Wednesday 26 July 2006

 

The ongoing crisis...

The mainstream Western media is often accused of imbalance and bias. Whenever these accusations are made I tend to conduct a brief survey of my own to see if they are valid. I often find that such accusations have more to do with the accuser's own bias - unhappy that their ideological position has not been confirmed by the media coverage - rather than with manifestly unbalanced coverage. That is not to say that I have never detected bias. Alas unbalanced and poor journalism abounds. But so far I have not been convinced that there is any kind of 'conspiracy' behind it. I blame a complex mess of political, commercial and ideological factors for skewing coverage on various issues rather than an arcane cabal of back-room elites secretly controlling things for their own nefarious ends.

Perhaps the worst example of mainstream media imbalance (actually the blogosphere is guilty of this one as well) is the lack of coverage of conflict in Africa. Conflicts that kill thousands - northern Uganda for example - and tens of thousands - western Sudan for example - are lucky to get one or two column inches a week in the mainstream newspapers. As for television, you occasionally get a minute or two on the SBS World News.

People might be forgiven for thinking that these conflicts are currently on hold. Unfortunately the two examples I gave above are in full swing, claiming the lives of women and children every day. And while ceasefires and truces are holding in other parts of Africa, the social, economic and environmental impact of conflict still adversely affects the daily lives of millions in those places.

As a token effort to redress this imbalance, here is a brief recap and update on the the conflict in Darfur - western Sudan. It has killed 80,000 people, most of them civilians killed by the Sudanese People's Air Force which, until recently, had been supporting the pro Government militias against the various rebel groups. There are currently about 1.8 million displaced people living in poorly serviced camps in western Darfur and neighbouring Chad. About twenty percent of these people are beyond the reach of UN assistance. Though the presence of 7,000 poorly equipped African Union peace keepers and a peace deal signed between the Sudanese Government and the Sudanese Liberation Army, the main rebel group, has stopped the air raids, the pro Government militias are still sniping at the refugees. There is still fighting between pro Government militias and other rebel groups.

The only good news is that the Bush Administration has maintained its attention on the conflict and is pushing both sides to stick to the peace agreements and encouraging other groups to join the process (you know you're in trouble when anything involving the Bush Administration is good news). George Bush recently hosted Minni Minnawi, leader of the Sudanese Liberation Army, at the White House as a valuable show of support for the fledgling peace process.

Apologies to those who were looking for another blog on the Lebanon/Israel crisis. That crisis is currently being well covered by the mainstream media and other bloggers. For anyone interested, the best piece I have read to date is probably Israel's maximal option by Juan Cole at salon.com. Cole identifies the key motivations and, unlike many on the left, does not demonise Israel. I would suggest that he is a little limited in his analysis of Israel's possible endgame options, but the outcomes he predicts seem inevitable in any case.

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