The new world order is providing an opportunity for the world to rethink the little they know about the rest of the world. The traditional world order is undergoing a dramatic shift, driven by Covid-19, China, Russia, and movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. But rather than dwelling on this, I want to share some of the facts that should make us all rethink the traditional and stereotypical ways we dismiss non-White, non-rich countries and their people.
These examples have shown us that global media is complicit in perpetuating racist narratives, by not encouraging diversity in its newsrooms and giving an unrestricted platform to reporters and influential spokespeople with implicit biases that are left unchallenged. In Africa our stories tend to offer simplistic analysis that lacks contextĪnd nuance, and prioritizes headline-grabbing proclamations, like this one from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about an “an epidemic of coup d’états” in response to the six coups in five out of 54 African countries over an 18-month period. It’s the reason why the ‘unthinkable things’ that happen in places like Africa are typically reported in terms of issues, numbers and trends - rather than the people, the emotions and the lives destroyed. But it’s clear that far too many are not paying attention to them because the people in these stories are not rich or from the Global North. In Africa, it’s the stories of conflict in Ethiopia, insurgency in Mozambique, election violence in Uganda, and the recent coups in Mali, Chad, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Guinea Bissau. ITV News correspondent Lucy Watson on ITV reporting back to the studio summed up the collective hypocrisy and underlying narrative that the Ukrainian war has exposed when she said: “The unthinkable has happened…this is not a developing, third-world nation this is Europe!” We can’t ignore the darker sides of global unity on war in Ukraine According to the narrative she believes, “unthinkable things” happen only in “third world nations” (now an outdated and derogatory term, someone should tell her), and that narrative is perpetuated by the type of stories she and many like her, have heard about the continent.
CBS, Aljazeera, France’s BFM TV and ITV have all reported the invasion in ways that illustrate deep bias, informed by a belief system that screams of an old-world, White-led, order. The interviewers and media platforms that have aired them.