Have you watched the news recently, opened a news article on Facebook or even just mindlessly swiped through your Instagram stories? If so, then there are probably two things that have come to your attention – firstly, that there is currently a war in Ukraine and secondly, that the news coverage of this war is different from the vast majority of reporting on other conflicts.
What makes this war different?

To answer such a question, we should turn to those who are doing the reporting. CBS Senior Foreign Correspondent Chris D’Agata, live on air from the besieged city of Kyiv last month, exclaimed that Ukraine “isn’t like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades”. He continued: “This is a relatively civilised, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, where you wouldn’t expect that.”
Stating that the conflict in Ukraine is incomparable to the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – because of how “civilised” Ukraine and its people are – is to insinuate that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan were not as “civilised” when war broke out in their regions. To make such a point undermines the deep trauma that thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have lived through. After public outcry at his comments, D’Agata did apologise for the words which he had so “carefully” chosen. A journalist who is yet to provide any clarity on his remarks is columnist David Hannon.
Writing in the Telegraph, Hannon wrote about the “shocking” nature of the Ukrainian conflict. The conflict was so shocking to Hannon because, to him, it revolved around the fact that Ukrainians, “seem so like us”. He expands on his point by explaining how they too watch Netflix and read uncensored newspapers. The persistent discourse around how the people of Ukraine are seemingly so similar to us insinuates that it is perfectly acceptable to have less, if any, empathy for conflict-stricken communities to whom we cannot relate.
Peter Dobbie is an English Al-Jazeera anchor who said on air about the Ukrainian migrant crisis: “What’s compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous, middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East … or north Africa. They look like any European family that you’d live next door to.”
Dobbie presents refugees that come from the Middle East or north Africa as people who have made a choice. Rather than fleeing deadly conflict zones, Dobbie dismisses them as merely “trying to get away” from where they were born. Ukrainians aren’t refugees, apparently – they are “prosperous, middle-class people” who you could easily “live next door to”.

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