`Under-reported'? The Top 10
By Shashi Tharoor
"The Hindu", Online edition of India's National Newspaper
June 18, 2005

The reality is that we are in the thick of a brutally competitive news environment, with maybe just two stories with major claims on world attention. The quieter emergencies will never trump these events.

SATURATION COVERAGE OR EXCLUSION?: Crisis in Africa. PHOTO: REUTERS

IN January 2003, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan held a press conference to cover 16 different issues on his global agenda but every single question addressed to him was about Iraq. The global news coverage the next day focused only on the same subject. "Iraq," Mr. Annan noted ruefully last summer, "has sucked out all the oxygen and distorted the international agenda."

In response, my U.N. colleagues and I came up with a list of the top 10 stories that we felt weren't getting enough media attention. We were careful to avoid calling them "under-reported" stories, because the objective wasn't to point a finger at the reporters. We understood the pressures that drove the world's news agenda, and we didn't deny that Iraq was an important story. We felt, however, that there were other important stories too that were falling off the radar screen because the media didn't have the space or time for them. And what the world hadn't heard about, it would not be willing to do anything about. So we wanted to say to our friends in the press: "would you please consider reporting these stories too?"

To draw up the list, my team consulted every United Nations department and agency to find out what they thought the world needed to know more about in their areas of work. A list of over 60 issues soon emerged, which we then had to whittle down to the more media-friendly 10. We tried to choose human interest stories and good-news stories, offbeat stories and early-warning stories. The result was a compelling mix that no one could plausibly consider yawn-inducing. The U.N.'s top 10 list, as we privately dubbed it, got some play in the world press in 2004, so we did it again this year, hoping to shake a few consciences in the world media.

Let me take just one story from the 2005 list to illustrate my point. Legions of African and Asian teenage girls are approaching childbirth without medical care this year — and the consequences for some will be catastrophic. Married and pregnant before their time, as many as 1,00,000 of these expectant mothers will go into excruciating and protracted labour, lose their babies at birth and be left with severe tissue damage and chronic incontinence. Without restorative surgery, their dignity will be compromised and, in many cases, their families and communities will disown them. This is the legacy of obstetric fistula, a disease as old as humankind. It is also preventable and curable and therefore almost unheard of in the industrialised world today. In developing countries, however, two million mothers are afflicted, when $300 operation could restore most of these women to health and their rightful place in society.

But is this news? The media don't seem to think so. There is no sight of the TV cameras and the editorial indignation so necessary to get the moral adrenaline flowing for serious political action.

Obstetric fistula

We have obstetric fistula high on our list of neglected stories this year and we believe the other nine stories we have singled out would also interest most readers or viewers, anywhere. Everyone remembers the headlines about Somalia in 1992 and 1993; where is the media now, as the country bravely, if unsteadily, takes steps towards peace and a stable government? The world reacted overwhelmingly to the Asian tsunami but forgot the victims of Hurricane Ivan in tiny Grenada, still struggling to recover from devastation. Tragic conflicts in Africa routinely make the news, but who writes about the mission accomplished by U.N. peacekeepers who will leave Sierra Leone by December, having disarmed 70,000 former combatants and paved the way for a new national government? (For the full list, go to www.un.org/events/tenstories.)

We know we're making the smallest of dents in the public consciousness, but we couldn't forgive ourselves if we didn't try. The reality is that we are in the thick of a brutally competitive news environment, with the war in Iraq and the multinational tsunami disaster as just two stories with major claims on world attention. The quieter emergencies will never trump these events. But is the public getting a fair share from its news leaders? Just how many column inches or hours of broadcast time does a sophisticated audience need before it grasps the importance and emotion of a particular war, disaster, or domestic court case? Does saturation coverage of a few items, to the exclusion of other important happenings in the wider world, say something about their priorities or does it reflect a none-too-flattering judgment of us, their audience? We think it's time to widen the focus.

Four decades ago the newsman Edward Behr came across a TV cameraman in a camp of violated Belgian nuns in the Congo calling out, "anybody here been raped and speak English?" It's never enough to have suffered; you must be able to convey your suffering in the language the media wants to hear. That's where the U.N. will try to help — to give a voice to those who remain voiceless in the world media.