What Foreign Affairs?: Why U.S. News Isn't International

Hundreds of people were killed when a cataclysmic blast blew up an ammunition depot at the Ikeja Military Cantonment, north of Lagos, Nigeria in January. It's not your fault if you know little about it. The U.S. media shamefully underplayed the story.

That's not uncommon. Africa too often is given too little attention. It's like Africans don't count.

"Americans have very poor foreign affairs knowledge," says Doyinsola Abiola, president of the Johannesburg-based Foundation for African Media Excellence (FAME) . She earned her doctorate in mass communications and political science at the University of Wisconsin. "In fact, I think they think the world begins and ends here," she said in a recent interview while visiting the United States.

Abiola lives in Ikeja and the blast shattered the windows and doors of her home. Through FAME -- which is getting help from the Virginia-based Freedom Forum -- she plans to focus on improving journalism in Africa. The Nigeria story demonstrates the dire improvement needed in this country's coverage of Africa. And it's just the latest example: the death toll from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, genocidal attacks in Burundi, and famine in the Horn of Africa are just some of the stories that received too little play in the U.S. media.

There might seem to be an inconsistency in the criticism of people like me who complain about African coverage. We groan that news organizations give too much coverage to bad news, then moan when the media don't give things like the explosion prominent play.

The problem is the superficial nature of the coverage and its lack of context and balance. There are far too many important African topics the American media ignore in favor of disaster stories. Compared to the coverage of catastrophes in Europe and Israel, for example, the coverage of African events tends to diminish the value of black life.