A Sudanese refugee cries after reaching Bahai on the Chad border, after fleeing political violence in Darfur, Sudan. At least 1.2 million black Africans have fled the Darfur region because mostly Arab militias have killed thousands of civilians in response to a rebellion. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo, File)
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After Lessons of Rwanda, Darfur Remains Invisible
By Ingrid Chang
In a 2005 American Journalism Review article, “Déjà vu,” Sherry Ricchiardi investigates the lack of media coverage in Sudan’s Darfur region a decade after a similar travesty occurred in Rwanda. The Rwanda genocide had the international community say the words “never again,” yet at the time of Ricchiardi’s study 70,000 people had been killed in Darfur and most Americans had never heard of it. Why didn’t the story receive more news coverage?
The author analyzed a year of broadcast news and print coverage in 2004, as well as interviewed journalists and editors. Among her results, she found that ABC devoted 18 minutes, NBC five minutes and CBS three minutes to the situation in Darfur in 2004 for a total of 26 minutes. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of network airtime. The San Francisco Chronicle archives showed 36 page-one stories on the Laci Peterson murder and only three on the unfolding tragedy in Sudan. Lexis Nexis showed that most of the stories published were fewer than 500 words.
To help explain such findings, Ricchiardi suggests that the conflict was too complex for journalists to adequately report, with many underlying religious, ethnic and economic factors difficult to understand. So, the handful of details coming through the media didn’t garner much attention. According to one newspaper editor interviewed, “Darfur just doesn’t push a button. Pick a place perhaps more familiar to us and it would be an enormous story."
Another reason that coverage was lacking is because journalists could not get to Darfur because of both budget constraints and Sudanese government obstacles on visa and permission requirements. When journalists did make it across the border they still needed to get to Darfur and the journey there was perilous. More generally, media have to decide where to put scarce resources. The Darfur tragedy coincided with the Iraq war, Afghanistan war and a presidential campaign. According to a Time’s editor, Iraq was the major factor for why media didn’t have the resources to send journalists to Darfur. It boiled down to priorities.