The media's blackout continent

BY BIRAJ SWAIN| IN Media Practice | 24/05/2014
In the six weeks of super-charged election coverage, some of the big stories from Africa were ignored, brushed aside or given lip-service coverage.
BIRAJ SWAIN says the neglect is a constant. PIX credit: pri.org

American political satirist John Oliver’s debut episode of Last Week Tonight on HBO where he spoofed the American media for ignoring the very important Indian elections went viral in India too. However, Indian media (especially the Delhi based mainstream media) does to Africa consistently what the US media did to our elections. Ignore!

Africa is a continent with resurgent Indian investment interests, sizeable Indian diaspora, shared histories, struggles, traditions and culture with just the Indian Ocean separating us. Yet the Indian media doesn’t find enough air time or print space for it. Elections were just an excuse this time but blacking out and under-reportage, are a constant.

In the six weeks of super-charged election coverage, some of the big stories from that continent of 54 fully recognised sovereign states, that our media ignored, brushed aside or paid lip-service coverage to, are:

Chibok girls’ kidnapping: The Islamist terror group Boko Haram kidnapping 200+ (276 by some reports) girls from a school in the northern Nigerian region of Chibok on the night of April 14-15 is big news. It got passing reference in the Indian media till Michelle Obama and the celebrity jing-bang lent their support. But the reportage is still nowhere matched to the scale of the incident and its causes. And with such scant reportage, unsurprisingly, there’s hardly any outrage in India, either from the feminists, educationists, governance and security activists or even physicists (since some reports suggest these girls were preparing or taking their Physics exam). That the western forces mobilising help could pose a real danger of another unpredictable and prolonged military intervention, also doesn’t get the tongues of our strategists and defence analysts’ wagging. 

Now that the elections in India are over, the news of more than 200 Nigerian girls being kidnapped is getting some traction. But only after many celebrities started campaigning with the hashtag ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ that caught worldwide attention. The coverage still is mostly the news picked up from western news agencies and their perspective. Surely our nation would like to know more! 

Egyptian court sentencing 720 to death: After sentencing 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death on March 24 this year and fuelling global outrage and appeal, another judge sentenced 683 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death with no due process either, on April 28 in another mass trial. He also banned a youth movement behind the 2011 Arab Spring revolution. The same judge, in a separate but related matter, on the earlier 529 cases, also upheld death sentences for 37 of the 529, taking the death sentence conviction count to 720. Considering our Lok Sabha elections have seen unprecedented social media quotient this time, it was surprising that this grotesque mutation of the first ever social media fuelled revolution went hardly reported. 

South Africa general elections: South Africa went to polls on May 7, when Amethi was voting in India and the battle for Varanasi was reaching its last phase. That, this was the 20th anniversary of the first post-Apartheid election in South Africa still didn’t mean any deserving attention from India’s mainstream media. That South Africa’s anti-Apartheid struggle has a shared history with India’s independence struggle and common icons, didn’t trigger any curiosity either. There was a new kid on the block, the Economic Freedom Fighters (akin to our Aam Aadmi Party) that garnered 6.4% to 10% of the total mandate (depending on which analysis you choose to read) and surprised the ruling African National Congress, the leading opposition Democratic Alliance and the commentators. Surely this election deserved some coverage, if not for vintage value, then for comparing notes on two fledgling social-movement-turned-political-parties. 

South Sudan crisis: The newest sovereign state in the world is in a constant state of turmoil with internal conflict over its oil and religion, impending famine and a double dose of drought and crop failure. A peace agreement of sorts with the early makings of a transitional government is emerging, all bank-rolled by Western donors in the African Union’s head-quarters at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While this emerging peace deal is being scripted, the global humanitarian fraternity watches with bated breath to avert another colossal unnecessary crisis-laden death-spree. But the Indian media has other things to report on than South Sudan, even though India is the largest contributor to the UN Peacekeeping mission in south Sudan.

These are not some regional 8th page tuck-in items. These are international headlines. Such important happenings with global resonance and clear Indian connections went either unreported or under-reported! Does that mean Indian media has picked Africa for special neglect? Not necessarily. Latin America is also scarcely reported and often distance is cited as the reason.

But geographies do get transcended, for all the wrong reasons! And the trial of Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius is a testimony of that fact. In its third month, the court-room drama gets reported well. Wish one could say it was because of Indian media’s renewed interest in justice, violence against women or the inter-play of power and judiciary. Naah, its plain voyeurism and celebrity-gazing! Fox News, please take note!

After the collective outrage against Delhi’s ex-law minister Somnath Bharti’s midnight raid in January this year and the mistreating of Ugandan women, one really hoped Indian media has not only rallied force to denounce racism (in all forms) but also found real interest in that country and the continent.

But when the mainstream national media, in its obsession with the parliamentary elections, has ignored the state elections in Odisha, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and given reluctant coverage to Seemandhra and Telengana, where does Africa really rank in its priority?

Biraj Swain can be reached at biraj_swain@hotmail.com. She works on issues of poverty, public policy & citizen-state engagement in Horn East and Central Africa and South Asia. She is a self-confessed news addict and Africanist. 


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