America’s flag is still at half-staff, grieving the massacre at Virginia Tech that took 32 lives Monday, April 16. The country was stunned last week as it watched the tragedy unfold on news networks that were in a frenzied stampede to get to Blacksburg, Va., to cover the story. And cover it they did. America knew every minuscule detail as stories were updated from one minute to the next.

Americans keeping tabs on the media last week also watched as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dodged intense questioning from congress members concerning his role in the firing of U.S. attorneys across the country.

The story many Americans did not notice, however, was the one about more than 200 Iraqis who were killed in a series of suicide bombings at a busy market in Baghdad. Besides those who perished in the bombings, there was also an incident April 22 where gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a full bus and checked the IDs of the passengers. Christians were ordered to get off, while members of the Yazidi sect, a minority religion in Iraq, were bused away and shot execution -style. Twenty-three people were killed.

Why is it that America can grieve so intensely for deaths on its own territory and yet casually gloss over 200 lives lost as a direct result of American intervention?

The media went into overdrive for coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre as well they should have. Every network big and small had prolonged and detailed coverage of the attack. The victims’ names, lives and families were quickly publicized, and interviews with friends and family members were splashed across America’s TV screens.

Did the Iraqi victims get the same kind of coverage? Absolutely not. Not even the Arab media covered it in any way other than what has become the global standard for Iraq war coverage of carnage: where it happened, when it happened and who might have done it. There is never any extensive follow-up, never any interviews with victims’ families and never any coverage of funeral proceedings. The identities of the victims are rarely known; their abruptly ended lives simply slip off into the violent oblivion of war. Are their families supported monetarily or emotionally by their government as they grieve? Who knows.

This has not always been the case in Iraq war coverage. At the beginning of the war, journalists roamed freely around Iraq and engaged regularly with the population.

Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War, by Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Shadid, was filled with brilliant interviews with Iraqis who recounted unbelievable experiences outside of the heavily protected green zone. George Packer’s The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq followed the author as he made his way through Iraq and showed the surreal dichotomy that existed and still exists between the green zone and the rest of Iraq.

In the beginning years of the war, hands-on coverage was possible. But the violence gripping Iraq now makes the situation impossible for journalists to cover amid risks of kidnappings and bombings, even if they are from Arab media organizations.

Iraqis inevitably heard of the Virginia Tech killings, and they are aware that President George W. Bush stopped his day and went down to personally express his condolences. Have any such gestures been made on behalf of the Iraqis who perished last week, who have perished in the past four years and who will continue to perish until the war ends?

There have been none, and the implications raise the question: Do Americans care whether Iraqis continue to die violently in this war? If they do, they had better start showing it, and the media needs to give them the right resources to see the truth.

Reach columnist Hanady Kader at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.