Bangladesh was the most widely reported of the genocides we studied in which the US can be said to bear some direct responsibility. At first, in 1971, war in what was then called East Pakistan was considered worthy of some attention by the Times. This corresponded with a time when there was controversy in the State Department regarding American support for West Pakistan, and when some diplomats were recognizing the genocidal potential of US complicity. But after that internal dissent failed to change US policy, one would have to squint to find any reference to the fact that a genocide was committed in the world’s eighth most populous country, let alone that the US provided much of the weaponry for it. From the December 1971 conclusion of the war to 2020—a span of about 48 years, or well over 17,000 daily editions of the New York Times—just 176 articles included the term “genocide” when mentioning Bangladesh. For comparison, by 2020 Cambodia—which itself was the least mentioned of the three genocides we studied that were not US-backed—had been mentioned along with “genocide” in 808 articles in the 41 years since the ouster of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
East Timor is another illustrative case, especially because it demonstrates how US grand strategy shapes the way mass violence is understood by the country’s ostensibly independent domestic media. At the start of the Indonesian occupation in 1975, the US had an interest in maintaining close ties with Indonesia and keeping it outside of the USSR’s sphere of influence. But this posture shifted after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the accompanying change in the geopolitical landscape. By 1999, the US had distanced itself from Suharto’s Indonesia and held Timorese independence as a foreign policy goal. Not coincidentally, it was around this time, long after the worst phase of the genocide had ended, that the Times finally deemed Timor a minor but newsworthy story, reporting on the Timorese independence referendum and the subsequent Indonesian repression. The change was noticeable: From 1975 to 1991, the term “genocide” had accompanied mentions of Timor in only 1.5% of Times articles. Then, from the end of the Cold War in 1991 to Timorese independence in 1999, when Timorese victimhood became less of an impediment to US foreign policy, far more reporting was published on the conflict and more than 5% of articles included the term “genocide.” Overall, Timor remained a marginal story and has all but vanished from the news over the decades, but the paper’s sudden openness to covering it after the reversal in US policy is nevertheless revealing.