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MEDIA AND GENOCIDE:

• Burying the News?
• http://tinyurl.com/9v88o
• May 5, 2005 -- Since slavery, U.S. media coverage of crimes against humanity, including the recent Sudanese genocide, has been woefully inadequate — even though press attention has the power to save lives.
  
• By Camille Jackson Staff Writer, Tolerance.org
  
• From 1939-1945 The New York Times, arguably the country's most influential paper, barely covered the extermination of millions of Jews.
  There was plenty of coverage of World War II, but news of the Holocaust did not get the press attention that could have steered public discourse and ultimately saved lives.
  
• Laurel Leff, author of Buried By The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, says The Times minimized and misunderstood the Holocaust.
  The Times is not alone.
  
• There have been other genocides aside from the Holocaust in contemporary history — in Armenia, Bosnia and Rwanda to name a few. None received full press coverage in mainstream media outlets.
  And the problem continues.
  Today, while the crisis in the Sudan has escalated to a full-throttle genocide, mainstream media still minimize and misunderstand genocide.
  It's not a matter of lack of information.
  Leff says that at one point during the Holocaust, the World Jewish Congress handed The Times a detailed report and first-hand accounts of horror from Jews who'd escaped. It ran on page 36.
  Not only was the information buried inside the paper, it was buried in the stories, too. It never received continuous attention or prominent play. Odd, some say, for a paper owned by a German Jewish publisher.
  "They were very concerned that it not be perceived as a Jewish newspaper," says Leff. She says The Times' owner, Arthur Sulzberger, worried about appearing "too Jewish."
  A close friend, Henry Morganthau, also Jewish, did convince Sulzberger to run a press release on the creation of a refugee board designed to save as many Jews as possible. Even then, The Times ran the release on page 11.
  In recent years, The Times' editors have acknowledged the paper's role could have been greater — life-saving even.
  According to Leff, in 1996, the newspaper ran an exhibit at the New York Public Library acknowledging it had underplayed the story, that it was wrong for doing so and that an apology was in order.
  America's story Like The Times, other mainstream media outlets have expressed regret for inadequate coverage of unfolding crimes against humanity.
  In 2000, the Hartford Courant, the country's oldest newspaper, apologized for its complicity in the slave trade. The paper came clean and dug 240 years deep into Connecticut's history to produce Complicity, an eight-chapter supplement revealing details of the state's hidden slave past.
  Later it released Beyond Complicity, further exploring Connecticut's maritime and financial ties to the slave trade. Both publications have been distributed to local schools. A book on the paper's findings will be released this fall.
  Editor Jenifer Frank says the Courant's non-traditional leadership supported the staff's mission to produce the ground-breaking work, committing the time and resources necessary to investigate a centuries-old story.
  The Courant's coverage also has inspired The Providence Journal, in neighboring Rhode Island, to investigate its slave past.
  Frank said the inspiration for the Courant's ongoing coverage is simple: "This is the story of America today."
  'Tainted with racism' Coverage like that of the Courant is the exception, not the rule.
  Activists say, in general, the mainstream media's coverage of contemporary human crisis and genocide is woefully inadequate.
  Between April and July 1994, an estimated 1 million Tutsis were killed by Hutus in Rwanda while the Clinton administration was reluctant to act. Some say, in the midst of the horror, the media was too easy on the forces and policies that allowed such a bloody slaughter.
  That July, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) editor Jane Hunter criticized the media for its handwringing.
  Even though the story of Rwanda's genocide made front-page news in major papers, Hunter explained how the coverage was tainted with racism.
  "Broadcast media have aired horrific accounts and the major papers have featured the story ... The media seldom wavered, however, from their habitual racist portrayal of African strife as atavistic tribal savagery," she wrote.
  "Even after the politics behind the massacre was known, editors and reporters continued to prefer the Tarzan reruns imprinted in their minds."
  She wrote that the San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times both made reference to Africa's "heart of darkness." Other reporters, she said, simply got it wrong, confusing the ethnicities of the Hutu and Tutsi warring factions.
  Repeating the same mistakes Over a decade later, the media is repeating the same mistakes in covering the horrors occurring in Darfur, Sudan.
  Ann-Louise Colgan of the Washington, D.C.-based Africa Action says the most disturbing inaccuracy is the death count. Some papers are reporting 70,000 people have been killed in the past two years. In fact, she says, a new report (PDF) from the Coalition for International Justice reveals 400,000 killed.
  Accurate numbers, says Colgan, honor the people who've lost their lives and heighten the crisis as an international issue.
  "When dealing with something like genocide, you expect to see coverage that's a lot more frequent and that conveys the urgency," Colgan says.
  She says she'd like to see more coverage of the "activism taking place across the country by diverse groups of people." She says there are hundreds of events each month. Africa Action holds vigils every Wednesday in front of the White House to bring attention to the genocide in Darfur.
  But the media has missed the story. During President Bush's press briefing last week, not a single reporter raised the question of his administration's inaction in the Sudanese genocide.
  "In our minds, the media has a responsibility," says Colgan. "To my understanding, [the lack of media coverage] is very similar to what happened in Rwanda."
  Leff also is disappointed by the media coverage of recent genocides.
  While relief organizations can be vocal about state-sponsored genocide, Leff says journalists have a hard time getting clear answers from governments. For example, she says, the Sudanese government has denied access to reporters.
  "The coverage doesn't rise to the level you expect and think is necessary because journalists feel like they need to present both sides," says Leff.
  As a result, the stories are ambiguous, not sustained "with pictures that would make Americans care about it."
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• DO SOMETHING
• :: Check out current media-related activism from the Action Coalition for Media Education.
  
• :: Get involved by joining one of 149 media reform organizations in the Media Reform's database.
  
• :: Send an email to editors, reporters, ombudsmen at your local paper praising them for covering issues you care about and offering suggestions for more coverage.
  
• DIG DEEPER
• Visit the Center for Media Literacy to learn more about the value of accuracy in the media, and the harm done when coverage falls short.