The Michael Jackson Genocide

This isn’t a newspaper or a magazine, web or otherwise. Nobody here is paid to gather and report news; nobody here is paid for anything. But there are lots of people who are paid, and very well paid, to report news in print and in electronic media.

They rake in millions in advertising, and they have camera crews and airplanes and helicopters and reporters. They have satellite uplinks and cell phones, wireless computers and minicams; they can report from more places more easily than ever before. But they don't. Not the U.S. media.

It’s bad enough that President Bush barely mentions the major genocide in Darfur in the Sudan. In case you missed it, it’s been going on for two years. But here’s a little wake-up sentence from Nicholas Kristof originally published in the New York Times:

"The American news media aren't even covering the Darfur genocide as well as we covered the Armenian genocide in 1915."

The worst is television.

“According to monitoring by the Tyndall Report, ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in its nightly newscasts all last year - and that turns out to be a credit to Peter Jennings. NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS only 3 minutes - about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks.”

According to Gayle Smith of beawitness.org, which monitors the coverage, CBS went 75 days without a single mention of Darfur. In the same period it devoted 321 segments to Tom Cruise and more than 600 to the Michael Jackson trial.

Last month, Kristof notes, “CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur.”

But CBS did send Diane Sawyer to Africa. To interview Brad Pitt.

Who has done a decent job? Kristof:

The BBC has shown that outstanding television coverage of Darfur is possible. And, incredibly, mtvU (the MTV channel aimed at universities) has covered Darfur more seriously than any network or cable station. When MTV dispatches a crew to cover genocide and NBC doesn't, then we in journalism need to hang our heads.

Time magazine gets credit for putting Darfur on its cover - but the newsweeklies should be embarrassed that better magazine coverage of Darfur has often been in Christianity Today.