician and highly elusive figure. He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.
Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani was a Syrian song writer. He is considered to be Syria's National Poet. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, religion, and Arab empowerment against foreign imperialism and local dictators. Qabbani is one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world. His famous relatives include Abu Khalil Qabbani, Sabah Qabbani, Rana Kabbani, Yasmine Seale.
Bassel Fleihan was a Lebanese legislator and Minister of Economy and Trade. He died from injuries sustained when a massive bomb exploded on the Beirut seafront as he passed by in former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri's motorcade on 14 February 2005. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon convicted several Hezbollah members for their role in the bombing, which is widely believed to have been orchestrated by the Syrian government.
Since 2004, a series of bombings and assassinations have struck Lebanon, most of them occurring in and around the capital, Beirut. This wave of bombings began with the assassination attempt on Marwan Hamadeh, then peaked with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri on 14 February 2005, which touched off the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. After the massive protests sparked by Hariri's killing, several more bombings hit Lebanon.
Richard Engel is an American journalist and author who is the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News. He was assigned to that position on April 18, 2008, after serving as the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief. Before joining NBC in May 2003, Engel reported on the start of the 2003 war in Iraq for ABC News as a freelance journalist in Baghdad.
Roy Greenslade is a British author and freelance journalist, and a former professor of journalism. He worked in the UK newspaper industry from the 1960s onwards. As a media commentator, he wrote a daily blog from 2006 to 2018 for The Guardian and a column for London's Evening Standard from 2006 to 2016. Under a pseudonym, Greenslade also wrote for the Sinn Féin newspaper An Phoblacht during the late 1980s whilst also working on Fleet Street. In 2021, it was reported in The Times newspaper, citing an article by Greenslade in the British Journalism Review, that he supported the bombing campaign of the Provisional IRA. Following this revelation, Greenslade resigned as Honorary Visiting Professor at City, University of London.
Benjamin C. Wedeman is an American journalist and war correspondent. He is a CNN senior international correspondent based in Rome. He has been with the network since 1994, and has earned multiple Emmy Awards and Edward R. Murrow Awards for team reporting.
Demetrius I Qadi was Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, and Alexandria and Jerusalem of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church from 1919 until 1925.
Mashrou' Leila, sometimes transliterated as Mashrou3 Leila or translated as "Leila's Project", was a Lebanese four-member indie rock band from Beirut. It was formed in 2008 as a music workshop at the American University of Beirut, and released four studio albums: Mashrou' Leila (2009), Raasük (2013), Ibn El Leil (2015) and The Beirut School (2019), as well as an EP, El Hal Romancy (2011). The band has been controversial due to their satirical lyrics and themes.
The Vilayet of Syria, also known as Vilayet of Damascus, was a first-level administrative division (vilayet) of the Ottoman Empire.
Psychic numbing is a tendency for individuals or societies to withdraw attention from past experiences that were traumatic, or from future threats that are perceived to have massive consequences but low probability. Psychic numbing can be a response to threats as diverse as financial and economic collapse, the risk of nuclear weapon detonations, pandemics, and global warming. It is also important to consider the neuroscience behind the phenomenon, which gives validation to the observable human behavior. The term has evolved to include both societies as well as individuals, so psychic numbing can be viewed from either a collectivist or an individualist standpoint. Individualist psychic numbing is found in rape survivors and people who have post-traumatic stress disorder.
Al Mayadeen is a Lebanese pan-Arabist satellite news television channel based in the city of Beirut. Launched on 11 June 2012, it has news reporters in most of the Arab countries. In the pan-Arabist television news market, it competes against Qatar-owned Al Jazeera and Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, and also against Sky News Arabia and BBC News Arabic. At the time it was founded, most of the channel's senior staff were former correspondents and editors of Al Jazeera.
The Aleppo University bombings took place on 15 January 2013, during the Syrian Civil War. The bombings killed at least 87 people at the Aleppo University, including students and children. The explosions reportedly struck an area between the University of Aleppo's halls of residence and the faculty of architecture, on the first day of exams. Both sides blamed each other for the explosions. While the university has been a center of antigovernment demonstrations, it is also in a government-held area, with neither side seemingly having had an obvious reason to strike. It was also a refuge for over 30,000 civilians fleeing the fighting in Aleppo.
Dzhokhar "Jahar" Anzorovich Tsarnaev is an American terrorist of Chechen and Avar descent who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing. On April 15, 2013, Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The bombs detonated, killing three people and injuring 264 others.
The 2013 Iranian embassy bombing in Beirut was a double suicide bombing in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on 19 November 2013. The two bombings resulted in 23 deaths and injured at least 160 others.
From its inception, the Syrian Civil War has produced and inspired a great deal of strife and unrest in the nation of Lebanon. Prior to the Battle of Arsal in August 2014, the Lebanese Army has tried to keep out of it and the violence has been mostly between various factions within the country and overt Syrian involvement has been limited to airstrikes and occasional accidental incursions.
On 12 November 2015, two suicide bombers attacked Bourj el-Barajneh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, that is inhabited mostly by Shia Muslims. Reports of the number of fatalities concluded that 43 people died directly from the detonation. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Liz Sly is a British journalist based in Beirut.
Compassion fade is the tendency to experience a decrease in empathy as the number of people in need of aid increase. As a type of cognitive bias, it has a significant effect on the prosocial behaviour from which helping behaviour generates. The term was developed by psychologist and researcher Paul Slovic.