Washington — After a slow start, U.S. media coverage of catastrophic flooding in Mozambique is picking up. "This is the biggest story in Southern Africa, the worst disaster in the region," says Washington Post Assistant Foreign Editor for Africa Patricia Gaston. The Post's Johannesburg-based reporter John Jeter has been in the ravaged nation for a week.
But although the flooding began more than a month ago, with relief organizations almost immediately predicting calamitous consequences, Mozambique is only now beginning to command significant media attention. There are competing news interests: presidential primary campaigning, Middle East negotiations, "John and I began talking about going more than a week ago," says Gaston. "We were asking, 'Is this the time to go?' Then it started to rain again."
Washington Post and New York Times coverage "is an outrage," said Simon Marks of Feature Story News on Wednesday, when the Post and Times both carried only inside briefs about the flooding. Feature Story, whose "Going Global" world news program for America's Voice is carried live by cable and satellite networks, devoted half this week's show to the story. "There is no question that if tens of thousands of people were in treetops in Tuscany - or even in Armenia - there would have been intensive coverage," says Marks. "And helicopters to pull them out."
As more rain has drawn camera crews to the dramatic filmic possibilities, television coverage has increased, but reports were virtually nonexistent on U.S. television news until late this week. Compelling pictures of women and children being yanked from trees and rooftops have now thrust Mozambique nearer the top of the agenda for international news stories in both print and broadcast media.
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Africa just isn't that important to many media decision-makers, says USA Today foreign correspondent Jack Kelley. "The media doesn't cover Africa as it should. In Africa it often isn't a story until it appears on a TV screen."
To many it appears as if conflict and disaster are the only thing that gets Africa on the television screen. "I'd love to go over myself and get a handle on why Africa is in chaos," a television network producer who asked not to be named was told by her boss. "All 54 nations?" the producer responded.
Kelley says international relief groups began calling USA Today almost immediately after the cyclone hit and rain continued to pound the southern African nation. "They were telling us their people had been missing for several days, asking us if we had reporters in there."
The paper, which does not have overseas bureaus, is planning to send in a stringer. "It's difficult getting access," says Kelley. "About the only way out there is South African helicopters." Ordinarily, Kelley would be the paper's reporter heading out to cover Mozambique, but he's just returned from Cuba. "I hope I get to go," says Kelley. "This is a disaster that can't be ignored."
