too much news ?

yesterday there seems to have been a gigantic massacre in egypt. supposing that you take the lowest figures as provided by the egyptian military as truth, some 600+ protesters died when the military moved to clear their protest camps. the opposition says 6000. almost certainly the real figure is somewhere in between

now this giant news has been reported but only, it seems, in 5 minute bit pieces towards the end of bulletins or in quarter-page articles in the international section of the paper.

is this strange?

if you compare the mass killing to other acts of state violence against protesters in recent history then the massacre yesterday seems pretty serious (at least in terms of the number killed)

for instance the june 4th incident in china remains shrouded in mystery but it is said that the death toll was as low as 250 and potentially as high as 6000.

from what we know then that makes yesterday either equally as violent, or else even more violent, than june 4th.

there's a strong possibility that future historians looking back will mark yesterday's massacre as the start of the egyptian civil war (depending on how things play out, obviously)

and yet relatively little coverage. maybe in-between stories such as the elcetion and the syrian civil war there is not much time to devote to stories of shocking, complicated violence in egypt.

all the same if you think back to the way other violent, foreign news has been reported lately (a la round-the-clock coverage following the boston attack) the absence of some extended coverage or even primary-story status is jarring.

is this failure a result of incompetence or the way in which news corporations now function?

it could be incompetence. i certainly don't know enough about egypt to make a detailed report about it, perhaps journalists don't too

or it could be that (by virtue of US support for the egyptian military) the australian media is following the lead of the international outlets in providing poor coverage. after all, it seemed to take an uncomfortably long time for the word coup to even be used in international reporting of the recent coup

or consumers of news dont want to hear more about violence in egypt; complicated as it is. reader fatigue and all that. maybe they want to hear about the election

OR the media landscape in australia could just be rubbish. who can say