White House offers list of terrorist attacks the press took lightly

The White House released on Monday a list of 78 terrorist attacks that the Trump administration claim were not sufficiently covered by the nation's press. The list, however, included some mass killings that were covered well enough to make their locales into symbols of anger and grief: Orlando, San Bernardino, the Boston Marathon, Nice and Paris in France, and Brussels in Belgium.

According to a White House official, the international list was sent out to prove the point "that these terrorists attacks are so pervasive at this point that they do not spark the wall-to-wall coverage they once did."

"If you look back just a few years ago, any one of these attacks would have been ubiquitous in every news outlet, and now they're happening so often — at a rate of more than once every two weeks, according to the list — that networks are not devoting to each of them the same level of coverage they once did," the official said.

"This cannot be allowed to become the 'new normal,'" the official added.

The list came out after President Donald Trump said Monday that the media has not been reporting adequately on recent terrorist attacks, focusing instead of such things as people protesting against his administration. And while the list includes several major attacks that dominated headlines for weeks, there are several attacks listed that likely did not merit much U.S. news coverage, at least relative to the Orlando Massacre or San Bernardino.

“You’ve seen what happened in Paris, and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening,” Trump said earlier Monday. “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”

Under-reported terrorist attacks became a point of public discussion after Kellyanne Conway, a top counselor to Trump, cited a terrorist attack in Bowling Green that never occurred. And the list also furthers the Trump administration's narrative that the press is focused on the wrong things, if not hostile to White House — the "opposition party" according to top Trump adviser Steve Bannon.