Where Is The Media On The Russian Terrorist Situation?

by John Hawkins | October 23, 2002 10:23 pm

Where Is The Media On The Russian Terrorist Situation?: We have a Russian 9/11 going on as we speak in Moscow. There are somewhere between 20-100 terrorists holding as many as 1000 Russians hostage. They’ve wired the building to explode and have planted mines. The terrorists are making demands that the Russians are not going to be able to meet (an end to war in Chechnya) and things could easily spiral out of control. We could wake up tomorrow to hear about a THOUSAND Russians killed in 2nd worst terrorist attack in human history.

Yet, this doesn’t seem to be a lead story at any of the big news sites…

Fox News[1], CNN[2], MSNBC[3], ABC[4], CBS[5], & The Drudge Report[6] are all running this as the #2 story behind the sniper. I’m hitting MSNBC, Fox, and CNN and they’re all running wall to wall sniper coverage.

I MIGHT, MIGHT, think the sniper situation would deserve this sort of coverage if they had actually caught the sniper, but there’s really nothing going on. The police are searching someone’s yard & are looking for two “persons of interest”, yippity-dippity-do. Meanwhile, more people than the sniper could kill in three years are being held hostage by terrorists. Where are the breakdowns of the options that Russian special forces have? Where are the live pics of the theater on TV? Why isn’t the mainstream media covering this story like they should? Come on, we shouldn’t have to read British papers to find out what’s going on with one of the biggest stories since 9/11.

***Update***: According to the BBC[7], the hostages include, “Three Britons are reported to be among the hostages, along with seven Germans, four Americans, two Canadians, two Austrians and two Dutch citizens.”

Apparently, someone has already been killed as well, “The rebels told Kavkaz-Centre they had shot a woman Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who tried to enter the theatre, ignoring their warnings.”

Word on the Russian government reaction is as follows, “A senior Russian Government official, Alexei Volin, said the security forces had two priorities: to save the hostages and make no concessions to the attackers.

But the Russian authorities have reportedly told the rebels that they will guarantee them safe passage to another country if all the hostages are freed unharmed.”

***Update***: The Terrorists[8] have given Russia, “7 days to comply with their demands to end the war in Chechnya and for a complete withdrawal of Russian forces from the volatile republic.”