You're not a loser. In fact, you're someone who cares about the world and tries to stay informed. But this is solid evidence of CG's founding proposition: Foreign news has disappeared from the Anglophone media. And news from Africa? Forget it. The Washington Post has a single correspondent for the entire continent, and she's in Nigeria. It's incredible how dire the situation is. It's not really anyone's fault: The traditional economics of foreign news coverage just don't work for the major media in the Internet age. But it results in this. This story is huge--it's Iran-Iraq War huge, even Pol Pot huge. Certainly Rwandan genocide huge.
The scale of the conflict dwarfs Ukraine (although no party to it has nuclear weapons). It's been characterized by atrocities of indescribable horror. It's something the world should know about: When something like this happens, the whole world should stop in its tracks. But this time, no one even knows about it.
It would once have been viewed as a massive story, and most people would have been aware of it. That would have led to a great deal more international pressure on the Abiy regime. Remember Live Aid? Self-satisfied and useless though that was, people were at least *aware* of the problem.
This time, though, there are few journalists anywhere near this conflict. (I'd say "none," but there have been a handful of exceptions. I can count on one hand how many articles I've read about it, though.) Most of what we know has been reported by NGOs and aid agencies. It's mentioned maybe once a month in the two big US newspapers, and never on broadcast or cable news. So Tigrayans have been screaming, helplessly, "They're killing us!"--and no one knows what they're talking about. It's heartbreaking, actually.
If you haven't found it already, I think this piece we did is a good introduction. And you'll see from it that I don't know a whole lot more about it than you do, but fortunately, I know how to find people who do:
Here's what a loser I am: I don't think I've ever heard of Tigray, much less that there's a war going on there. The man needs to read more CosmoGlob!
You're not a loser. In fact, you're someone who cares about the world and tries to stay informed. But this is solid evidence of CG's founding proposition: Foreign news has disappeared from the Anglophone media. And news from Africa? Forget it. The Washington Post has a single correspondent for the entire continent, and she's in Nigeria. It's incredible how dire the situation is. It's not really anyone's fault: The traditional economics of foreign news coverage just don't work for the major media in the Internet age. But it results in this. This story is huge--it's Iran-Iraq War huge, even Pol Pot huge. Certainly Rwandan genocide huge.
The scale of the conflict dwarfs Ukraine (although no party to it has nuclear weapons). It's been characterized by atrocities of indescribable horror. It's something the world should know about: When something like this happens, the whole world should stop in its tracks. But this time, no one even knows about it.
It would once have been viewed as a massive story, and most people would have been aware of it. That would have led to a great deal more international pressure on the Abiy regime. Remember Live Aid? Self-satisfied and useless though that was, people were at least *aware* of the problem.
This time, though, there are few journalists anywhere near this conflict. (I'd say "none," but there have been a handful of exceptions. I can count on one hand how many articles I've read about it, though.) Most of what we know has been reported by NGOs and aid agencies. It's mentioned maybe once a month in the two big US newspapers, and never on broadcast or cable news. So Tigrayans have been screaming, helplessly, "They're killing us!"--and no one knows what they're talking about. It's heartbreaking, actually.
If you haven't found it already, I think this piece we did is a good introduction. And you'll see from it that I don't know a whole lot more about it than you do, but fortunately, I know how to find people who do:
https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/global-eyes-africa-edition
Can you explain in more detail why the economics of news prevents this from reaching the mainstream outlets?
Sure, I've written about this a lot. Have you read our About page? https://claireberlinski.substack.com/about
Thanks. That tells me what I want to know. I'd read it before but hadn't read beyond the about to the why.