Well Allow Me To Retort

There are some people in the media who mean well but don't quite get it. I'm a regular reader of North Jersey News (Bergen Record). They happen to have a pretty good sports section, the real estate section is kinda depressing if you want to buy a house, and an upper if you're selling, but it's their op-ed and overall tone of the paper that sometimes bothers me like nothing else.

It's not that the Bergen Record is more liberal than the New York Times, because it isn't. I haven't quite put my finger on it, but this particular piece caught my attention. Why don't we hear the cries of Dafur writes Mary Ellen Schoonmaker. Among her arguments is this:

Given the choices America's news editors make each day, the question arises: What story trumps genocide? Crimes against humanity are being committed in Darfur, and they could be stopped if enough people - including media decision-makers - cared enough to make it a cause.

But almost no one does. When Sen. Jon Corzine held a press conference last week to introduce a bipartisan bill that outlines a plan of action to stop the genocide, one reporter and two cameramen showed up. Corzine can pack them in when he talks about Social Security, but not when he offers a way to stop the vicious killing of tens of thousands of men, women and children.

She urges the Times to run this story on its front page. Of course, she doesn't notice that her own paper doesn't see the Dafur conflict as being worth covering on the front page of its own paper.

So, in response to that piece, I wrote a nice letter back, which I am reprinting here in its entirety.

All one has to do to see where the world's priorities are is to look at the front page of the New York Times, watch the Evening News, or read the crawl under any of the cable news networks. The priority of
showing Dafur's genocide is simply not there. There is no interest among the editors and publishers of the major media outlets to cover this horrific story.

Why is that? It can't be because of the axiom "If it bleeds, it leads," since what could possibly top the genocide of upwards of 210,000 people in Dafur? Cues to following and touting stories comes from the Times and flagship news networks, and they have failed to follow the story closely enough.

There is simply no interest to cover the story with anything more than a perfunctory reference buried within page A18 of the Times. Since other papers take their cues from the Times, the coverage in secondary papers is similarly lacking. Nicholas Kristof has done yeoman's work in exposing the story to Times readers, but where is the Times' vaunted news reporters? They're absent, and that shows where the priorities lay.

Not that any of this detracts from the culpability of the world to intervene. While there have been strong statements from some in the US government, the UN and other international organizations have failed to act once again. The Genocide Convention goes unheeded, despite the desparate nature in Dafur, and that anyone in their right mind would call the events in Dafur genocide.

Kofi Annan refuses to call the events in Dafur genocide, even as the numbers rise higher and higher, complicity between the Janjaweed and Sudanese government becomes more overt (what can be more overt than Janjaweed militia leaders stating that the ties do exist), and the killing fields grow deeper in the bodies of the victims. His actions border on the criminal for his failure to act, indeed to lead the UN at this critical juncture.

While the US is already providing assistance to the African Union, in the form of logistical assistance, the African Union's mission is limited to peacekeeping, and is insufficient to stop attacks against the local population. Further, the EU is silent on the matter, looking on in indifference.

So much for Never Again.

I have been following the issue for quite some time on my blogs, which are referenced in links within my signature file. Also, if you want to make sure that this story gets the kind of attention you, and I, know it should, then your paper should take the lead in exposing the story, putting it on the front page, and
keeping it there as long as it takes to get the nation focused on the issue.

Sincerely,

Everyone keeps hoping that someone else will take the lead and publicize the story. Kristof hopes that his expose in the op-ed will get others interested in the story. Problem is, the news division, where this story should have been broken in the first place, and covered like nothing else, is curiously absent. Other papers take their cues from the Times, as do the networks. If the Times, with its vast resources doesn't think the story is important, why should a local paper run a story and use its limited resources to cover the story.

The problem is that the Times is flat wrong. They are missing one of the biggest stories of this generation for inexplicable reasons, and other papers and media outlets are too timid to ask the tough questions, send journalists to the UN demanding action, and raising the awareness on their own.

This is where bloggers like myself come in. I can type about this till my fingers bleed, but I don't have enough power to reach a national audience, even if I get an Instalanche and a Footballing at the same time. Only the national papers and media can do that. But they'd much rather chase around Michael Jackson and devote their resources there, thinking this is what people want to watch.

The mass media should be ashamed of their silence on the matter, and Schoonmaker has the ability to do something at her own paper. Take the lead because someone has to.

But don't do it for me, or my words, but for the hundreds of thousands who are already dead, and the thousands more who will die before the killing finally stops.

Technorati: Human Rights, Genocide