Progressive Wednesday

Genocide in Darfur: Contact

May 23rd, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday

A few months ago we went to see Anderson Cooper give a speech at the University of Buffalo. While it was entertaining and informative, he gave an answer during a Q & A that bothered me, though I appreciated his honesty. When asked about who decides what topics to cover and to what extent. He said that the reporters decide, but that if they didn’t show the things that bring in the ratings, they’d be off the air faster than you can say “Don Imus.” I might be paraphrasing.

The constitution gives the press the enormous power to tell us about important things going on in the world. In other words, they should make the news interesting, not make the “interesting” newsworthy. Lately, in the game of roshambo that is today’s news, the “interesting” has become the rock and the newsworthy has become the scissors. When it comes to Darfur, the media has been borderline treasonous.

Whether it’s one of the major broadcast networks, or the ubiquitous cable news networks, relatively little has been reported about the atrocities in Darfur. In fact, in June of 2005, at the height of the violence, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, MSNBC, and CNN ran a total of 6,248 segments about Michael Jackson. Darfur? 126. That’s a ratio of almost 50:1. The TV show “ER” brought more attention to it than the media did.

BeAWitness.org is trying to change this. From their website you can send a letter to the major news networks expressing your displeasure with their lack of coverage of the situation in Darfur. More specifically, watch this television ad. Then tell them that you want them to run it on their networks. So far they have refused. I don’t wonder why.

So contact the major networks or write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Because genocide is newsworthy. You can’t stop it unless you know about it.