When Brad Pitt gets more coverage than genocide.

Some of us in the American news media have hounded President Bush for his passivity in the face of genocide in Darfur, but we've behaved as disgracefully as he has. The real failure has been television's: ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in its nightly newscasts all last year, NBC had only 5 minutes, and CBS only 3 minutes--about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart got 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks. When asked about this lapse, correspondents note that visas to Sudan are hard to get and that reporting in Darfur is expensive and dangerous. True, but TV crews could at least interview Darfur refugees in nearby Chad. After all, Diane Sawyer traveled to Africa this year--to interview Brad Pitt, revealing that the networks are willing to devote resources to cover the African stories they consider more important than genocide. Incredibly, mtvU [the MTV channel aimed at universities] has covered Darfur more seriously than any network or cable station. When MTV dispatches a crew to cover genocide and NBC doesn't, then we in journalism need to hang our heads.--Nicholas D. Kristof [7/26/05]