--- title: Boko Haram: How We Failed the Kidnapped Nigerian Schoolgirls description: We covered the search for the plane and the search for ferry survivors. Why wasn't the media focused on searching for the missing girls? canonical: https://time.com/84414/how-we-failed-the-lost-girls-kidnapped-by-boko-haram/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-02T21:52:21.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:02:27.511Z og:title: How We Failed the Girls Kidnapped by Boko Haram og:description: We covered the search for the plane and the search for ferry survivors. Why wasn't the media focused on searching for the missing girls? og:url: https://time.com/84414/how-we-failed-the-lost-girls-kidnapped-by-boko-haram/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt374d1e67bc63b5d8/69868da6cd804d0cf0ccaa97/2014-04-30t193052z_148076076_gm1ea5109.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Women react during a protest demanding security forces to search harder for 200 abducted schoolgirls, outside Nigeria's parliament in Abuja og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How We Failed the Girls Kidnapped by Boko Haram twitter:description: We covered the search for the plane and the search for ferry survivors. Why wasn't the media focused on searching for the missing girls? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt374d1e67bc63b5d8/69868da6cd804d0cf0ccaa97/2014-04-30t193052z_148076076_gm1ea5109.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How We Failed the Lost Girls Kidnapped by Boko Haram > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Worth Your Time: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Worth Your Time is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more. Worth Your Time is a curated guide to the culture worth knowing, from the biggest conversations of the moment to the books, shows, ideas and discoveries worth your attention. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Boko Haram Abduction and Terror [Watch (HLS stream): Boko Haram Abduction and Terror](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/aONwMaQI.m3u8) (1:34)  _Published 2014-05-06. Boko Haram claims responsibility for the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian school girls, which has sprung a global movement calling for their release._  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent May 2, 2014 9:52 PM UTC  Nigerian women demonstrate outside the parliamentary building in Abuja, the country's capital, on April 30, 2014, demanding the government to search harder for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist militants Boko Haram two weeks ago Nigerian women demonstrate outside the parliamentary building in Abuja, the country's capital, on April 30, 2014, demanding the government to search harder for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist militants Boko Haram two weeks ago Afolabi Sotunde—Reuters  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent May 2, 2014 9:52 PM UTC **Updated: May 5, 8:51 AM** _In a speech on national television Sunday, almost three weeks after the girls were taken, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan_ [_vowed to rescue_](http://time.com/87431/goodluck-jonathan-nigerian-president-schoolgirls-boko-haram/) _the missing schoolgirls and bring them home to their families. On Monday, a Boko Haram leader released_ [_a video_ ](http://time.com/87658/boko-haram-nigeria-kidnapped-girls/)_claiming responsibility, saying “I abducted your girls” and “I will sell them in the market, by Allah.”_ There’s nothing the media loves more than a good hunt. So for the past few months, news coverage has been dominated by the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the hunt for survivors on the South Korean ferry accident, even the hunt for the U.S.’s 2016 presidential candidates. But when Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped more than 276 Nigerian girls from their school on the night of April 14, Wolf Blitzer and his fancy graphics were nowhere to be found. Eighteen days ago, the girls were just high schoolers trying to get an education. Now they’ve been kidnapped by terrorists and likely [sold](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27206449) into “marriages” to men in Chad and Cameroon. [Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe](http://time.com/70892/rosemary-nyirumbe-2014-time-100/), who runs a shelter for girls abducted by Joseph Kony’s rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, in Uganda, says that’s just a euphemism for systematic rape. “This is not marriage,” she says. “They are being given in sex slavery. This is human trafficking. We should call evil by its name.” Sub-Saharan Africa is home to over [16%](http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/region/sub-saharan-africa/) of the 29.8 million enslaved people in the world, and now these girls have likely joined their ranks. It’s atrocious that the Nigerian government has made almost no publicized effort to find the girls. Mausi Segun, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Nigeria, says that people who live near the group’s suspected camps haven’t seen any security forces searching for the students, nobody from the government has reached out to the families, and the government even lied and said that most of the girls had been returned. But the media enabled the government to sweep the whole thing under the rug by ignoring the story for weeks. The kidnapping was mentioned for the first time on American nightly news on May 1, more than two weeks after the girls were taken, according to Andrew Tyndall, who runs the [Tyndall Report](http://tyndallreport.com/) analyzing TV news. _NBC Nightly News_ ran the [first story](http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/families-kidnapped-nigerian-schoolgirls-demand-answers-n95271) Thursday night, CBS ran [a piece](http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/hundreds-of-school-girls-abducted-in-nigeria/) Friday morning, and ABC has been mum. The story never made the front page of the national edition of the New York _Times_. CNN has had a bit more coverage, but nothing approaching the coverage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane carrying [370 passengers](http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/01/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/) or the South Korean ferry accident that left over [300 people dead or missing](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/south-korea-ferry-disaster/broken-fingers-reveal-south-korea-ferry-victims-escape-bids-n87416). We only started paying close attention after salacious rumors surfaced that the girls were likely sold as child brides for as little as $12\. That’s too little, too late. By contrast, when the Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared March 8, the story was the lead story on all NBC, ABC and CBS news shows for 11 weekdays straight. But does it matter what’s on TV? Nyirumbe says global media attention is key to stopping the atrocities. “The media has the most powerful voice, the media can reverse evil if it is done correctly,” she says. “Even these people who are doing these atrocities against humanity, once they hear the media is coming, they stop.” The irony is that by Netflix-algorithm logic, this should have been the biggest news of the past two weeks — stories about searches, schools and sexual abuse tend to capture our interest. Tyndall points out that the media tends to love stories about girls’ education in Muslim countries; just look at all the press [Malala Yousafzai](http://tyndallreport.com/tyndallsearch/?m=2&guid=2015&storytitle=Pakistan+education:+schools+for+girls+campaign&yearstart=2012&monthstart=10&daystart=1&yearend=2014&monthend=2&dayend=10&search=not+required&searchstory=true&searchreporter=true&searchdateline=true&network%5Fany=true&bureau%5Fany=true&focus%5Fany=true&includeeverytopic=on&iteration=3&listall=true) has gotten (she now has a publicity team to handle her public image). The girls were kidnapped by Islamic extremist group Boko Haram on the night of they’d assembled to take an exam at the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, in the northeastern part of the country. That’s no coincidence, because Boko Haram’s name roughly translates to “Western education is forbidden.” The group has been terrorizing Nigeria for years, capitalizing on instability fueled by economic inequality and unemployment in Africa’s largest economy. They’ve attacked [villages](http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/144261/1/12-killed-in-fresh-boko-haram-attack-on-kopchi-vil.html), caused [explosions](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/boko-haram-abuja-blast) at bus stations and [murdered boys](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/29-boys-killed-boko-haram-attacks-boarding-school-nigeria-n37991) at a boarding school, but this is their largest attack yet, the one that should have caught the world’s attention. Frustrated by the government’s lack of action, some of the girls’ [fathers and brothers](http://www.npr.org/2014/04/27/307451067/have-mercy-on-our-little-ones-kidnapping-agonizes-nigerians) have gone looking for them, without success. It’s possible (but unlikely) that the government is doing some behind-the-scenes negotiations for the girls’ rescue, but the families are still [protesting](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/01/parents-abducted-schoolgirls-nigeria-protest) that the government isn’t doing enough to help the lost girls. The issue will be harder to ignore when representatives from other nations descend on Nigeria this week for the World Economic Forum. Nigeria just became Africa’s biggest economy, and the government wants to be associated with growth and opportunity, not terrorism and corruption. This mass kidnapping is bad optics for the narrative of a Nigeria on the rise, which is why they tried to bury the story. Segun, of Human Rights Watch, says that the government’s lie that the girls were returned was partially intended to deceive the media. “The government is concerned about its image, and a lot of what happened initially was that to stave off that interest,” she says, adding that the government pressured the school principal to back up their story, but she refused. But why did it take the press so long to catch on? Because we have a tendency to overreport stories that affect our foreign policy (especially in India, China and the Middle East) and underreport stories that have less geopolitical relevance. There’s also the fact that most [foreign bureaus](http://www.ted.com/talks/alisa%5Fmiller%5Fshares%5Fthe%5Fnews%5Fabout%5Fthe%5Fnews#t-146317) have been decimated, and 20 newspapers and companies have eliminated their foreign bureaus since [1998](http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=4997), which means that facts about the kidnapping were hard to come by. And it’s impossible to ignore the racial implications: when a pretty blonde girl like [Hannah Anderson](http://nation.time.com/2013/08/22/kidnapping-survivor-and-captor-were-pen-pals/) or Elizabeth Smart goes missing, news outlets send helicopters and reporters to the scene; but when hundreds of black girls are kidnapped in a faraway country, it barely makes the news. Now the spotlight on this case has grown, perhaps because of the impending economic forum. But it almost doesn’t matter what finally got the world’s attention because the media scrutiny came far too late. Two weeks ago the girls were taken in a caravan that moved slowly enough that some girls were able to escape. If we had paid attention then, when the girls were together and still in the country, they might have been found. Of course Boko Haram are the villains here, and the Nigerian government bears the brunt of the blame for the lack of action. However, this tragedy is partly on us. We weren’t paying attention. We failed those girls. Let’s not do it again. The map below shows how the conversation finally exploded on Twitter. ## Transcript New horrors from a brazen and increasing dangerous terrorist organization a man claiming to be the leader of the Islamic militant Boko Haram is promising a grim fate for 223 Nigerian girls kidnapped in the dead of night during a fiery attack on their school three weeks ago. I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market by Allah. There is a market for selling humans. Outrageous threats in a rambling nearly hour- long video. More reason for the United States to be very worried about Boko Haram's expanding campaign of terror, with some financial help and training from Al Qaeda. The group has killed thousands of people including innocent children since it's emergence in 2009 in bombings and armed attacks on buses, churches, mosques, and villages. Boko Haram's means Western education is sinful, it's goal is to create a radical Islamic estate in Nigeria. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell the women. I sell women. [ NOISE ] Protesters in Nigeria and around the world are demanding action to find the abducted girls, who may already have been sold as child brides or worse. CNN has learned that the Obama administration has started sharing intelligence with Nigeria. Where the government is under fire and accused of incompetence. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/84414/how-we-failed-the-lost-girls-kidnapped-by-boko-haram/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/84414/how-we-failed-the-lost-girls-kidnapped-by-boko-haram/"},"headline":"How We Failed the Lost Girls Kidnapped by Boko Haram","datePublished":"2014-05-02T21:52:21.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:02:27.511Z","description":"We were fascinated with the search for the Malaysian plane and the search for survivors on the South Korean ferry. 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