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Light media coverage means lack of funds for crisis-plagued Africa

Feb. 21, 2005	 News media contact:   Matt  Carlisle * (615) 742-5470*
Nashville {05107}

A UMC.org Feature
By Lesley Crosson*

After a Dec. 26 earthquake generated a tsunami in the Indian Ocean,
extensive news coverage spurred some $6 billion in donations to
governments and relief agencies in less than a month.

But lack of coverage can mean little money. Although millions of people
in Africa continue to suffer from the scourges of war, disease and
poverty, people elsewhere who might be inspired to open their wallets
don't hear of the need for humanitarian aid.

Relief organizations, including the United Nations, have noted the
disparity. In a January Security Council briefing, Under
Secretary-General Jan Egeland chastised member nations for their slow
response to humanitarian appeals for the African continent.

"I remember sitting in this very room last summer asking for five
helicopters to save thousands of lives in Darfur (Sudan). In the end we
had to hire helicopters commercially as no member states were willing to
provide them," Egeland told the meeting on humanitarian challenges in
Africa.

A similar appeal after the tsunami resulted in the deployment of several
helicopters "within days," Egeland said.

Nearly 2 million people in Eritrea, in its fourth consecutive year of
drought, continue to suffer from a severe food shortage. In addition,
the 3.8 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo who have died
in fighting since 1998 represent "the toll of more than a dozen
tsunamis," said Egeland, who heads the U.N. Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs.

The sheer number of international crises requires agencies to
"multi-task," said the Rev. John McCullough, Church World Service
executive director.

"We can't turn away from the Indian Ocean," he said. "When natural
disaster strikes quickly, it is very compelling, but ongoing disasters
require ongoing attention."

Those disasters include the genocide in Darfur, which has claimed 70,000
lives; the AIDS pandemic, which has killed some 2.3 million people in
sub-Saharan Africa alone; wars that have killed or displaced millions of
people in different African countries; and the malnutrition, poverty and
diseases that plague millions more.

All these compete for the media attention that prompts people elsewhere
to provide donations for relief. Experts cite several reasons for the
lack of continuing coverage.

Kearsley Stewart, visiting professor of anthropology at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Ill., said unbalanced coverage affects people's
ability to identify with and feel compassion for the people of Africa.

"We don't ever have good news from Africa, so we really have a lopsided
exposure.  It's all famine or war or corruption, so you get no sense of
the diversity of culture and the way people really live," Stewart said.

Many American editors want to see those stories in their newspapers
because they think-incorrectly-that is what readers want, said John
Yearwood, world editor for the Miami Herald and treasurer for the
National Association of Black Journalists. The 3,200-member association
regularly sends journalists to Africa and encourages them to report on
the continent, he added.

Tight budgets, the complexity of the stories, and the short attention
span of the public are also problems. Donatella Lorch, director of the
Knight International Press Fellowships in Washington, said world news
increasingly is being reported from news bureaus in London, Jerusalem
and Moscow because news organizations have closed bureaus in other parts
of the world. It is not simply that journalists don't want to report
stories out of Africa, Lorch adds, "but they can only do so many."

When Africa does get media attention, the results can be astonishing.

Just before Christmas, the Rev. Michael Slaughter read about the carnage
caused by the fighting in Darfur. He said he felt that his congregation
at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, Ohio, was being
called to intervene. Slaughter challenged church members to raise a
Sudan Miracle Offering with a level of giving that matched what they
spent on gifts.

"If they spent $800 on themselves, then I asked them to bring $800 to
the church for the Sudanese," Slaughter said.

The result was an offering of nearly $312,000. The church sent the money
to the United Methodist Committee on Relief for relief efforts in Sudan.

The Ginghamsburg donation helped the agency respond quickly in Sudan,
said Marc Maxi, UMCOR's regional director for Africa and the Caribbean.
UMCOR is using the Ginghamsburg offering as seed money for an emergency
mission to bring food, water and supplies to the Darfur region. Maxi
said he hopes for increased positive coverage about the success of
Africa relief efforts because such stories "would encourage more people
to give."

When news of the Asian tsunami hit the airwaves, the Ginghamsburg
members didn't redirect their money. Instead, they collected yet another
offering and sent UMCOR an additional $30,000 to help tsunami victims.

"Our personal relationship with Jesus calls us to radical social
action," Slaughter said. "I'm thankful that so many people are involved
with tsunami relief, but the potential in Sudan is for the death of many
more people."

# # #

*Crosson is a freelance journalist working in New York City.

News media contact: Matt Carlisle, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5153 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service
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