Distribution of News Coverage
moultano
Creator of ns_shiva. Join Date: 2002-12-14 Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
Creator of ns_shiva. Join Date: 2002-12-14 Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">Sudan Genocide vs. Runaway Bride</div><a href="http://www.beawitness.org/methodology" target="_blank">http://www.beawitness.org/methodology</a>
<img src="http://www.beawitness.org/files/images/spark-bride.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
<img src="http://www.beawitness.org/files/images/spark-jackson.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
<img src="http://www.beawitness.org/files/images/spark-crusie.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
<img src="http://www.beawitness.org/files/images/spark-bride.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
<img src="http://www.beawitness.org/files/images/spark-jackson.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
<img src="http://www.beawitness.org/files/images/spark-crusie.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
Comments
This is exactly why I ignore newspapers nowadays, internet news sites seem to have better coverage (I use the customised google page with news feeds all over it), although I guess that could also be very poor coverage and I just don't have anything to compare it with. Cue conspiracy.
I'm pretty sure that's how it goes, more or less. The news show what people want to see, and despite my best attempts, I know Tom Cruise better than I know anyone in Darfur. Good thing I stay the hell away from the news.
Sounds callous, is true. Can be helped? Dunno. Certainly not as long as news networks are unwilling to set aside mere profit in the name of reporting what's actually important. But nobody in the world does that. Hail capi.
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Darfur is outside the monkeysphere. It's a question of simple failure of empathy. I don't know where it is, I don't know anyone down there, and what did they ever do for me anyway? I have more pressing concerns, like having to change my address with one million different organisations because I moved.
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This man hit it right on the nail.
I think the <a href="http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.html" target="_blank">monkeysphere</a> is a bit exagerrated, as it's easy for one person to at least achknowledge other people. Sure, you've seen Tom Cruise in some movie, but any sane person should be able to realize that that's not 'Tom Cruise. So you see him on <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5883772879840922003" target="_blank">Oprah</a>, but that doesn't mean he knows you anymore than you really know him. The same thing goes for all those people in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zViGbEtRSg" target="_blank">Darfur</a>. Tom Cruise is not part of your fabled 'Monkeysphere' so he shouldn't be more important than hundreds or thousands (or millions or billions) of people.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/darfur-map-big.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" /> or <img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/map-california.gif" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />
Which of these pictures is more important to you?
The question here should be, "why do you care about Thomas Cruise Mapother IV?" And not, "Why don't you care about Sahara Abdel Rakman?" As heartless as that sounds, you can't care about everybody all the time, and you shouldn't care about morons with the time you do spend caring about others.
Acknowledge your garbage man, forget about Hollywood and don't watch FOX news, and hopefully this problem will sort itself out.
In England, you have news agencies funded by public taxes.
English News is then run as a non profit.
In America, you have news agencies funded by consumer sales.
American News is run to generate profit.
Or as a means of "political profit" through propaganda.
That is, how fast does NEW information come out about this issue? Well, lets start with Darfur. How long have people been dying in Darfur? Actually, a better question might be, when was the last time people <i>weren't</i> dying due to a civil war in Africa somewhere? But if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt and distinguish Darfur from other african civil wars, its still been running for about 4 years.
In that 4 years, how many <b>new</b> items of information have there been, that are relevant to a US audience? And how many newscasts will that fill? I will grant you easily that the total figure of 400,000 deaths is important enough to be mentioned. And it was mentioned. But once you say it, what more is there to say <i>about it</i>? Quite simply, you run out of news material real fast by saying the same things over and over repeatedly.
A war strategist might be interested in hearing the details of tactical operations run by one side or the other, but most civilians really don't care about such things, and the newspeople don't understand them to the level required to provide intelligent reporting anyway. So all that really leaves you is human interest stories on this or that poor family thats been displaced by all the terrible violence. And thats interesting, the first few times. By the time you get to the 849th poor displaced family, your audience is bored, because quite frankly they look just the same as the 848 other poor displaced families.
Now compare to the run-away-bride. The information density over a given timescale is much higher, because its new! Its fresh! Things are happening today that hadnt happened yesterday! No, its not as important in the abstract, but its not going to be on the air very long either. The bride gets her fifteen minutes of fame, stays on the air exactly as long as new details continue to come out about her story (like whether the prosecutor is going to file charges or whatever), and then quickly fades into obscurity as the next big story comes out. If stories on this bride were stretched out over 4 years, you'd find coverage getting pretty thin on her too.
A handful of stories do have the legs to keep running for years--like the War in Iraq. But thats a special case, because coverage of any US policy decision is used to fuel, color, and direct political debate on those policy decisions. That story is kept alive by a desire to eject one party or another from national office, as well as by that all-important number, the US bodycount. US audiences consider US body counts to be much more important than foreigner bodycounts. In a story on an Iraq bombing that killed 4 US marines and 39 Iraqi civilians, you can bet the focus of the story will be the 4 Marines, and the Iraqis will be included as an afterthought. Since there aren't any Americans dying in Darfur, its automatically less important.
That is, how fast does NEW information come out about this issue? Well, lets start with Darfur. How long have people been dying in Darfur? Actually, a better question might be, when was the last time people <i>weren't</i> dying due to a civil war in Africa somewhere? But if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt and distinguish Darfur from other african civil wars, its still been running for about 4 years.
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I'm not going to take you too much to task for this because I know this is an opinion shared by a lot of people, but you have to remember that Africa is a continent of 900 million people. That's more than North and South America <i>combined</i>. There are huge differences in climate, culture, economy, government and every other measurable factor between the nations of Africa. I felt the same way you do until fairly recently when I started taking a serious interest in the area, but now using the same mental model for all of the nations of Africa feels like using the same mental model for Canada and Peru. There are some issues that plague almost the entire continent, notably the remnants of colonialism and AIDS, but political instability definitely doesn't apply uniformly.
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In that 4 years, how many <b>new</b> items of information have there been, that are relevant to a US audience? And how many newscasts will that fill? I will grant you easily that the total figure of 400,000 deaths is important enough to be mentioned. And it was mentioned. But once you say it, what more is there to say <i>about it</i>? Quite simply, you run out of news material real fast by saying the same things over and over repeatedly.
A war strategist might be interested in hearing the details of tactical operations run by one side or the other, but most civilians really don't care about such things, and the newspeople don't understand them to the level required to provide intelligent reporting anyway. So all that really leaves you is human interest stories on this or that poor family thats been displaced by all the terrible violence. And thats interesting, the first few times. By the time you get to the 849th poor displaced family, your audience is bored, because quite frankly they look just the same as the 848 other poor displaced families.
Now compare to the run-away-bride. The information density over a given timescale is much higher, because its new! Its fresh! Things are happening today that hadnt happened yesterday! No, its not as important in the abstract, but its not going to be on the air very long either. The bride gets her fifteen minutes of fame, stays on the air exactly as long as new details continue to come out about her story (like whether the prosecutor is going to file charges or whatever), and then quickly fades into obscurity as the next big story comes out. If stories on this bride were stretched out over 4 years, you'd find coverage getting pretty thin on her too.
A handful of stories do have the legs to keep running for years--like the War in Iraq. But thats a special case, because coverage of any US policy decision is used to fuel, color, and direct political debate on those policy decisions. That story is kept alive by a desire to eject one party or another from national office, as well as by that all-important number, the US bodycount. US audiences consider US body counts to be much more important than foreigner bodycounts. In a story on an Iraq bombing that killed 4 US marines and 39 Iraqi civilians, you can bet the focus of the story will be the 4 Marines, and the Iraqis will be included as an afterthought. Since there aren't any Americans dying in Darfur, its automatically less important.
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That makes sense, but there's certainly a lot that could be said about the UN's policy towards the region. I wonder sometimes if our poor news coverage of purely foreign affairs is due to the general disinterest of Americans or the other way around. It certainly seems like the media has the ability to determine what a lot of people are interested in just by showing it to them a lot, and so I'm wondering if there's a feedback loop of sorts there.
I'm not going to take you too much to task for this because I know this is an opinion shared by a lot of people, but you have to remember that Africa is a continent of 900 million people. That's more than North and South America <i>combined</i>. There are huge differences in climate, culture, economy, government and every other measurable factor between the nations of Africa. I felt the same way you do until fairly recently when I started taking a serious interest in the area, but now using the same mental model for all of the nations of Africa feels like using the same mental model for Canada and Peru. There are some issues that plague almost the entire continent, notably the remnants of colonialism and AIDS, but political instability definitely doesn't apply uniformly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Granted, I did sweep an awful lot of people together there. Good catch. But I think you're right that a lot of Americans kinda think like that. I personally don't imagine that all of Africa is identical, but I'll admit that beyond knowing there probably are <i>some</i> differences, I've made no effort to find out what any of them are, or to distinguish between say Ethiopians and Zambians.
A lot of that has to do with their influence on world politics, which in many cases is approximately zero. Some nations just exhibit a lot more ability to reach out beyond their own borders and influence foreign events than others. And quite frankly, very few African nations show that quality. Those that do tend to get more news coverage.
In other words, Japan is important to us because we buy lots of their stuff. China is important to us because we buy tons of their stuff, and worry about what might happen to us if we had to fight them. Iran is important to us because we worry about fighting them. For awhile Libya was important when they reached out and bombed a passenger plane. (That was Libya, right?) But what has Zambia ever done thats going to influence us? They arent attacking us, or threatening to attack us, or building things that <i>might</i> attack us. They don't have a large enough economy to make much difference by trading with us. They're just kind of...there. As long as the events in a particular country aren't going to influence how we live here at home, people aren't going to care all that much.
I would suggest that same equation explains why people from other, smaller countries seem to be more interested in foreign affairs than we lazy Americans. What other countries do, and specifically what America does, is very much <i>going</i> to influence how they live there at home. The smaller the country, the more vulnerable they are to foreign affairs. People everywhere from France to Iran to China are actually impacted by who we in America elect as our President. Can you say the same about Sudan?