UK media continue to ignore the elephants in the room

The massacre of nearly 150 Christian students in Kenya, who were separated from Muslim students  by their Muslim attackers before being slaughtered, was presented in British media headlines as a story of unspecified Africans militants killings unspecified African victims. Any media outlet presenting the story in any kind of detail, however, was unable to avoid the fact that this was a terrorist attack by Muslims targeting non-Muslims, so they had to be especially creative to ensure that Muslims were still seen in a positive light or even as victims (update: see Telegraph report below).

Typical of such a report was that by Lisa Holland on Sky News, which started with scenes of female students in hijabs comforting survivors. Holland then stated that the area that was targeted was one of the poorest parts of Kenya whose population was almost exclusively Muslim, without any explanation as to why so many Christian students were there and why they alone were singled out. She went on to explain that the 'militants' came from Somalia (even though survivors had already said that most were Kenyan Muslims and one was actually the son of a Kenyan government official) and that they were simply protesting the presence of Kenyan troops in Somalia. She ended with the obligatory reference to the poor local Muslims fearing a 'backlash'.

With the Kenyan massacre coming at the same time as numerous other stories of British Muslims joining (or attempting to join) ISIS, there was no shortage of discussion about terrorism on the TV and radio.  The notion that Muslims were again the real victims because of the potential 'backlash' was also propagated by the usual talking heads on these chat shows. The commentators on these shows also stated without exception the standard diatribe that the attackers not only had nothing to do with Islam but were actually anti-Islamic. This was inevitably followed up by talk of Western imperialism and support for Israel against the Palestinians as being 'root causes' of Muslim anger. And there were the absolutely obligatory statements about 'right wing extremism' being as great a threat as Islamic terrorism.

Just in case people do not understand that Muslims must always be classified as the real victims of Islamic terrorism, the Conservatives have promised that 'Islamaphobic attacks' (the bulk of which appear to be comments and articles on the web complaining about Islamic terrorists) will become a specific 'hate crime' under new legislation if they are re-elected. I can therefore look forward, no doubt, to being charged with such a hate crime for this posting if Cameron is re-elected.

Update: Compare the way even 'conservative' UK newspapers like the Telegraph reported the Kenya massacre with the reality below.

Muslim woman centre stage among victims. No mention of Muslim killers and Christian victims

Compare with photo of some of the murdered Christians. This appeared in an Indian newspaper but was curiously missing from all UK coverage, presumably because it neither shows Muslims in a positive light or as victims. Had there been a hijabed victim it would have been shown in every UK media outlet.