New Book from Charlayne Hunter-Gault

I remember Charlayne Hunter-Gault's amazing series of stories that she did about Somalia on The News Hour some years back. She's been living in South Africa but is on a book tour promoting her new book, New News out of Africa. Gayle Smith recently interviewed Hunter-Gault at the Center for American Progress; here's an excerpt from a summary of the event:

“We don’t know enough about Africa,” Smith said, because our current media coverage is reactionary and piecemeal, suffering from the “if it bleeds, it leads” syndrome. As a consequence, the American public has become apathetic to the continent. The perception, according to Hunter-Gault, is that if conditions never change than the issues are not a good investment of time, emotions, and money.

The lack of consistent media attention is obscuring important positive developments in Africa. The most interesting stories, for Hunter-Gault, are not Africa’s problems but the hope and heroism throughout the continent in the face of those problems. “Today there is a second wind of change blowing across Africa,” she said. Pointing to tentative but consistent democratic progress and a growing confidence that Africa can be active in improving itself, Hunter-Gault expressed hope that a more positive image of Africa in the media could emerge.

I heard Hunter-Gault on The News Hour last night and she used an expression, parachute journalism, to describe a style of journalism where events in places like Africa are only covered in emergencies where journalists drop in for a few days and then disappear. I feel like that can easily describe Bush's approach to being president. If something happens, he focuses on it for a few days and then disappears. We're going to lose our position in the world if we start don't doing things for the long haul. I don't understand this new era but I hope more Charlayne Hunter-Gaults begin showing up to turn things around.