Making the rounds is a meme that proposes that you won’t hear from the American mainstream media that the largest rally against Islam took place in France recently — because it didn’t.
“The largest rally against Islam in the history of the world took place in France recently. But you’d never know it by watching mainstream media!” are the words emblazoned accross a photo of a large group of people.
There was, in fact, a massive rally in France against terrorism. It was attended by 3.7 million, and covered by CNN (video included), that took place on January 11, 2015. It was covered by all the major American networks (Fox, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NYT, etc.)
So.. why didn’t you see it recently? Look at the year again. 2015. Is that this year? No, it isn’t.
It didn’t take place recently. It wasn’t covered by mainstream media recently because it didn’t even happen recently.
Do you expect a news agency to cover stories, again, and from over a year ago?
The dominating theme of the gathering was “Je Suis Charlie,” being French for “I am Charlie” as the people identified themselves with the victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo. The emphasis was upon solidarity and unity, against terror in general, not specifically from a single source. Were there people in attendance who were against Islam? I think that sounds entirely plausible, but it wasn’t a dominating theme according to observable accounts.
To everyone that believed this before looking it up, and who was sent here by someone who linked to this article: The fact that you’re willing to believe a Facebook picture or meme without researching it first is indicative of how horrible of a source for information YOU are. You encountered information, and then instantly believed it, because you have a FALSE understanding of the world.
If your criticism is that this story didn’t appear on the “mainstream media” then you have quite possibly the worst research methods ever. Furthermore, YOU ARE ON THE INTERNET. There are THOUSANDS of news sources to check and cross-check, at your leisure — but you, you sit there and complain that perhaps 5 of them didn’t cover something recently, and those news sources that have to squeeze the entirety of world history into a single hour of coverage somehow doesn’t match the mind-boggling standards that make up the impossibly small bubble you live in — that, not only did they actually cover, but it happened well over a year ago AND you complained about it then, too.