Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Western Media

Western media is hungry for misery in Africa. I've been watching the progression of news development in Africa and their lack of interest in Ethiopia is disturbing. New York Times is yet to acknowledge that any elections are happening in Ethiopia at all. BBC finally put the statement from the ruling party claiming that they've a landslide victory on the front of their Africa news page. The whole of yesterday they had some horrid news about some gunmen and government officials being taken to court. On CNN you have to dig in some 10 pages before you find anything on Ethiopia.

Look, I understand. It could be that Ethiopia is a useless country, as far as the needs of the West are concerned. But again, considering it has the 3rd highest population in Africa, and is the core of stability in Eastern Africa, one would think that these so called journalists would show face to throw in a few miserly comments.

Perhaps I'm complaining in vain. It's so hard to troubleshoot the perspective of the west anyway. They've been hanging on to every word of the observers, telling us that the elections have been fair. I just read unconfirmed reports from Ethiopia saying that the observers are being fickle. One man mentioned that Jimmy Carter showed up at his station for 5 minutes. The Ethiopians' reaction to them was, "iyetazebachihun new? iNam iyetazebnachu new." Playing ...sem'na worq on election day, I guess :)

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