THE WORLD’S NEWEST COUNTRY, South Sudan, still struggles to end the internal conflicts that have marred its early life. This week, for instance, a deadline to reach agreement passed without success in peace talks between the warring factions.
But nevertheless the country is still managing to make progress in the vital field of educating its young people.
And remarkably, one of the world’s leading broadcasters, the BBC, is playing a role in that effort.
THE UNASSUMING TOWN of Soma, in Turkey’s western Aegean region, was suddenly catapulted into the world’s media in May, with a shocking mining disaster.
Fire raged unstoppably through Soma’s aging coalmine after an electrical explosion. Rescuers made frantic efforts for four days to save hundreds of miners feared trapped underground. In the end, a total of 301 people lay dead, and many more were injured.
Continue reading “After World’s Media Depart, Turks Still in Need” »
YOU WOULD THINK (always a risky beginning) that media commentators would welcome the Special Forces and FBI’s neat — and casualty-free — seizure of Ahmed Abu Khatalla off Tripoli’s streets and onto a U.S. Navy ship and then a plane bound for an American courtroom. No; actually you wouldn’t think that, not given the wholesale shift, even among the president’s once-innumerable media supporters, to Obama-bashing during this advanced stage of his second term. Continue reading “Naïvety in Critiques of Benghazi Suspect Seizure” »
MASS MEDIA CONSUMERS in America might be forgiven for forgetting this, but the purpose of Memorial Day is – obviously enough – to remember our troops, past and present, with gratitude for their service. But what are those service-members themselves remembering?
I’ve been asking this question while spending time in company with a good many US military veterans, as they delved searchingly into their own memories.
My focus was a workshop conducted for and by wounded warriors who suffer from invisible as well as visible wounds. Media access to such highly personal and confidential events is rare – for understandable reasons. Continue reading “Memorial Day Memories” »
MEDIA PLANNERS just love anniversaries. But I’m wondering how many in the mass media will pick up on a confluence of two such commemorations this coming week – a 50th and a 20th – which mark different, equally salient, events in the long life of a recently departed global giant.
Nelson Mandela, who died late last year at age 95, was 45 when exactly fifty years ago this Sunday he stood in a courtroom to defend himself against terrorism charges, using powerful words that have resounded across the world through the last century and into this one. Continue reading “50 Years On: Mandela’s Fateful Words, Too Easily Forgotten by Media” »
