On Jan. 7, two gunmen burst into the offices of satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 and injuring many more. In the following weeks, Western media lit up in defense of free speech, mourning the deaths of the 12 staff members who were hailed as heroes by many. For days, Charlie Hebdo was all anyone was talking about.

Interesting considering that four days earlier, extremist group Boko Haram massacred more than 2,000 civilians in Nigeria, leaving hundreds of bodies strewn along the wayside in what Amnesty International described as Boko Haram’s “deadliest massacre.” And yet the deaths of thousands received hardly a footnote in the face of 12 dead magazine staff members.

The response to Charlie Hebdo itself is understandable and valid. But the fact that thousands of African civilians don’t get the same courtesy reveals serious problems in how Western media and the nations that host it fail to react to even worse crises in countries outside of their circle.

For example, did you know that professional Russian troops are still joining with separatists to undermine Ukraine’s independence, according to Ukrainian soldiers still fighting months after the crisis left the scripts of the nightly news? Or that Ebola appears to have mutated, and is adding to the number of the more than 22,000 people who have been infected with the disease in West Africa? Or maybe that months ago, Turkish authorities attempted to shut down any contact that citizens had with the outside world in order to cover up the fact that Turkish police in riot gear were releasing tear gas and water cannons to stop protests- a situation that strangely mirrors what happened in Ferguson, Missouri after the death of Michael Brown?

Chances are little of that information will ever make it onto the screens of the phones, computers and televisions of high schoolers, or even average Americans.

Online news sources such as the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Huffington Post cover these crises semi-regularly, but they are rarely headline news. Some of the less-biased sources available are BBC World News and Al Jazeera English, but few teens are clicking on links to BBC News, and even fewer have even heard of Al Jazeera. I know that prior to writing this story I certainly hadn’t.

What happened to the Charlie Hebdo employees was a tragedy. But there should be no excuse for being ignorant of what’s happening beyond the West, especially not a lack of news sources covering them. The news is out there, just slightly hidden and it’s time everyone stopped simply being Charlie and started paying attention.