This week, the internet went into full emergency mode over Macklemore being dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour.
Supporting acts withdrew. Politicians weighed in. The entertainment elite descended from their usual position of moral altitude. Everyone was instructed to choose a side.
Then Saudi Arabia announced that its air defences had intercepted a Houthi drone heading towards Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.
The contrast was striking: while the world spent days debating musicians, promoters and free speech, a drone was reportedly heading towards Mecca, and much of the outrage machine fell strangely quiet.
At the Venice Film Festival, NAZA, built around testimony from anonymous insiders, received a record 25-minute standing ovation and won the Special Jury Prize. We were told that this was important.
At roughly the same time, the fifth season of Fauda arrived on Netflix, opening with October 7 and showing the actual event that began this chapter of the war.
One story was celebrated. No prizes for guessing which was not.
This is how the modern information war works. We aren’t only being told what to think. We are being told where to look.
The stories that serve the preferred narrative are amplified until they fill the screen. The inconvenient ones are allowed to pass almost unnoticed.
Sometimes the most important story is not the one everyone is shouting about:
It is the one we are being encouraged not to see.