A 15-year-old boy gunning down five fellow students in an American high school cafeteria is news, right?

I don’t need to tell you that.

Every fiber of any sane human being’s body would surely recoil in utter horror at such a revelation.

By late Friday afternoon, a few hours after the devastating incident in Washington State, the facts were clear: one young girl was dead, so was the shooter who had killed himself. Four other schoolchildren were critically wounded, fighting for their lives. (One of those has now also died.)

Zoe Galasso, left, died in Friday's school shooting in Washington State. Gia Soriano, right, passed away two days later. Yet media virtually ignore the tragedy

It was the worst gun outrage at a school in the United States since Sandy Hook nearly two years ago.

Yet the following morning, it was like it had never happened.

I studied the front page of the New York Times, which I receive daily at my home in Los Angeles.

There were two stories on Ebola, a feature on abortion voting concerns in Tennessee, and a report on Chinese pop stars joining pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong.

This gun obsessed teen opened fire at his school and no major newspapers bothered to cover the story in depth

There WAS a big gun-related story: a photo report about the attack on Ottawa’s Parliament two days previously. That happened in another country and killed only one person, but the shooter was a radicalised Islamic fundamentalist so…well, you can note the massive coverage it got in all American media and draw your own conclusions.

The worst school shooting since Sandy Hook was relegated to a tiny 35-word mention in the bottom left hand corner – referencing a fuller report on page 12.

My second paper, the Los Angeles Times, didn’t have a single word about it on their front page – preferring to cover Chinese online phenomenon Alibaba, the cartoon character Hello Kitty, and a feature entitled ‘BROGA – YOGA FOR DUDES’.

America’s other leading newspapers followed a similar patter on their front pages.

The Washington Post – not a word, though it did find room to feature a photograph of six pieces of candy.

The Boston Globe – 26 words, less than the weather forecast.

Chicago Tribune – not a word, though half the front page was devoted to a report on tiny camera drones being used to film sport practice and games creating ‘safety issues’ at high schools.

Miami Herald – not a word.

San Francisco Chronicle – 21 words, about 30 times less than its report on World Series baseball match.

America’s mainstream media had collectively assessed a mass shooting at a high school in which six students were shot as not very interesting.

I consider this to be an utterly contemptible abrogation of news values.

If this had happened almost anywhere else in the world, there would be a national outcry demanding change. In Britain, after the Dunblane school massacre in 1996 in which 16 children were murdered, virtually all assault weapons and handguns were banned from civilian use. There hasn’t been a school shooting since.

In America, there have now been over 80 reported shooting incidents at schools and colleges in America since Newtown alone.

President Obama personally and repeatedly assured the parents of those poor children shot to pieces at Sandy Hook that he would get action on gun control.

He’s failed, dismally, to achieve a single thing.

The NRA’s brutal political and commercial power is now so overwhelming that Obama couldn’t even get a bill recommending universal background checks for all gun sales passed.

His extraordinary impotence on guns is directly linked to America’s equally extraordinary lack of concern. The country’s become immune to gun violence, even as it slaughters its children at school.

Let’s consider an unpalatable truth:

If the Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooter, Jaylen Fryberg, had been a Muslim, his actions would have instantly been deemed a terror attack – and every front page in America would have been cleared to report the story.

Yet his despicable actions WERE an act of terror.

They were no less abominable than what happened in Ottawa.

But because he used a gun in a school, America simply shrugged its shoulders and moved on.

Just as it did last month when a 9-year-old girl accidentally killed a Nevada gun range instructor with an UZI sub-machine gun he had given her to fire - as her parents laughed encouragement in the background.

How can this be tolerated in a supposedly civilised society?

Ebola has so far killed one person on U.S. soil.

Over 10,000 children a year are killed or wounded by guns on the same soil.