Tourists are running for the airports or are hiding away in their hotel rooms, ordinary citizens with machetes are setting up roadblocks on almost every street corner, shops are getting looted,demonstrators are getting shot at! Those are the reports coming out of Egypt. The Western media has been looking at the situation with a wide grin right across it face. Its chaos, its bad news, but for them its primetime news.Like a shark smelling blood these journalists have pounced on their prey. They have wasted no time setting up thier cameras and microphone delivering their well rehearsed punch lines to the world whiles in the background a dead demonstrator is dragged across the street into some decent cover.
Its a shame everytime Africa hits the headlines its for all the wrong reasons. All these images of chaos I'm seeing and reading are certainly from Egypt, and there is no debating that. But is that all that is happening in Africa? Surely there must be something positive going on that is just as newsworthy as the turmoil in Egypt.
So I set out to prove myself right. And I did not go looking on any African based or African biased news media (if there is any) to prove my point. The task turned out to be far more easier than I imagined it would be. I started and finished my search on BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/africa/). Not surprisingly the leading news article on the web page on African news was about Egypt with accompanied
images of burnt out vehicles and the general images of commotion. Just below this was another story,however that was in smaller print. This article is titled "Niger election heads for run-off". So theres been a peaceful election in Niger and its even gone off into a run-off and there has been no violence!! Why is this story not featured side by side the Egyptian one. Why are these western journalists not hopping on the next plane to Niger? I guess the simple answer is, this kind of story is just not sentional enough. Its good news and for them good news is no news at all!!
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