’European media’s Darfur coverage in questionable’
By Afkar Abdullah (Our staff re****ter)
17 April 2008
KHARTOUM — The exaggeration of the situation in Darfur by the
international media has
complicated the issue to a great extent, feel Western experts and Sudanese
government officials.
Speaking to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the Sudanese-European
Relations Forum that was
held in Khartoum recently, European experts as well as Sudanese officials
emphasised the
im****tance of the role of the media in presenting “the true image” of
Sudan in order to counter
the distorted image being presented by the international media.
Dr David Hoile, Director of the European-Sudanese Public Affairs
Council (ESPAC), said that
since the media played an im****tant role in shaping political responses to
issues, the accuracy
of its coverage of the Darfur crisis must be *****sed.
It has to be said that European media coverage of Darfur has been
questionable, in parts,
and superficial, in others, he said, adding that it has replicated many of
the shortfalls
projected by the American media.
In a keynote speech at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence
and Security Studies
in London in July 2006, one of Europe’s most senior foreign
correspondents, The Guardian
Correspondent Jonathan Steele, bluntly criticised the European media
coverage of Darfur: “The
media, in my view, have consistently failed to cover Darfur properly.
Re****ters have made
repeated mistakes, and have not been honest with their readers.
Commentators have ignored or
slanted key aspects of the conflict. Even though much of their work has
been well-intentioned,
aiming to alert the world to the tragedies of Darfur in the hope of
getting them stopped, I
believe their work has had the opposite effect. Bad journalism has helped
to prolong the war.”
Steele outlined eight mistakes the media had made in their coverage of
the Darfur crisis.
“Mistake number one was not getting the war’s origins right. The fact
that hostilities began
with a rebel attack on the Sudanese Air Force base at El Fasher in
February 2003 and the deaths
of dozens of soldiers was usually not mentioned,” he said.
“Mistake number two was to transfer the template of Sudan’s North-South
war to Darfur. So we
heard a good deal about how the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum
was trying to impose
Islam and the shariah on Darfur just as it had done for years on the
Neolithic people of south
Sudan. It took months before most of the media discovered that almost
everyone in Darfur was
Muslim,” he pointed out.
According to Steele, mistake number three, which was “a variant of
mistake number two, was
to ****tray the war as one between Arab and Africans. Alright, the war
wasn’t about religion. It
was about race...this simplistic Arab versus African template ignored the
complexity of
Darfur’s tribal structure and the long history of tension between the
various tribes and
ethnicities. It also ignored the long history of tribal reconciliation
mechanisms which had
managed over decades to keep the peace in Darfur or restore it when it was
occasionally broken.”
“Mistake number four was to ignore the economic roots of the conflict.
If the media did not
understand or bother to re****t the context of the war in Darfur, they were
equally bad at
failing to re****t the options for peace,” he commented.
“Mistake number five by the media was to ignore the peace process.
Instead, the bulk of the
op-ed pieces and comments were to demand Western intervention and
sanctions on Khartoum as
though there was no peace track on offer,” he said. “The trouble was that
at various points the
rebels walked out or refused to return after a break.”
“Once they took on board that peace talks were happening, media’s
mistake number six was to
overlook the problems caused by the rebels. All the blame for the lack of
progress at the peace
talks was put on the government,” Steele remarked.
“Mistake number seven was to ignore the splits in the rebels’ ranks. It
was not until two of
the three rebel movements refused to sign the Abuja deal in May that some
of the re****ters woke
up to the fact that the rebels were not united,” he pointed out.
“Media mistake number eight was to ignore the humanitarian problems
caused by the rebels. In
their eagerness to ****tray the struggle in simple terms as good guys
versus bad guys, attacks
by the rebels on aid convoys were not covered. Attacks by the rebels on
villages which also
displaced thousands of Darfurians also went unre****ted,” Steele lamented.
Steele went on to ask: “Does all this matter to anyone except a handful
of students of the
Press?” His clear answer was ‘yes’.
The Guardian journalist strongly believed that undemanding Western
media coverage of the
Darfur conflict had artificially prolonged the crisis and the suffering.
Steele’s views were, to a large extent, sup****ted by Dr. Stefane
Kroepelin, an expert in
historical geology, who conducted researches in climate changes in the
western region of Sudan
for 25 years.
Dr. Kroepelin said the Western media coverage of Darfur had been
characterised by
exaggeration and projection of biased accusations. It failed to providing
accurate attributes
to the main cause of the conflict and its parties.
According to the expert, the United Nations media campaign, led by the
US media and BBC,
created negative public opinion in Europe. The media campaign against
Darfur reached its climax
with the demonstrations in the US led by Hollywood stars. They chanted
slogans such as “Leave
Iraq and Invade Darfur” without having a clue about the realities in both
Iraq and Darfur.
The Sudanese Minister of Information and Communication, Al Zahawi
Ibrahim Malik, said, “As
government, we understand that the Sudanese media is too poor to confront
the international
media. The government is not giving priority to the media in terms of
development as there are
many more im****tant priorities that require ensuring security and
stability. But this doesn’t
mean the media is not as im****tant as other issues. The government has
activated media attaches
in Sudanese missions around the world to counter the negative image
projected by the
international media and to make efforts to convey the truth to the people
of the world.”
The international media campaign against Sudan played a great role in
complicating the
internal issues in the country by adding fuel to the fire by proliferating
fabricated,
inaccurate and misleading information, Al Zahawi alleged. A permanent
media centre affiliated
to Sudanese Ministry of Information and Communication will soon be
launched to help enhancing
the role of the media in the country, he added.
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