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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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And yet they stay more or less equally silent when the non-Islamic Hutu fight the non-Islamic Tutsi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for ten years with tens of thousands of civilians dying as a result. That war only came to an end two years ago.
Have you read about that on the front page of the Herald Sun? I know I haven't.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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Two years ago? I can't remember what I had for breakfast!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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I expect you spent more time thinking about that breakfast than you spent thinking about the Congolese Kivu Conflict.
(Don't take that as an insult. I probably did too.)
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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You hear bugger all about most of the inter-tribal civil wars in Africa, going back to when the Shona took power (politically) in Zimbabwe after they deposed the white government.
The civil war prior got a lot of media internationally as it was fashionable to report the black struggle against the whites.
Blacks killing blacks isn't as sexy, reporting on it can be construed as borderline racist by some idealistic nutjobs.
It's just perception, but it seems clear that most African countries leaders don't want anything from white Europe except Money. The vast majority of the people couldn't give a rats arse what colour you were if you offered food and assistance, but the leaders don't want scrutiny and the smallest hints of sending in UN troops would be met with screams of paternalism and racism.
I'm sure there's various mining companies operating, making squillions and paying good "bribes" to government officials but bugger all of that money flows through to the population
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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Foreign aid and government corruption aren't really relevant to media coverage, though. And you seriously think professional journalists don't know how to report on African conflicts without risking accusations of racism? I certainly don't buy that.
As far as I can tell, there can only be two explangations: 1) the Australian public generally isn't really all that interested in what goes on in Sub-Saharan Africa and never will be; or 2) editors and journalists just lack the creativity or awareness to frame these stories in a way that would interest newspaper readers, who, if given the chance, would take an interest in these events.
It's one or both of those, basically. What other plausible explanation is there?
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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King Monkey
Joined: 15 Apr 2009
Location: On a journey to seek the scriptures of enlightenment....
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| Post subject: Re: Our hierarchy of interest | |
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| David wrote: | A lot of us have been emotionally affected by the events in Paris yesterday. The senselessness of it all, the nightmarish details of how the massacres were carried out, the heartbreaking witness accounts, the knowledge that it could have been any of us ... it's only human to be shaken by it and to want to express solidarity with the people of France.
And yet, we know that these events do not only occur in Europe and North America. A couple of days ago, 43 people were killed in a similar attack in Lebanon. 50-80 were killed in an attack on a Shia mosque in Bangladesh less than a month ago. These attacks did not get front page treatment in the newspapers, and weren't given rolling live coverage on TV. The Sydney Opera House was not lit up in the colours of Lebanon or Bangladesh. Those of us who heard about these attacks would not have spent more than 5 minutes thinking about them, and I dare say the majority of us didn't even hear about them at all.
Why is this? Do we simply care more about the lives of French people, and if so, why? Is it because they look like us? Is it that they share a similar culture with us? Or is it about media coverage? Would we have been affected equally by the Lebanese or Bangladeshi bombings if they had received the same coverage, with the same live updates, personal stories and faces of victims? Or are we incapable of devoting such empathy to strange, 'foreign' people? Is there something quite fundamental in human nature causing this?
That this phenomenon - this hierarchy of interest - exists is undeniable. Knowing that, is there anything we can do about it? And would our world be a better place if we could? |
| David wrote: | And yet they stay more or less equally silent when the non-Islamic Hutu fight the non-Islamic Tutsi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for ten years with tens of thousands of civilians dying as a result. That war only came to an end two years ago.
Have you read about that on the front page of the Herald Sun? I know I haven't. |
Pretty simple answer in relation to the mainstream media I'd say:
Fill pages and airtime with news that your target audience can't/don't/won't relate to for any number of reasons including distance and unfamiliarity: end up with less readers/listeners/watchers, sell less units, make less money.
Without needing to think about it in much depth, it's fairly obvious that French culture has shaped the way we live, eat, speak.
There are a few other European countries you can say that about off the top of the head.
We have somewhat of a common lifestyle and can relate to what happens to the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish and so on.....
We probably don't need to point out the similarities in this part of the world to the UK and the US do we??
We have somewhat of a common lifestyle and can relate to what happens to the British and Americans.
I don't remember the last time we beat DR Congo in a sporting contest, had a Bangladeshi film take $483 million at the box office, saw a Congolese restaurant open in every shopping strip in the country, copied words from Arabic into our own language, filled our libraries with Lebanese literature, named our towns & streets after revered Bangladeshi figures, or learnt about the history of Zaire as a subject offered in school.
So unless individuals have done research on the places largely of their own volition - "we" as a whole know SFA about these places, the people, the lifestyles; we can't relate to what happens to the Congolese, the Bangladeshis, or the Lebanese.
Hence, major news like mass shootings in France, UK, US take the front page, whilst Bangladeshi affairs get a paragraph on page 26 if anything major like a Shia Mosque getting bombed happens there.
I wonder what page Martin Bryant's mugshot made it onto in the "Kinshasa Telegraph"????
Actually, that all probably sums up the "human empathy" side of things as well as the media coverage.
Not sure what all the fuss is about??.......
_________________
"I am a great sage, equal of heaven.
Grow stick, grow.
Fly cloud, fly.
Oh you are a dee-mon, I love to fiiight." |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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interesting, sad, a while back i posted a link to the devastation in Syria, which went largely unnoticed if i remember correctly,
i may never get to either country, but i just find the destruction of such ancient wonders for absolutely no reason, just disgusting. and like these poor people have not been through enough:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-19/afghanistan-ski-tourism-resurgent-taliban/7335510
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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