Pro-Palestinian activists are not to blame for slaughter on Bondi Beach

Reaction to the terrorist shooting of 12 innocent and unarmed Jewish people in Australia at the weekend has been inconsistent and wrong-headed, writes Herald columnist Carlos Alba

One of the first, and most challenging, lessons taught to journalism students in this country is that the value of an individual’s life is relative.

An unspoken algorithm in media organisations determines the number of people who have to die in certain areas of the world before their demise is regarded as newsworthy.

That formula establishes how many fatalities are required in a regional flood in Bangladesh, for example, before it is elevated from the news-in-brief section of the foreign pages.

A multiplier of tens, if not hundreds, is applied to the number of deadly casualties of inter-ethnic violence in central Africa, before an incident can challenge a school shooting in the US for prominence of coverage.

The reasons for this are cultural, educational and, I’m afraid to say, commercial. Readers and viewers are generally not interested in learning about people whose lives they know little about and whom they understand even less.

It helps to explain why, for example, the appalling shooting dead of 12 Jewish people, celebrating Hanukkah on a beach in Australia at the weekend, has commanded blanket media coverage in this country.

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