Email an article

From (enter your email address here):

Recipient (email address):	Additional recipient (optional):	Additional recipient (optional):


Your message: (optional, limit 100 characters)
I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: Media on the Somalia Intervention By Jim Naureckas The first question national media need to ask themselves about Somalia is: Where were we? In January 1991, six leading relief agencies warned that 20 million people in Africa faced starvation unless food aid was forthcoming--mainly in Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia. (See Hunger in Africa -- A Story Still Untold, Extra! September 1992) In the fall of 1991, U.N. officials estimated that 4.5 million Somalis faced grave food shortages. In all of 1991, Somalia got three minutes of attention on the three evening network news shows. From January to June 1992, Somalia got 11 minutes (Tyndall Report, cited in Inter Press Service, 12/4/92). By July, when the news media began to pay attention, 25 percent of Somalia's children under five may already have died, according to one international aid group (Medicins Sans Frontieres). While some people have cited the intervention in Somalia as an example of the power of TV pictures to compel governments to act, the fact is that the TV networks were hardly interested in Somalia until after the U.S. government started using military planes to airlift supplies there. Instead of waiting for the U.S. government to lead the way, the media should immediately report on those other countries where food aid is urgently needed, such as Sudan, Mozambique and Liberia. U.S. vs. U.N. There was a constant sense in news coverage that a full-scale U.S. military operation was the only way to save lives. "The American troops are the only solution. Every other solution has been tried," one relief worker was quoted in the New York Times (12/6/92). In fact, many in the relief community believed that while military intervention may have been necessary, it should have been done with a U.N. force, not by the U.S. acting virtually alone. To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1211 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Site designed by the May First Technology Collective