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Swedish, Nature conservation freak, Passionate about Africa, Loving Peace, Politically neutral

Monday 3 November 2008

McCain, Obama and Palin more important than Congo

During the flaming US election the outbreak of yet another full-scale war is feared in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo, former Zaire). Reports are letting us know that we can have a new Rwanda on our hands very soon if actions are not taken. Remembering the happenings in Rwanda in 1994, which left up to one million people slaughtered, this conflict in DRC requires our full attention. Unfortunately, some of our focus is diverted away towards the glitter and glamor of the US presidential elections. Accordingly, I’m really waiting for this election to be over, so the media can start report and draw attention to the DRC. (see video clips)

As I’m curious how media are reporting on the US election vs the DRC-crisis I conducted a simple study of media coverage. I searched today at around 12 am CET for the words “McCain”, “Obama”, “Palin”, “Biden” and “Congo” (or “Kongo” or “DRC”) on the front page of some media’s web sites, which I frequently visit. I counted how many hits each search word got and compiled results in a table (see below). With some dismay, but little surprise, I see that “Obama”, “McCain” and “Palin”(!) get more hits than Congo at most of the visited web pages.

As some of the web sites have several links to the same article (thus using some of my search words over and over again) I quickly tested if the result would differ if I used a ranking system instead of absolute numbers, but the results were practically the same. The main conclusion that can be drawn from this small survey is, as mentioned above, for the sake of the Congolese people let the US election be done with real soon. The other conclusion drawn is that Joe Biden probably needs to fire his campaign leader.


McCain Obama Palin Biden Congo
cnn.com 5 3 0 1 6
washingtonpost.com 4 4 1 0 1
time.com 10 13 1 0 3
newsweek.com 5 6 5 0 0
svd.se 6 6 2 3 0
dn.se 8 6 3 0 0
dagbladet.no 3 10 3 0 2
vg.no 0 9 1 0 6
lavanguardia.es 1 8 1 0 0
politiken.dk 6 13 6 1 4
publico.clix.pt 2 4 0 0 1
telegraaf.nl 1 7 4 0 2
mg.co.za 4 13 5 0 4
Sum 55 102 32 5 29


Update: I see that the tears of Obama (due to the passing of his grandmother) have given him lots of media exposure the last couple of hours. I suspect, with a generalising tone, that these tears will give him plenty of sympathy votes in the election. People are after all very easy to turn around when being exposed to some heart aching pictures/videos. Wonder if we can use this in order to get some engagement into the Congo-crisis...?

CNN CNN CNN WS WS Time Time NW SVD SVD SVD AB DN DN DN DN VG VG VG DB DB DB Pol Pol DT LV Pub Pub TT SS SVT Dagen
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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

fuck you swedish pot smoking hippie
go back to ur shack and smoke your pot retard

Anonymous said...

Intressant sammanställning du gjort! :) Dock tycker jag att amerikanska presidentvalet griper in på så många plan i vår värld. Även för situationen i Kongo så jag tycker inte att det gör så mkt att valet syns mer i media. Även om jag önskar att Kongo kunde synas mer.

Men som du skriver så kommer snart valet vara över. Vi får hoppas Kongo syns mer då! :)

Nabo0o said...

Hel enig. Nå burde FN samle de store landene i en enighet om at det som foregår i Kongo ikke kan gå for langt, om det en må stoppes med fredsbevarende styrker.

Jævela idiotiskt med valget i USA egentlig, det e jo nesten ikke demokratiskt en gang! Siden det bare er to partier og at begge kandidatene bare skal gjøre det som de har lovt sine økonomiske støttere så har det ikke så mye å si hvem som blir valgt.

Som southpark forklarte det på den tia, det står mellom en 'giant douche' og en 'Turd Sandwich', hvem er best...?

Anonymous said...

Kanskje VG-haterne satte kaffen i halsen her? Seks saker om Kongo.

Geoffrey Goines said...

>niclas

jo du har helt rätt, men jag valde att bara fokusera på mediaexponeringen vid en tidpunkt i detta sammanhang.


>nabo0o

Jag är inget stort fan av south park, men det där avsnittet var väldigt roligt.

Anonymous said...

Nei, nå er det tross alt Afrika vi snakker om. Borgerkrig, krigsforbrytelser og hungersnød blir det da hvert år.

Dette trenger da virkelig ikke nyhetstid for dette har vi sett før.

La dem krige og få en vinner. Så blir det kanskje slutt på det bråket der. For denne gang iallefall.

Anonymous said...

Det är alltid krig eller svält nånstans i afrika... Ska man vara cynisk så hade det kanske varit bättre att dom fick ha ihjäl varandra, alternativt svälta ihjäl så det kanske blir slut på problemen... Så länge dom inte tar ansvar för sin egen situation så kommer det inte att bli så våldsamt mycket bättre.

Geoffrey Goines said...

>>anonymous 1 & 2

På sätt och vis så måste man hålla med. Det är ett väldigt utdraget lidande som folket i Afrika har fått genomgå det senaste decenierna.

Jag kommer ha anledning att komma tillbaka till era kommentarer i ett längre inlägg på bloggen inom kort.