The Eurocentric Media's Overemphasis on Ukraine

Google ‘Ukraine crisis 2022’. For me, there were about 509,000,000 results in less than a second. Now try ‘Tigrayan crisis 2022’. 50,60,000 results in the same amount of time. Similar numbers when you change the country to Afghanistan or Iran also appear. Personally, I’ve never been that great at maths, but even I can see the clear common denominator presented by these statistics.

The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation began on 24th February 2022. Since then, the media has been flooded, and rightly so, with ongoing information surrounding this humanitarian disaster. Families have been torn apart, cities have been destroyed, and the people of Ukraine have witnessed their homes under attack for months. This deserves to be news. Written about, reported about, shouted about. The people of Ukraine deserve a voice, and the media can give it to them.

But does the emphasis on Ukraine silence others experiencing humanitarian disasters? Those in Afghanistan have been experiencing conflict for decades now, is their pain simply not “trending” enough to be spoken about in the media? Their families have been torn apart, their cities have been destroyed, and their people have witnessed their homes under attack for years and years. So why aren’t we talking about them as much?
The Tigray conflict is an ongoing civil war that began in November of 2020 in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. The conflict has left 350,000 people living in famine conditions, over 2 million having to flee their homes and thousands dead. Are these people not worthy of 509,000,000 results?

To ask if the media is Eurocentric, is like asking a banana if it is yellow. It can’t and won’t answer you, but just look at it, and you have your answer. Even when humanitarian disasters elsewhere are discussed in the media, they are clearly not discussed in the same light. If you just look at the difference between how Ukrainian refugees are written about vs how refugees from countries like Afghanistan are written about in the British media, it is very clear eurocentrism.

Ukrainian refugees are said to need our help. They deserve homes, jobs, food, clothing. Afghanistan refugees are said to be illegal criminals, storming into our country to make Britain ‘not British’ (whatever that means) and take 'our' jobs.

Perhaps it’s different because there has been peace in Europe for so long. Perhaps it’s because Ukraine is closer to what we call home, but we all know the reason why it’s different is because of whiteness. The media often tends to ignore the pain of people of colour, and highlight the pain of white people: that is the cold, hard truth. That is the difference between how Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton are portrayed. That is why you don’t hear about the Tigrayan crisis. The common denominator has always, and unless we do something about it, will always be whiteness.