Abraham Paulos reports
Ever since the tragedy in Rwanda, the world has vowed to keep its eyes open and to never let a situation like that ever happen again. The words "never again" rang throughout the world . Today, the situation in Sudan is on the verge of becoming another Rwanda or worse yet another Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why isn't the public fully aware of the situation in Sudan? What happened to "never again?" If the world promised to keep its eyes open, then what is it watching?
No other source of information — newspapers, radio programs, or the Internet — comes close to the power of television to inform the public. However, coverage of international news, especially U.S. coverage of Africa, has actually diminished. In 1975, the major Western media had reporters based in most African countries. Today, of the American TV companies, only CNN has a bureau in any of the African countries between the Sahara and South Africa.
The size and outreach of American media is rising. There are an estimated 35,000 media outlets in the US alone. Surveys have shown that about 80 percent of the U.S. public get most of their news from television, as opposed to other media outlets. The nightly news might be the only contact with the international world for many Americans. Cable news television, such as CNN and Fox News, is more commonly watched in recent years, particularly during a crisis such as a war. According to recent surveys, ABC, NBC, and CBS approximately attract about 30 million domestic viewers each evening while the 24-hour news service CNN has 110 million viewing households worldwide.
According to the 2004 Tyndall Report, each year the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC devote a total of roughly 24,900 minutes to news. In 2004, according to research funded by The Genocide Intervention Fund (GIF) and the American Progress Action Fund (APAF), the three network nightly newscasts aired a total of only 26 minutes on the fighting in Sudan. By contrast, Martha Stewart's legal problems received 130 minutes of nightly news coverage. Although I appreciate Martha for ending my sleepless nights of worrying about how to make the sweetest sweet potato pie, why her personal life received more coverage than tens of thousands of people dying is baffling. The crisis in Sudan received approximately one out of every 950 minutes of news coverage in 2004. ABC devoted 18 minutes to Darfur coverage, NBC five and CBS only three. Americans learned almost nothing about the situation in Sudan from major television news media in 2004.
The same research was done by GIF and APAF, through quantitative monitoring of network and cable news. In June 2005, the major network and cable news stations broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week aired only 126 segments on Sudan. On the contrary, during heavy fighting in Sudan, these same stations aired a combined 2,019 segments on the "Runaway Bride" scandal and Tom Cruise.
The "Runaway Bride" is Jennifer Wilcox, a 32-year-old Georgian woman who claimed that she was abducted but actually fled voluntarily due to the pressure of her looming wedding. Even after a month after she was found, her story was broadcast in 485 news segments on the six networks combined. There were many people "running away" that month in Sudan, some of them brides. Then there was movie icon Tom Cruise, whose film "Top Gun" taught me an alternative way to hi-five my friends. If you watched TV in June, you couldn't have missed the fact that Cruise had a new movie coming out, was marrying Katie Holmes, and had an interesting outlook on modern medicine. The networks thought that the personal life of Tom Cruise was so crucial that they aired 1,570 news segments about his life.
Meanwhile in Sudan, brutal attacks on villages, the burning of huts with people inside, the killing of children, the daily raping of women when they try to collect firewood, forced displacement and pillaging continued. Tens of thousands of humans suffered in makeshift camps, waiting for food and water that had to travel through difficult physical and often fatal terrain. According to conservative statistical data from the Coalition of International Justice (CIJ)— the source for the US determination that genocide was occurring in Darfur — the death toll in June 2005 had reached approximately 340,000 since the crisis began in February 2003. In other words, about 11,000 human beings died in one African country that month alone. Newsworthy?
There was slightly more coverage of Africa in July 2005. Some of the networks aired news segments roughly 5 million people needing emergency food aid in the West African countries of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso due to failing crops, locust infections, and indescribable poverty. However, the plight of West Africa was ironically overshadowed by the 2005 G8 Summit in early July, when world leaders met to discuss of all things, poverty in Africa. During the summit, the networks overemphasized the $40 billion debt relief or cancellation for Third World countries. Members of the G8 countries had just previously cancelled $30 billion of Iraq's debt while it has taken African countries years of deliberation to even get this far. Hardly mentioned was the fact that Western economic policies often implemented onto these African countries had worsened their debt.
One of the world's worst disasters occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with barely a whistle blowing. Experts estimate that between 3.8 million to 5 million people had died since 1998 from war, disease and hunger. Fergal Keane from the BBC considered it to be "one of the worst sins of omissions in media history." In 1999, donor governments provided $207 per person in Kosovo while only giving $8 per person in the DRC. The director of the Irish aid group GOAL called it "the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Holocaust. Five million dead ..." If three to five million people died in Europe due to warfare and hunger, it would be called World War III with the entire world (including Africans) rushing to report, offer aid, and interve to diffuse the situation.
Issues of hunger, poverty, and death in Africa have been underrepresented in network news due to their fanatic obsession with celebrities and inconsequential stories. This infatuation has exacerbated gross human atrocities of millions of human beings. Africa has received less focus in nightly news compared to the Middle East and Europe. Even if the story is about aid workers rescuing hungry, poor, sick Africans or unreasonable violent Africans victimizing "themselves" the continent is still invisible.
Greater network news engagement had a positive effect after pictures were broadcast of the 1984-1985 Ethiopian famine. This lead to the saving of millions of lives. After media coverage of Apartheid, Americans banded together in protest to expedite the collapse of the regime. If the public doesn't know about situations in Africa, then it is going to demand less, then the networks claim the people aren't interested, and that becomes the excuse for less exposure.
If we want to progress as a human race in a global world, then media coverage of hunger, poverty, and warfare in Africa needs to be constructive and beneficial. TV news representation of world issues is vital to an informed democratic society. Network news can inform the public to demand instant action. Even the presence of the media offers some comfort to people suffering. One reporter quoted a letter by a Sudanese man: "It may be a blessing to die in front of a camera — then at least the world will get to know about it."
