How the Western media methodically dehumanised Iran bombing victims

When dozens of people were killed in mass shootings or terrorist attacks in Paris, Texas, and Manchester, the Western media went all out with photo galleries, victim descriptions, digital renderings, and eyewitness accounts.

But after two explosions killed 89 people on January 3 in Kerman, Iran, there was almost radio silence. Western mainstream outlets only noted the skeletal details and the Iranian leader’s reaction to the carnage.

The media deliberately omitted any information about the victims, their families, and the burial ceremonies as part of their ongoing, methodical omission of any sympathy for the Middle East.

Such systemic dehumanisation is racist, and has profound consequences.

Solidarity and empathy for the Global North

In Paris in 2015, Daesh killed 130 people in attacks outside a football stadium, crowded cafes, and a concert. The BBC was all over it, going over what happened on the night with maps, videos, photos of the aftermath, details of each of the attacks, and even digital illustrations of the location of the gunmen.

They produced a lengthy article dedicated to eyewitness accounts, and a video, with photos of tribute flowers. The Western mainstream media listed the victims and described their lives and professions in articles and videos.

Those who lost their lives were portrayed with sympathetic photos, and named, given ages, stories, and family. There was further coverage of the burials and services for the victims. The Sydney Opera House changed its colours in their honour, and people changed their profile photos on social media to the French flag.

Likewise, the 22 victims of the Manchester bombing in 2017 were named, described in detail, their photos shown and stories told by Western media outside of the UK, with language like “beautiful little girl” used. And the same again with, for example, the mass shooting and 23 people killed in Texas, United States, in August 2019. It goes on.

Middle East and Global South reduced to figures

But after the two explosions in Iran, a Muslim-majority nation, which have been claimed by Daesh, there was a silence by the same Western news outlets.

Coverage was minimal; most English-language readers would be lucky if they even heard about the tragedy. In the few stories that appeared, the victims weren’t named or described, there were no eyewitness accounts, nor Iranian experts consulted to understand what had happened. There was hardly any coverage of the funerals, with Reuters briefly mentioning mourners “demand(ing) revenge”.

This indifference was not due to a lack of information. Independent US-based media, Democracy Now, interviewed an Iranian expert and showed footage of a survivor in a hospital. Non-Western media outlets covered the burials and mentioned that there were children and Afghan nationals among the victims. There is footage of one of the explosions, and this footage, and horrific photos of the aftermath – all of which would have contributed to empathy and concern.

Iranian scholar Setareh Sadeqi was in Herman at the time and she speaks English. She was available for comment or reporting. And it’s not like information and survivor accounts weren’t available. Take a look at a video of this injured man who spoke from a hospital bed. His account only needed to be translated into English. Western mainstream media made a choice to exclude all this.

Instead, the brief coverage was about the Iranian leader’s response and the geopolitical fallout. Content was written from outside the country, instead of by local journalists. The Washington Post wrote from Türkiye and Germany, and Reuters from Dubai and the US. While journalism can be difficult in Iran, there are plenty of journalists who can provide both contextualised and humanised coverage.

This dehumanisation is a routine pattern, a deliberate editorial practice by big Western media organisations. The bomb blast in Pakistan on Sunday, or the bombing in which 62 people were killed in Pakistan last September, was covered in a similar brief, sterile way with no victims named.

The situation is the same with Palestine. Western outlets regularly reduce Palestinians to faceless numbers, in contrast with Israeli victims. Such victims are actively “killed” or “murdered” by Hamas, while the language used for Palestinians is passive. They “die” without a perpetrator. The New Yorker recently managed to publish a whole article with the headline “Gaza is starving”, without once mentioning Israel and its soldiers blocking the delivery of water and food.

Causes and consequences of dehumanisation

Western mainstream outlets’ double standards in reporting atrocities in the Middle East were analysed by researchers in a 2022 book, “Covering Muslims: American Newspapers in Comparative Perspective”. They examined the tone and language of hundreds of thousands of articles, and found “overwhelmingly negative coverage” of Muslims in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

The media’s coverage of the two explosions in Kerman occurs in the context of the US support for Israel and its recent $106 million sale of arms to the country. The UK and EU also sell arms to Israel. Over the past two decades, the US has bombed or led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Somalia, and the media justifies such carnage.

Now, as the Israeli government refers to Palestinians as “human animals,” it is planning to “do anything to bring back security” in northern Lebanon – an unsubtle hint at expanding attacks there.

The media’s dehumanisation of Iran and the Middle East systematically transforms dignified people into subhumans. Subhumans can be intentionally harmed, hunted, attacked, ignored, and denied humane treatment. They can more easily be punished, destroyed, and their human rights violated with impunity and with little global protest. Dehumanised people no longer benefit from moral treatment or care.

This type of coverage materialises as discrimination, racism, and harmful policies. It likely contributed to a white man shooting and seriously injuring three Palestinian men in Vermont, US, in November. The attack was investigated as a hate crime. Days later, Emerson College students marched in solidarity with the victims, with one speaker urging that US media outlets be held accountable for “spreading anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic rhetoric.” Dehumanising media coverage supports the unempathetic treatment of Middle Eastern refugees compared to Ukrainians. It upholds wars and the very atrocities it reports on.