The New York Times
July 26, 2005

All Ears for Tom Cruise, All Eyes on Brad Pitt
All Ears for Tom Cruise, All Eyes on Brad Pitt
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Some of us in the news media have been hounding President Bush for his
shameful passivity in the face of genocide in Darfur.
More than two years have passed since the beginning of what Mr. Bush
acknowledges is the first genocide of the 21st century, yet Mr. Bush barely
manages to get the word “Darfur” out of his mouth. Still, it seems
hypocritical of me to rage about Mr. Bush’s negligence, when my own beloved
institution – the American media – has been at least as passive as Mr. Bush.
Condi Rice finally showed up in Darfur a few days ago, and she went out of
her way to talk to rape victims and spotlight the sexual violence used to
terrorize civilians. Most American television networks and cable programs
haven’t done that much.
Even the coverage of Ms. Rice’s trip underscored our self-absorption. The
manhandling of journalists accompanying Ms. Rice got more coverage than any
massacre in Darfur has.
This is a column I don’t want to write – we in the media business have so
many critics already that I hardly need to pipe in as well. But after more
than a year of seething frustration, I feel I have to.
Like many others, I drifted toward journalism partly because it seemed an
opportunity to do some good. (O.K., O.K.: it was also a blast, impressed
girls and offered the glory of the byline.) But to sustain the idealism in
journalism – and to rebut the widespread perception that journalists are
just irresponsible gossips – we need to show more interest in the first
genocide of the 21st century than in the “runaway bride.”
I’m outraged that one of my Times colleagues, Judith Miller, is in jail for
protecting her sources. But if we journalists are to demand a legal
privilege to protect our sources, we need to show that we serve the public
good – which means covering genocide as seriously as we cover, say, Tom
Cruise. In some ways, we’ve gone downhill: the American news media aren’t
even covering the Darfur genocide as well as we covered the Armenian
genocide in 1915.
Serious newspapers have done the best job of covering Darfur, and I take my
hat off to Emily Wax of The Washington Post and to several colleagues at The
Times for their reporting. Time magazine gets credit for putting Darfur on
its cover – but the newsweeklies should be embarrassed that better magazine
coverage of Darfur has often been in Christianity Today.
The real failure has been television’s. According to monitoring by the
Tyndall Report, ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in
its nightly newscasts all last year – and that turns out to be a credit to
Peter Jennings. NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS
only 3 minutes – about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In
contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three
networks.
Incredibly, more than two years into the genocide, NBC, aside from covering
official trips, has still not bothered to send one of its own correspondents
into Darfur for independent reporting.
“Generally speaking, it’s been a total vacuum,” said John Prendergast of the
International Crisis Group, speaking of television coverage. “I blame policy
makers for not making better policy, but it sure would be easier if we had
more media coverage.”
When I’ve asked television correspondents about this lapse, they’ve noted
that visas to Sudan are difficult to get and that reporting in Darfur is
expensive and dangerous. True, but TV crews could at least interview Darfur
refugees in nearby Chad. After all, Diane Sawyer traveled to Africa this
year – to interview Brad Pitt, underscoring the point that the networks are
willing to devote resources to cover the African stories that they consider
more important than genocide.
If only Michael Jackson’s trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN,
Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories
about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur.
The BBC has shown that outstanding television coverage of Darfur is
possible. And, incredibly, mtvU (the MTV channel aimed at universities) has
covered Darfur more seriously than any network or cable station. When MTV
dispatches a crew to cover genocide and NBC doesn’t, then we in journalism
need to hang our heads.
So while we have every right to criticize Mr. Bush for his passivity, I hope
that he criticizes us back. We’ve behaved as disgracefully as he has.

E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com

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