The following graph is a comparison of the levels of media coverage of certain conflicts and crises in The Australian newspaper – Israel-Palestine, Zimbabwe, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The numbers are the total word counts for all relevant articles on each conflict/crisis. On first glance, the coverage appears to be virtually the same for each.

Now, take a closer look at the periods of coverage measured. What these figures tell us is that 9 years of coverage by The Australian of the conflict in the DRC is roughly equivalent to 6 months of coverage of conflict in Darfur (as it began to attract attention in 2004), and to 1.5 months of coverage of the charged 2008 elections in Zimbabwe, and to 1 month of coverage of Israel-Palestine, when fighting broke out there in 2000. And let us not forget that the conflict in the DRC over this period was hundreds (at times thousands) of times deadlier than any of the other conflicts/crises at the time of the periods covered. Interestingly, we can see that Africa is not simply ignored across the board. Even within Africa, there is a huge gap between stealth conflicts and chosen conflicts – some conflicts are more ignored than others.

This should by no means be seen as a rare example of media choices skewed beyond any semblance of balance. I would say that this kind of media coverage is quite representative of other newspapers in the USA or UK, for example.

(This data was taken from research I conducted for an article in the journal Media, War & Conflict entitled ‘National interest or business interest: coverage of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo in The Australian newspaper’. The article contains more juicy comparisons and analysis. You need a subscription to read the article (sorry), but if you have access to a university library online, you should be able to read it in full).

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