Media Coverage of Darfur

I mentioned this article in the American Journalism Review earlier examining the lack of media coverage of the genocide in Darfur and I just wanted to highlight a few sections

Serious reporting on the subject largely has been absent on the networks and on cable. Last year the three network nightly newscasts aired a meager total of 26 minutes on the bloodshed, according to the Tyndall Report, which monitors network news. ABC devoted just 18 minutes to Darfur, NBC five and CBS three. By contrast, Martha Stewart's woes received 130 minutes, five times as much.

Later in the article, AJR interviewed editors at five papers across the country regarding their coverage of Darfur and they offered a variety of excuses as to why they haven't dedicated more space to the genocide, though they also insisted that their papers had been covering it.

Douglas C. Clifton of the Cleveland Plain Dealer claimed that "When news of the mass killings first surfaced, the story 'broke page one repeatedly and then moved inside.'"

Steve Merelman of the Raleigh News & Observer claimed that "We have spilled a fair amount of ink over Sudan, including a few front page stories."

I did a quick search of the 5 papers AJR questioned to see just how many stories mentioning Darfur had appeared on their pages in the last two years.

Here are the results

Dallas Morning News - 40
News & Observer - 43
Kansas City Star - 156
Orlando Sentinel - 146
Cleveland Plain Dealer - 15

The Plain Dealer and the News & Observer have, combined, run less than 60 stories mentioning Darfur. By no stretch of the imagination can that be considered "a fair amount of ink."

In comparison, here are the results of a search for the number of stories that mentioned Martha Stewart during the same time period

Dallas Morning News - 226
News & Observer - 125
Kansas City Star - 385
Orlando Sentinel - 404
Cleveland Plain Dealer - 134

On average, these five papers have run 80 stories mentioning Darfur in the last two years and 240 mentioning Martha Stewart.