Racism Influence Bleak Coverage of Routinely Coined "Dark Continent"? Love Me If You Will, Hate Me If You Must, But Don't Ignore Me?

Racism Influence Bleak Coverage of Routinely Coined "Dark Continent"?
Love Me If You Will, Hate Me If You Must, But Don't Ignore Me?

"Africans Denounce
Media Bias" at Outside the Beltway featured an interesting piece on
Africans complaints about being portrayed as a poverty stricken, AIDS infested
continent which in fact has many stories of good news to report as far as some
of the world's fastest growing economic areas.

While racism probably is part of the picture, negative news on any topic drives
coverage. One only has to think of the white bread golden boy Scott Peterson
who became a household name when he went bad. The tired aphorism "If it
bleeds it leads" is probably at work as well - Africa has had more than
its share in this area. Do-gooders and fundraisers, including well intentioned
church organizations have also contributed - how many of us have burned into
our memories stories of children less fortunate in Third World countries - even
that designation says something in the pecking order of nations.

I was inspired after reading this post to do a bit of Googling and while this
is not scientific and dependent on how Google organizes and caches data, the
results were interesting - especially with Dark Continent Africa. I didn't search
China as that can also be a product and wasn't sure the best way to tease out
the best data.

One would like to survey what Americans know about Africa besides its troubles
and trouble makers. How many of us can identify their leaders, capitals, industries
- versus say Monaco.

Perhaps Paul Wolfowitz with work at the World Bank can work on changing perceptions
and getting out the good news. He certainly had a hand in getting the news out
about Iraq - for better or worse!

Google:

Africa - 239,000,000

Asia - 227,000,000

Europe - 358,000,000

Iraq - 117,000

United States - 476,000,000

Google News:

Africa - 52,600

Asia - 57,000

Europe - 104,000

Iraq - 143,000

United States - 132,000

A Google search of Africa Dark Continent rendered 614,000 results.