"The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing"
- Nicholas D. Kristof
About this Quote
This quote by Nicholas D. Kristof is a powerful declaration about the absence of coverage of the Darfur crisis by the news media, especially television news. He is criticizing the media for not providing enough attention to the atrocities taking place in Darfur, and rather concentrating on unimportant matters such as Michael Jackson. He is suggesting that if the media provided the same amount of attention to Darfur as they do to Michael Jackson, then the general public would be more knowledgeable about the circumstance and could do something about it to stop it. This quote highlights the power of the media to form popular opinion and the responsibility of the media to report on essential concerns. It is a call to action for the media to take a more active function in notifying the public about the atrocities happening in Darfur.
"Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone"
"Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols"
"We're going to develop - what we want to do is to provide the viewers with what they want from CNN and that is the news. So when people tune in, they'll get the latest news, but they'll also get the biggest story of the day in depth, as CNN does so well"
"I wrote a lot of stuff quickly: pages and pages of notes that seemed pretty incoherent at first. Most of it was taken from the radio because -suddenly being a parent- I'd be confronted by the radio giving a news report every hour of the day"
"He appeared every night, like myself, at about nine o'clock, in the office of Mr. Tyler, to learn the news brought in the night Associated Press report. He knew me from the Bull Run campaign as a correspondent of the press"
