The Diffusion of News

by Thor Hampus Bank

LAST WEEK a Danish media scholar, Stig Hjarvard, announced that more than 40% of the danish population are "media junkies" in one of the largest online newspaper in Denmark, www.politiken.dk. These 40% are almost constantly updating themselves on the recent news, their social network sites, etc.

I am not questioning this statement - I am sure that Hjarvard's theory fits other western countries as well - but it made me wonder; "what news is it that we keep updating ourselves on...?". And I began to look into it.

LET'S GO BACK to 2007. Time Magazine and CNN has made a list of the 10 most reported news stories on CNN. Here's the list with some keyword to each news story:

1. The Government Crisis in Pakistan (Musharraf/Bhutto, West vs. East)

2. The Mortgage Crisis (USA, Sub-prime money troubles)

3. The Munk protests in Burma (Violence, Junta, Fascist rule)

4. Goodbye, Harry Potter (Potter mania in US/EU, movie-fuzz)

5. Petraeus under Fire (Iraq, military, US foreign policy)

6. Chinese produced toys recalled (lead infected childrens toy from China)

7. The Virginia Tech Tradegy (school killings in US)

8. Stem Cell Breakthrough (science, medecine, mankind)

9. Bond breaks home-run record (US, baseball, record, fraud with steroids)

10. IPhone Mania (Apple, technology, mobile)

THE STRIKING thing is the comprehensiveness of the top 10 news. Politics, war, science,  economics and entertainment, - it's all there. What's not there is the Third World countries and the disasters they experience.

We all know that US media coverage are sometimes less than adequate (ever heard about Fox News Corp.?), so let's turn our attention to the news coverage in Europe. With nearly 50 different countries and no cross-national news coverage service BBC News seems like the most reasonable choice in a pragmatic perspective. BBC is funded by the british tax-payers and should therefore not have any commercial interest in it's news coverage. Well, we must assume that they have to provide the news people want or else they will lose their audience, which may prove to be exactly the point here. 

AT THIS VERY MOMENT over 1 million people are fleing their homes in the "Democratic" Republic of Congo. They are trying to escape rebel and government soldiers killing, raping and looting the civilians in this country in their effort to win this civil war. This is BIG news.

THIS STORY should at least be able to make a headliner once, since the world community is involved with the largest UN force deployment anywhere in the world. And BBC are indeed covering this event on their front news page (www.news.bbc.co.uk). Unfortunately, there are two distinct problem with BBC's (and the rest of the european mass medias') coverage of this story.

FIRST, this conflict has just reach another peak at this moment and the war in Congo stretches back many months and the sources of this war many years. The last year thousands and thousands of women and children has been mutilated and raped by looting rebel forces only to experience the same treatment by the government forces. The killings are measured in thousands as well. This is in fact and old story if the angle on the story was the huge catastrophe that still is sweaping across the tormented country. This lead us to the second point.

SECOND, when something this big is covered after so many months you can't help asking "why now?". The answer could be, that it just simply can not be ignored any longer. The numbers are too big to not be turned into a headline; "More than 250,000 refugees in danger" and so on... Another, and more cynical, way of looking at it yields another answer. It seems like African catastrophes only make headlines when things are so bad that it actually becomes a problem for us in the sense that the international western world bodies, we have established to watch the world, like UN, UNICEF, etc, are not able to deal with the situation without further funding or mandate.

IT'S LIKE A CHARITY COLLECTOR standing outside or door asking you for some spare change in order to help the starving people i Somalia. These people was not a problem - they were not even present -  in your world until this collector ended up pressing your doorbell and now you have to at least acknowledge that there is a problem somewhere in the world. We need huge, present, emotional and catastrophic disasters that can not be improved without world community help.

This maybe sounds a little harsh, but think about it. Maybe there is just too many small disasters in this world that nobody really wants to hear about Congo when the numbers only amount to thousands. But it seems somewhat hollow that Holocaust still attracts headlines, when genocides in Africa is going unheard in the western world. Was the lesson from Holocaust to not close the eyes on these things. Has the civilizations in our world not reach a point where these actions (genocide, systematic raping, psychological warfare on children, etc.) should result in the strongest reaction from the only ones that have the ability to react:

Us... 

If you want to know what's going on in the poor (media covered) parts of the world these are some good news sites;

CNN Africa

BBC World (maybe it is a bit unfair to use BBC as an example in this article, since they are one the best european providers of world news)

If you have any hints about good world news sites, please write your recommendations in a comment and they will be added to the list.

This article is solely an expression of the author's opinion.

Some additional sources:

Politiken

Bad boy Fox

Oh my God!?

by Thor Hampus Bank

NO, this is not about children abused or ridiciously spoiled by their parents. The pictures are from the documentary "Jesus Camp" from 2006. It is not exactly a new movie, but is has proven to become even more relevant in the light of the coming presedential election in the US this fall.

A BRIEF recap for those of you who haven't got to see it yet:

"Jesus Camp" is a portrait of the Evangelical movement in the US, which has approximately 80 million followers. They are a very conservative christian movement who believe in the Creation Theory (as opposite to Darwin's Evolutionary Theory). They also believe that their faith is the ONLY way to go about life (when asked why?; well,... it just is!) and they are against abortion. Furthermore, they encourage their children to become political active, so they can change the system from inside.

THE documentary revovles around a camp, called "Kids on Fire", arranged for the children in the movement and their parents. At this camp they are prepared to sacrifice their life, kill Harry Potter if they ever should meet him in person, and do whatever they can, so they one day can become people who are able to change the American political system in a conservative direction.

EVERYBODY should be surprised by the massive brainwashing of their children this movement is pulling off the first time they see this film. But I am really surprised by all the little hints throughtout the film about how deeply involved this movement is with the Bush administration and the Republican Party in general.

THIS influence was previously managed by pastor Ted Haggart, founder of The New Life Church, who had a weekly meeting with the advicers in the White House and sometimes George Bush himself. I guess they didn't discuss the weather, though Bush is known to prefer simple subjects.

UNFORTUNATELY, Ted Haggart had to resign in 2006 after it was revealed that he had been engaged in a homosexual relationship with an intellectual prostitute called Mike Jones. And just to pep things up a little, he also admitted having an metaamphetamin abuse. So, of course, Ted had to go. But rest assure, the connecting between the Republican Party and the Evangelical movement did just fine without him. It happens to be, that the Republican Party really, really likes all the dirty voting they know the evangelical pastors around the country can deliver, so the rather conservative christians are welcomed, as one of 3 guests, in the republican social and debate club every wednesday in Washington. This is basically where the "concerned" republicans meet to discuss how to win the next election, how to win the nasty wars they have started, and what to do about those cheesy democrats.

BESIDES the Evangelical Church, also knows as the conservative christians, the republican discussion/social club is attended by the ultra-right-wing conservatives, who thinks that a tax cut down to 0% tax would be appropiate, and the "Warmongers", who generally think that war is the natural state of the world and the most wise solution to every man made problem on this planet (either because they have money bound in the massive military industrial complexes, or simply because they are in love with guns...). In other words, this has been a really a nice place for the republicans to talk about their favourite subject over the past years. Did anybody notice this in the foreign policy?

WHAT could make some of us a little nervous, is the fact that the size of the evangelican movement in the US has risen from 26,3% of the US population in 2004 to 28,6% in 2007. They are not all just as conservative as the ones you see in "Jesus Camp", but overall the number of voters guided more or less be their believe and local pastors are on the rise. This will of course play a role in the upcoming election. 

IF you are interested I would recommend watching "Jesus Camp" or maybe even read "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright to get a historical perspective on religious fanatiscm.

If you have any comments, please feel free to post them. By the way, this is the "woman" playing with those kids above:

Keep your eyes open and for Gods sake, VOTE!

;)