By Evaldas Labanauskas
It is not easy to comment on Lithuania’s media reaction on Ferguson events, because at that time I was in the U.S. already. Anyhow, Lithuanian media paid some attention to Ferguson case, but I think not enough.
The main reasons why Lithuania’s media was not engage in the Ferguson case were:
- At that time (and still) Lithuania’s media have been focusing on Russian aggression in Ukraine.
- Riots in the U.S. themselves were the mere reason and the main topic what was media reporting on Ferguson case. I did not find any attempts to look deeper or explain how sensitive is racism topic in America – only shocking photos, basic information about police, riots and protests.
- Lithuanians don’t understand America and the racism question. On one hand, people simply don’t care: Ferguson – what? where? why shall we care about it when the war is near our borders? On the other hand, there is plenty of racism and homophobia in Lithuanian society.
- Consequently, if people don’t care about it, they don’t read about it. Which means that there are no visits on the news website. If there are no web page visits, there is no money from advertisers. So why should media write about things that supposedly are not interesting for the majority of readers and don’t bring profit?
