The Occassional Ignorance of the U.S.

I haven't been too aware of what's going on in the world of news this week due to the chaos that is college. So I went online today to see if I could find a story to write about. What I found was a story that due to it's placement on the website made it seem as though it were not important. This story is called, "Hundreds hurt in crossfire of fierce battles in Mogadishu." This got me thinking, people tend to concentrate on the war in Iraq and often times miss things that are just as important, or even on occassion, more so.

The media plays a role in this because I can honestly say that this is one of the first stories I have seen that deal with the ongoing crisis in Africa. The media updates Americans daily on how many soldiers have died that day, and how many bombings there were in Iraq, but in my experience they haven't said anything about the "more than 430 people, the vast majority of them civilians" whom were injured in this attack. It seems that the media has a tendency to cover things that involve Americans. Africa is being torn apart by civil war and disease, and that is not as important as "car bomb kills worshippers." The media needs to take charge and cover the terror that is Africa to help make people more aware that there is still trouble in Mogadishu and in Uganda. We rely on the media to tell us what is important in world news, and if they don't do their job, who will?