Thread: I'm interested in the tendency of some major media to use the term "blast" for planned terror bombing attacks. The use of the term appears to be a way to make it as innocuous as possible as in "blast near girls school kills 50"...which makes it sound like an accident

I believe this is on purpose and that it is often used to reduce coverage of mass murder in the global south and poorer countries. In essence, the same media that was perfectly capable of calling the US capitol riot an insurrection, calls the targeted murder of 50 a "blast"

The same media that seems capable of naming a lynching a lynching, not "man killed by rope", can't seem to use the term "bombing"...or "murder" or terms that indicate human involvement and perpetrators.

I notice also when it comes to bombings in Afghanistan or Pakistan that often target Shi'ite minorities, media in the West doesn't say the victims were targets as Shi'ites. Same media is capable of writing about Islamophobic or racist attacks in the West. Why?

It's wortwhile to ask if terms like "blast" are designed, consciously or subconsciously, to dehumanize victims. A "blast" is a gas leak...a purposeful bombing of a girl's school or mosque in Afghanistan is not a "blast."

I mean no one speaks about the Guernica "blasts" of 1937 do they? The Hiroshima "blast" of 1945. The 9/11 "blast" that hit the World Trade Center? The "blast" that killed JFK...no one says "US President JFK hit with metal object, dies."

Headlines can say "mass shooting" in the US...but can't seem to label 50 murdered in Afghanistan as a mass murder.

It's worth people looking at how they describe victims. Victims need an identity, a humanity and it should be indicated it was not an accident.

This also wasn't a "blast", was it? it was a targeted assassination attempt.

I believe this is systematic. It is across numerous platforms. Did the word "blast" enter the jargon by mistake...or via major wire services? Or was it a conscious effort to downplay mass murders and assassinations, religious massacres, hate-filled attacks?

After all, it does seem that when it happens in the West, the reports say "far-right" and "attack" and "terror." So how come in Afghanistan it's not a far-right terror attack? It's a "blast"...so why not in the US "blasts behind most things that happen"....

I think we can do better. When a girl's school is purposely targeted in a genocidal terror attack...let's do better and not just say "a blast"...

I mean let's be honest, if there was a bombing targeting a school in the West and 50 people were killed and 100+ injured...I don't think it would be just a "blast" and "funerals after blast"...no one says the attack by Anders Breivik was just a "blast" but "massacre", "bomb van"

See, it’s possible to have a headline discussing the target, not a “blast”