That’s the thesis of my latest media column for the Rocky Mountain News. The column points out the media’s failure to cover the Ethiopian genocide against the Anuak people, the severe undercoverage of the genocide-by-starvation in Zimbabwe, and minimal attention to the disaster, including genocide, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That the Sudanese genocides in the south Sudan (against black African Christians and animists), and in west Sudan (against black African Muslims in Darfur) have received some media attention is mainly because human rights activists, particularly Christian groups in the U.S., have forced the issue into the public’s consciousness.
The media are correct, I concede, in recognizing that most readers have scant interest in Africa. But I argue that in the case of genocide, the media have an ethical duty to keep the issue constantly in front of their audience. One reason the promise of “never again” has turned into the awful reality of “again and again and again” is that Third World genocide receives so little Western media attention.
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