From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: EXTRA: Media neglect of Somalia
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 00:45:47 GMT

/** headlines: 221.0 **/
** Topic: EXTRA: Media neglect of Somalia **
** Written  4:34 pm  Sep  3, 1992 by ggundrey in cdp:headlines **
From: George Gundrey <ggundrey>
Subject: EXTRA: Media neglect of Somalia

/* Written  5:11 am  Sep  2, 1992 by saskin in cdp:reg.africa */
/* ---------- "EXTRA: Media neglect of Somalia" ---------- */
Follow-up: Hunger in Africa - A story still untold
  By Steve Askin (c) 1992

 This article appears in the September 1992 issue of Extra!,
 published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 130 W.
 25th Street, New York, NY 10025.

 The author hereby grants permission for reproduction on
 non-commercial electronic communications systems only. No other
 print or electronic reproduction permitted, except by permission
 of the author, who can be reached at saskin@igc.apc.org or Fax
 1-212-749-9335
 _________________________________________________________


 [Editor's note: War-induced famine in Somalia became page 1 news
 after UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali complained in
 late July that western nations preoccupied with Yugoslavia were
 ignoring a far graver African crisis. On the day that Ghali spoke
 out, July 23rd, a New York Times editorial harshly criticized
 President Bush for saying nothing about Somalia while "a third of
 a country inches toward the grave." Yet - as the following report
 shows - the Times, like George Bush, has consistently ignored the
 suffering of that nation's war- endangered people.]


 Question: When does a famine threatening millions of human lives
 become news that fits the front page of the New York Times.

 Answer: When animals die.

 That's the rule news editors at the Times seemed to follow in
 July, when they belatedly found front page space for the dual
 emergency -- drought in southern Africa and war-induced famine in
 the Horn of Africa -- threatening millions of the continent's
 people.

 In a rare burst of Africa coverage during the week of July 5-12,
 the paper published five stories by Nairobi-based correspondent
 Jane Perlez on food-short African nations. Perlez' writing
 offered valuable insight into the continent's most troubling
 problems. Yet, by the choices they made in displaying her
 stories, Times editors re-proved a point Jane Hunter and I made in
 Extra! a year ago, when we complained that the U.S. press gives
 "more attention to the lives of animals - featuring safari stories
 on elephants, rhinos and other endangered species - than the
 specter of death from starvation haunting millions of human beings
 in Africa."

 The fate of 2000 elephants ("Zimbabwe Kills Starving Elephants for
 Food," July 5) was the subject of the only Perlez story to make
 page one that week. Not until the ninth paragraph did readers
 learn that, in addition to ending the lives of 2000 elephants,
 drought "has devastated crops from Mozambique across to Angola,"
 and threatened five million Zimbabwean people.

 Thus began a parade of African wildlife through the pages of the
 Times. On July 7th, a 28 inch Perlez report ("Science Times,"
 page 2) described the Zimbabwean black rhino's "last stand."

 On July 12, the Sunday travel section ran 38 inches of Perlez copy
 on elephant viewing at Botswana's $200+ per day game parks. That
 same day, the Times placed a woefully understated headline ("U.N.
 Observers Delay Visit to Somalia," news section, page 12) atop a
 17 inch Perlez story on the world's most murderous human tragedy
 of 1992: the war-induced famine in Somalia.

 In total, the Times devoted 84 inches (excluding photos) over
 eight days to the three wildlife-centered stories from
 drought-afflicted nations. Endangered human beings were the focus
 of two less-prominently displayed stories totalling 41 inches.

 Not until July 19 did the Times find front page space for the
 Somali crisis, an emergency which has pre-occupied aid agencies
 since last fall, when the United Nations estimated that 4.5
 million Somalis faced potentially grave, war-induced food
 shortage. By the end of July, when the Times intensified its
 coverage of the Somali crisis, more than 25 percent of Somalia's
 children under five had already died, according to estimates by
 the international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres. "An entire
 generation may disappear," if they don't receive immediate
 assistance, MSF warned at a July 22nd Congressional hearing which
 received no coverage whatsoever in the Times.

 Editing which puts animals first while humans die by the tens of
 thousands is inhumane in the most literal sense of that word. Yet
 the blame for Times inhumanity does not lie with Perlez, who packs
 considerable insight even into the safari stories her editors seem
 to prefer. In her Botswana travel piece, for example, Perlez
 highlighted African complaints about western wildlife enthusiasts
 who sometimes impose their priorities with scant regard for
 African realities.

 The most telling commentary on western neglect of African need can
 be found in Perlez' own July 12 story on Somalia. She uses a
 quote from a Red Cross official to spotlight the double standard
 in western coverage of human tragedy. After noting that 500,000
 Somalis will starve unless aid is immediately doubled,
 International Committee of the Red Cross Director Peter Fuchs
 stressed to Perlez that Somalia's human disaster is
 "quantitatively much worse than that in the Yugoslav republics."

 Can there be any doubt that -- if a half million white Europeans
 faced death in the Somali famine -- their story, like Yugoslavia's,
 would have long ago received the frontpage coverage it deserved?

ENDS
** End of text from cdp:headlines **

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