No news is bad news

Three months ago this week in Nigeria, the Islamic militant group Boko Haram raided a girls' boarding school in the middle of the night. They kidnapped 300 terrified schoolgirls, then disappeared into the dense forests near the Cameroon border, taking their victims from the world they knew.

The girls' only crime was that they wanted an education. 'Boko Haram', whose name means 'Western education is sinful', believes that women's education is wrong and want to impose a caliphateAn Islamic state led by a supreme religious and political leader. 'Caliph' means 'the successor of Muhammad'. Yet many in the region say Boko Haram barely knows what it stands for. in the predominantly MuslimA follower of the religion of Islam. There are 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide.  north of Nigeria.

This appalling attack shocked the world and a huge international campaign was launched to get the girls back. The #bringbackourgirls tag flooded Twitter, receiving the backing of Michelle Obama, William Hague and Angelina Jolie. Britain, France and the US all offered to assist the Nigerian government in tracking the girls down.

Yet in the wake of fresh crises in IraqA country in the Middle East with a population of 43.5m.  and Gaza, media coverage of the girls' plight has waned. While 55 of the girls escapedWhen Boko Haram fighters went to attack an unsuspecting town, some of the girls managed to escape. Yet the vast majority of the remaining girls have still not been found. their captors, the rest are still thought to be with Boko Haram, or to have been sold off as brides in neighbouring countries.

In the meantime, Boko Haram continues to terrorise Nigeria, massacring villagers and toppling churches in acts of terrible violence. Despite the kidnapping, many schools in the dangerous north are still unprotected by the military and many locals have formed their own small militias for self-protection.

Now, three months on, the 17-year-old Pakistani rights activist Malala Yousafzai is visiting the girls' parents in an effort to rekindle the earlier international pressure. After being shot by the Taliban while on a school bus, Malala has become a global symbol of defiance against extremists and a champion of women's educationMalala has been given the European Union's human rights award and was nominated for (and was jointly awarded) the Nobel Peace Prize last year..

Yet many doubt that this is an issue in which media attention will change the situation. They think the girls' best hopes lie with the government's rescue efforts.

Some say the girls are still in captivity because the Nigerian government has not done enough to find them, and there are now too many other crises going on in the world for the media to keep focusing on this lost cause. There are Western diplomats who doubt the girls will ever be released and, sad though it is, the media must move on until there is more concrete news on the situation.

But others argue that the world's media need to keep up the pressure on the Nigerian government. Officials say that they take the abductions very seriously, but continue to make excuses. Before the media campaign, they even denied the kidnappings had taken place. By making sure the government does all it can, the world's media can contribute to getting the girls freed.