Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Massacre in Africa happened while our heads were turned

How can the murder of nearly 1,000 innocent people, sliced to death in a few hours, go unnoticed in the age of constant news bombardment?

Simple. We're all too busy logging onto CNN.com's ``War Tracker,'' channel surfing among the shouting heads on primetime television, or answering meaningless online polls to notice. The big satellite channels report the news, certainly. But as businesses, they also focus in on the stories they think viewers want to see, almost to the exclusion of all else.

The result: All war in Iraq, all the time. And this week, if it ain't in Baghdad, Basra or Baqubah, chances are viewers won't see it.

But inattention to a crime of the magnitude in Congo raises several issues.

One, I wonder if the lowly machete, which also took the bulk of 800,000 Rwandan lives in 1994, shouldn't be classified as a weapon of mass destruction. When you compare that death toll with the 103,000 souls who perished in the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a compelling case can certainly be made.

Two, the world doesn't pick and choose its problems for our viewing convenience. Our almost exclusive focus on Iraq doesn't mean that worse things aren't happening elsewhere. The irony is that with inescapable 24-hour news, we seem to have less variety in stories and far-ranging reporting than we did 10 years ago.

Three, the public is poorly served by a passive examination of news, a blind acceptance of editors' and network honchos' decisions about what is and isn't newsworthy, and what does and doesn't deserve our attention. Awareness of horrific events like the one in Congo last week provides a context for understanding and comparison the next time a politician tells you Americans need to oust Evil Dictator X or launch an attack on Country Y.

And four, one of the rationales for attacking Iraq that resonated most with Americans was to prevent Saddam Hussein from killing and further terrorizing innocent Iraqis. To underscore the point, the Bush administration dusted off ghastly, 15-year-old photos of slaughtered Kurds.

But we need to think about why some lives -- Kurds, Kosovars, Iraqis -- are worth American attention, tax dollars and political capital while others are not. Be assured that the rest of the world is asking that question.

The United States may not have a strategic or economic interest in Congo. But after the Iraq war is finished, it will be in our interest to return to President Bush's original vision of a powerful but benevolent America.

And while invading Congo is certainly a bad idea, willingness to rally international attention to the carnage there is not. Otherwise, Americans ignore some atrocities and act on others at our own moral and diplomatic peril.



I saw this story yesterday. I too wondered where all the attention and outrage was. The righties have been kvetching all day, on several sites, about the lack of media attention to the freeing of imprisoned Iraqi children. And I'll admit, I didn't see that story either til I saw it on someone elses site.

My point is this; all media is crap. All of it. The media is in the business of infotainment, and all media slants one way or the other. But the important news is out there. You just have to care enough to look for it.

I'm still looking for Bush's response to this carnage in Africa. If there has been a response, it eludes me.

Kansas @ 11:13 PM