At least 28 children and a teacher are dead after a school roof collapsed in Peshawar, Pakistan Thursday — and American media is all over it, the same media that can't be bothered to cover the crumbling schools in its own backyard.
The roof of the Al Khair Public School gave way during classes, killing children age 13 and under and injuring at least 47 more, according to NPR and CNN. Heavy overnight rainfall destabilized the structure, rescue official Bilal Ahmed told CNN. Peshawar police chief Mian Saeed called it a "weak building structure" whose roof was "overweight with construction on a weak structure," NBC reported. The school's owner has been arrested, according to NPR.
This is a genuine tragedy. It is also a systemic one. CNN acknowledged that building collapses are "a common problem" in Pakistan, where "construction standards... are often poorly enforced" and "many structures are built with substandard materials." Just weeks before, a hospital fire in Islamabad killed 14 newborns — no fire alarms, no sprinklers, no emergency procedures, an inquiry found. In July, another roof collapse at a Lahore tutoring center killed schoolchildren. The pattern: government failure, followed by government promises, followed by more government failure.
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari called the collapse "heart-wrenching" and ordered an investigation. Governor Faisal Karim Kundi sought a report. A committee was formed. The owner sits in a cell. The officials who let the building stand won't face any.
What's telling is what the outlets chose to emphasize — and what they left out. NPR never mentioned the heavy rainfall that CNN and ABC reported as the trigger. NBC buried the structural cause three paragraphs deep. And none of these outlets can bring the same urgency to the collapse of American public education, where reading scores have cratered, school buildings are literally falling apart, and the establishment that built and defends that system refuses to scrutinize it.
Injured teacher Mahwish Zaman told the Associated Press from her hospital bed that the school enrolled roughly 1,200 students from nursery through fifth grade. She was in her classroom when the roof came down. She felt as if the sky had fallen, NPR reported. She woke up in the hospital.
The death toll may still rise. Police told NBC that only 47 of 110 students in the three affected classrooms had been rescued as of their count.
Pakistan's government failed its children. So the question isn't just what happens next in Peshawar — it's when American outlets will bring the same urgency to the failures in their own backyard.
