In an introduction that dared the reader to turn over in search of something more interesting, The Sunday Times began a leading article this week: “It is becoming a depressingly familiar story.” The story at least had the merits of being a report of real events, which covered the front page and a spread on pages two and three.“French special forces stormed a luxury hotel held by Islamist terrorists in Burkina Faso yesterday in a bloody end to a siege in which 29 innocent people were killed,” the report began. Usually such prominence is given to an atrocity because it concerns British people or is close to home. I am not saying that such a criterion is virtuous, but it is how newspapers think. But Burkina Faso does not count as near home.Although we readers kne