Ari Berman (The Nation): Still Dying in Darfur

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Dated Wednesday August 24

Still Dying in Darfur
By Ari Berman

Here's a sad little secret: Every time I write about Darfur in this space, traffic drops by at least a third. So here goes nothing.

A few months ago I asked a veteran news producer why television had devoted so little attention to such a significant humanitarian crisis. The producer cited budget constraints and added, "Plus, the villages aren't burning anymore." When they were burning, as Nick Kristof has so poignantly documented, the media hardly cared. NBC spent 5 minutes on Darfur coverage last year; CBS devoted 3 minutes. This June, the major network and 24/7 cable news stations aired 126 segments on Sudan, compared to 8,303 segments on the runaway bride, Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise.

The world says "never again" to genocide and then it happens again. Ethnic cleansing by the government-backed Janjaweed militia has killed nearly 180,000 native Darfurians, mostly black Africans populating an arid region the size of France. Almost two million people have been displaced from their homes (not counting four million more displaced by the 21-year, North-South civil war).

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