There are some articles you read that you simply cannot get out of your head. You really try to… but no. This commentary by Jonathan Freedland about the unfathomable overlooked suffering in Sudan is one of them. It’s been haunting me for days because I know that I am part of the problem that Freedland alights upon.
Just read the powerful beginning: “Remember when we said that Black Lives Matter? We didn’t mean it. That much is clear now, as the world watches a war that is killing tens of thousands, that has displaced more than 10 million and which is threatening to devour 13 million more through famine – and barely gives it a glance. Most of
those are Black lives and it could not be more obvious that, to an indifferent world, they don’t matter at all.”
Friedland is explaining how shame-inducingly underreported the civil war in Sudan has been across global news media. News providers have turned their storytelling back on it despite the shockingly large scale of destruction unfolding there.
Why?
He highlights few reasons including the prejudice the western world has against Africa that manifests in its low expectations for the continent. “…In the silence of the west, there is a whisper of what, in a different context, George W Bush once called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”. As if news editors and foreign ministers, too
many of them, are quietly saying: “It’s Africa. What else do you expect?”
What Freedman exposes is very true but there is also something else at play here that acts as a pernicious barrier to producing fair journalism. It’s a bias we all carry called homophily that manifests in our conditioning to favour those who look, talk and behave like us. It also results in us being more distrustful of and indifferent to those who do not. The further away a tragedy unfolds from an over-represented group (e.g. European or North Americans), the more likely a story is to be left out of the news agenda.
In this instance no one from the global news media identifies strongly enough with the Sudanese people to write about them more. Hence why we have collectively allowed 10 million of them to be misplaced with millions more on the way, tens of thousands to be killed, raped and traumatised.
To circumvent this bias news media must first become aware of it, accept its existence and then disarm it by being extra intentional about the stories and groups news shines a light on. Wouldn’t it be great if daily editorial meetings included the question: “what stories might we be missing as a result of our biases like homophily?” The answer to this question will invariably bring to the forefront countries like Yemen, Sudan, Myanmar, Haiti and many others that demand more news attention that is yet to come.
