What else happened on that day? Protesters were killed in Syria and the rift between rebels and loyalists in Libya widened. These are the only two developments that I remember from that day and in truth, they are based on a following of these news stories for the past few weeks. I partially blame my own blinkered vision on Monday for this, yet the sheer volume of attention that the death of bin Laden garnered necessarily pushed everything from the front page of sites and papers.
With good reason, too. The reaction to this event is far-reaching and has serious ramifications for everyone in both the 'west' and 'east'. I am not saying that these stories should not be given their due space and news outlets will obviously be in competition with others for the most succinct, original and in some countries, extreme piece on the event. It makes good economic sense to devote this kind of space to major events.
Yet I cannot help but wonder what the tyrants of the world are thinking when they see such dominant headlines. I do not know if Gaddafi was particularly violent on this Monday or if Syrian security forces cracked down even harder on protesters and I would be willing to bet that most people in the world do not know this either. Was such a news story a carte blanche for such regimes to enact brutalities on a people that would go largely unnoticed? I do not know and I do not know how this would be mitigated.
At any rate we should be aware of this trend and not allow dictators one moment free from the global gaze.
-The English Student
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