Thursday, January 05, 2006

Natural and Not so Natural Disasters

It is interesting, I don't know if I wasn't paying attention to the news about 2-3 years back, because I never remembered the world being such a scary place. The past few years we have all been exposed to terrorism, earthquakes, bombings, wars, tsunami's and now a land slide in Indonesia. Maybe I didn't see it at first, because terrorism was never covered by western media. I suppose they though that it didn't effect us and that's why we needed to know about it. In a way I am glad that more and more of these un-natural disasters are brought to the world's attention. However what bothers me is the way the the media goes crazy when something bad happens in a western country, but doesn't place much (if any) emphasis on horrible things happening in less fortunate and/or eastern countries. Even here in Australia, when we are so close the Asia, our media seems only to be concerned with America, Britain and mainland Europe (and even Europe doesn't get much of a shoe in).

I must apologise to media groups like the ABC and SBS, who seem to be the only unbiased media groups in the country! Are we becoming like America? Where the media is so restrictive in the information it gives to the population, that many people there don't seem to realise what happens outside their border? I don't know if this bothers anyone else, but censorship is a big issue these days, and I think it is becoming a big issue for Australia and it's media.

Narrow reporting...does it control your life?

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