Two Journalists Equals Exactly How Many?

Don't we all just love coincidences?

Let's take the all-of-a-sudden-totally-not-going-on-for-at-least-a-year crisis in Syria. I wake up this morning and there are two whole stories on Syria. That's more then there's been in at least the past month (but who's counting?). More importantly, here's what the two stories were:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/26/world/syria-marie-colvin/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Follow the above link and read a heavily personalized story about a journalist being killed in Syria. The content of the story isn't so important, not so much as the fact that the first substantive story I've heard about the totally just happening now crisis in Syria is about a British journalist being killed, for lack of a better phrase, in the line of duty.

And then just hours later, on the same CNN website, I come across an emotionally driven article (http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/23/world/syria-intervention/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2) explaining why the world isn't helping Syria, but more importantly clearly written from the position that someone has a moral obligation to intervene and stop the violence. Every paragraph was an intentionally heart-wrenching interview with a civilian suffering the same as they have been for months when we just as passionately ignored them.

The attention Syria gets in the news is surprisingly correlated with the number of western journalists killed in the country. And I'm not the one using the phrase "western journalists." That's from the NY Times, reporting on the death of the same journalist described in the CNN article and one other: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/world/middleeast/marie-colvin-and-remi-ochlik-journalists-killed-in-syria.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

For months, no one even cared. At least no one in the media. Then two of their own get killed and it's back to compassion for all those people in Syria. The daily death toll in that country, the suffering and starvation, the lack of access to basic medical care, and the tragedy to the human race at large, it was all old news until a couple of more familiar faces joined the casualty list.