THE residents of Parkland, Florida, as well as former and present students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the town, will never forget the day 17 people were killed eight years ago by a former student.

It was a terrible incident that led on the news in Britain and Ireland for several days, with wall-to-wall coverage on BBC, RTÉ and other broadcast media outlets that allowed viewers to get to know the names of the deceased.

We heard of their personal stories, their dreams and hopes for a future that were cruelly denied, as well as interviews with grieving parents and friends.

Earlier this week, a much greater massacre was visited upon the Shajareh Tayyebeh school community in the town of Minab in Iran, when as many as 165 schoolgirls had their lives taken in an obscene act of mass murder, when precision bombs dropped by the American/Israeli axis struck the all-girls’ primary school.

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It has since been reported that the deadly attacks were the consequence of double tap bombs, meaning the first deadly attack was followed shortly afterwards by a second aimed at killing any survivors. The principal, teachers and school kids stood no chance.

In harrowing video footage shared online, the piercing screams of mothers frantically searching for their daughters could be heard amidst the death, rubble and destruction visited upon the school community.

The BBC, RTÉ and other news outlets failed to provide anything remotely resembling the wall-to-wall coverage that followed a school shooting in the United States in which a fraction of people had been killed.

Shamefully, an RTÉ News headline on the day of the funeral stated that the war had “been defined by two images: Iranian drones and missiles plunging to the ground and exploding, and interceptors streaking into the skies to stop them”, dismissing the mass killing of the schoolgirls in a manner that simply would not have happened had the massacre occurred in an Israeli or American school.

UNESCO described the massacre as a “grave violation” of international law, yet that did not push the story up the news agenda.

On Tuesday, the day of the children’s funerals, the BBC’s flagship News At Ten programme did not cover the story until 25 minutes into the programme.

There was to be no focus on the names and faces of the murdered children, their teachers and parents.

The American broadcaster, CBS, famously ran a televised news report on August 5 1965 showing American soldiers setting fire to the homes of elderly Vietnamese residents in the village of Cam Ne during the Vietnam War, with scores of family homes destroyed in the punitive onslaught.

The report ended with weeping mothers visibly despondent, holding young children and surrounded by many more poorly dressed kids.

The news report provoked a vicious response from the American government, with then President Lyndon B Johnson immediately calling the broadcaster’s president, Frank Stanton, to complain that the report insulted the American flag.

He also ordered an investigation into the journalist, convinced he was a communist sympathiser.

The broadcaster was compelled to change tack, following up the news report with weeks of reports leaving a more positive impression to viewers of the conduct of American soldiers in the conflict.

But the damage was done.

The distinguished American professor Jeff Sachs has described the latest conflict instigated by Israel as “psychopathy, because they’re killing people wantingly… schoolgirls bombed by Israel and no-one even pauses. It’s absolutely shocking, disgraceful and dangerous”.

In the interim period of decades, governments have become much more adept at controlling the narrative and media framing.

The era of the ‘embedded war journalist’ who travels with the US, UK or Israeli soldiers is well established.

During Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, media framing was apparent in much of the print and broadcast media’s reporting, with thousands of people ‘dying’ at the hands of Israel whilst others were ‘killed’ by Hamas.

The White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, went straight to the Israeli playbook when challenged to confirm that America was to blame for killing the schoolgirls.

She blamed the media for “falling” for Iran’s propaganda, claiming with a straight face that America does not target civilians – even as images of a carpet-bombed Tehran were going viral on social media.

The Israelis used to at least endeavour to provide misinformation and lies to blame others for their mass casualty attacks on civilian targets including hospitals, universities and schools. They don’t even bother any more.

Trump’s America has violently attacked seven different countries to date during his short tenure as a second term president, while also threatening others, including Greenland.

Listening to the bloodthirsty rant of the US War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, as he bragged about America and Israel bringing “death and destruction from the sky all day long”, it is impossible for anyone to avoid an inescapable conclusion: this America and its genocidal partner, Israel, are not the good guys.

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