Kenya massacre: AP policy to bury lede?

July 2, 2012 By

Day after day, your GetReligionistas receive emails from readers that say something like this: “Please look at the following. Why do you think that (name of mainstream news organization) chose to (leave out or butcher a crucial fact) when covering this story? Is there something (some kind of politically correct policy) that requires them to do this?”

In other words, people who have not worked in mainstream newsrooms have a tendency to assume (a) that the patterns they keep seeing are intentional and (b) that biases have actually been molded into written policies that, in effect, have become part of newsroom manuals of style.

Some of these complaints, however, come from readers who have mainstream experience or who remain in mainstream posts (and wish to remain anonymous).

It’s hard to know how to answer these readers.

Truth is, there is no need for an explicit policy if almost everyone in a given newsroom is cut from the same cultural cloth on a particular issue. Thus, where some of our readers see conspiracies, your GetReligionistas tend to see a lack of intellectual diversity at work.

But, honestly, can’t you understand the frustration of one reader with the following Associated Press report about the latest massacre of churchgoers in Africa?

This time, the bloodshed was in Kenya. Here’s the top of the story:

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Gunmen killed two policemen guarding a church, snatched their rifles and then opened fire on the congregation from inside and out on Sunday, killing 15 people and wounding 40, security officials said.

Two gunmen entered the simple wooden church in the city of Garissa at around 10:15 a.m. Sunday, while two others waited outside, police commander Philip Ndolo said. When the congregation fled the attack inside, they ran straight into another hail of bullets from gunmen outside, he said. At least one grenade was detonated in the attack.

Overturned wooden benches littered the church afterward. A victim wearing a simple blue dress lay on the sandy earth outside. Witnesses reported seeing the four gunmen flee in dark blue outfits and masks. …

The bloodiest of the two attacks came against the African Inland Church in Garissa, a city some 195 kilometers (120 miles) west of the Somali border. Ndolo said 15 people were killed and at least 40 wounded. A grenade attack against a second church in Garissa wounded three people.

Garissa Mayor Ismail Garat called the church assault “evil.”

The reader who sent this in to us made a rather predictable comment: Why not report who did this this bloody deed? How far into the story must one read before that issue is addressed?

Eventually, readers do learn that police authorities told reporters that they wanted to conduct an official investigation before “assigning blame to the group many people in this region assume is at fault: al-Shabab, the most dangerous militant group in Somalia.”

Now, curious readers would want to know something about this generic militant group, al-Shabab (or in some coverage, al-Shabaab). For some reason, the AP team decided to place this information in what seems to be the report’s final paragraph — the one most likely to be cut in the average newspaper. When describing the recent history of violence in the area, the story notes:

Kenya sent troops into Somalia last October to hunt al-Shabab fighters. The militants, who are allied with al-Qaida, have threatened repeatedly to carry out revenge attacks for Kenya’s push into Somalia. Sunday’s attacks appear to be part of that trend.

So, these generic militants are linked to al-Qaida. This would seem to be a rather significant fact. Our reader, in effect, wanted to know if AP now has a policy that requires links to militant Islam to be downplayed in coverage.

I do not know how to answer that question. I would say that burying this link to the world’s most infamous Islamist terrorist network seems rather strange.

Apparently, the Washington Post team would agree. Thus, here is the Post lede:

NAIROBI – Masked gunmen sprayed bullets and hurled grenades at two churches in a northern town in Kenya on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and injuring several, police officials said. It was the latest in a series of attacks in this East African nation suspected of being carried out by al-Qaeda-linked militants from neighboring Somalia or their sympathizers.

The coordinated assaults unfolded in the town of Garissa, a predominantly Muslim enclave about 120 miles from the border that Kenyan forces have used as a base of operations to fight Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabab militia.

That was easy. And how about The New York Times? Here is the top of that report:

NAIROBI, Kenya – Masked gunmen hurled grenades into two churches in eastern Kenya on Sunday and then sprayed gunfire at fleeing worshipers, killing at least 15 people in one of the worst terrorist attacks Kenya has suffered in years.

When Kenyan forces stormed into Somalia eight months ago, Somalia’s fiercest militant Islamist group, the Shabab, vowed to wreak vengeance, saying it would topple Nairobi’s skyscrapers and kill Kenyan civilians. The skyscrapers are still standing, but militants believed to be connected to the Shabab have carried out more than a dozen attacks in Kenya, scaring off tourists and putting a serious dent in this country’s economy and sense of security.

Whatever happened with the AP report did not happen at the Post and the Times.

So, GetReligion readers (especially anyone out there who studies AP trends closely), do you have any non-conspiracy theories as to what happened in this case? Does anyone sense a coherent style policy at work?

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Islam, World, World Religions
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz

    Reuters has a similar problem with terrorism. The closest link I can find is here. Is this a news wire problem that newspapers don’t have?

    Meanwhile, another question I have is, why did it take to the fifth paragraph to find out what church it was?

  • http://friarsfires.blogspot.com Brett

    “Does anyone sense a coherent style policy at work?”

    Not now, and rarely ever….and I say that as a former newspaper reporter at a small-town daily that regularly ran AP reports.

  • Spencerian

    All three reports show a type of watering down not only Those Who Attacked but Those Who Were Attacked. In one report, “the Vatican” is mentioned but not its association to the two churches. Only does the NYT article note that a Catholic church and non-Catholic church were both attacked.

    Its typical for the Vatican to make a statement that condemns religious violence regardless of whether Catholics are directly involved. But, as all Muslims are not terror cells, not all Christians are part of the Catholic faith. Thus, the omission seems to change the story’s accuracy quite a bit.

  • Mark C.

    I think the AP report gives its own ample justification for not including mention of al-Shabab in the first few paragraphs. The authorities themselves may suspect that they are involved, but they want to investigate more before they pin it on them. That is entirely reasonable. Indeed, it is good and responsible. I think the AP version properly follows that prudent path. No report needs to encapsulate the whole event. What if it isn’t al-Shabab but someone else? While the NYT and Washington Post commendably desire to put this attack into the context of other attacks, the way they do it would easily lead many readers to think that the connection is established fact, maybe all but proven, the way that newspapers report that someone who was witnessed by many people to have shot someone is still only accused or the alleged shooter. Tell me what happened, only then begin to raise various suspicious and bits of speculation, reporting them clearly as such. At least that’s the perspective of this reader of news.

  • Ben

    At the time of the report it wasn’t confirmed to be Al Shabab, that probably lowered it’s position in the report. Also, being “linked” to Al Qaeda can mean very little indeed.

  • Father Brendan Pelphrey

    I think that tmatt is correct. It’s not necessarily that writers are following a policy which calls for them to leave out some of the most important facts. Rather, it’s that the writers are indeed “cut from the same cloth” and share opinions and assumptions. In my experience, at least, I’ve noticed that they are not actually very well educated, lack knowledge of world religions and even of Christianity (for instance, we are Greek Orthodox, but in news articles the Orthodox are constantly confused with Roman Catholics), assume that Islam is “peaceful”–without apparently any direct experience of living in Muslim states where Islam is anything but peaceful, have virtually zero knowledge of world history or the history of Islam and its relationship to people of other faiths, do not even understand the basic origins of, for example, slavery as it came to the West (from Muslim traders in Africa)…I could go on, but you get the drift. This kind of ignorance cannot be remedied. But it should not be tolerated, either.

  • Christine

    I see comment #2 from Brett on many sites over several years when it comes to bias at the AP. Its always “I was a small town yada yada who used the AP and they never yada yada.” The comments are so similar I think its probably just a tactic the AP and the left use to try and water down any complaints about the bias.