Just how long will Congo stay in the headlines?

Over at Untold stories(via FrontLine blog),Janeen Heath argues for keeping the news about Congo in the headlines.

It is an interesting point.The media coverage of the crisis has been particually good in the quality press in the UK and apart from the three days when we were saturated by the US elections coverage has been fairly comprehensive.

However she argues that

But space for international news coverage is really hard to come by these days. Just 5% of cable television's news hole is dedicated to international coverage; 9% for network television and 12% for newspapers (2007 Project for Excellence in Journalism). Soon, like most underreported international news stories, we will see Congo coverage beat out for other breaking news.

How the West should improve on Humanitarian reporting

Charlie Beckett is at Harvaad attending a discussion about the reporting of natural disasters.

He draws our attention to a paper by Susan Moeller who says

Surveys of US, UK and European journalists who cover natural and other crises have found that few use or even know about existing humanitarian crisis aggregating outlets such as Reuters’ AlertNet, OCHA’s ReliefWeb and ECHO’s site. These same surveys also identify that NGOs and governments are missing opportunities to reach media:

I must admit that I find it strange that journalists don'tmake better use of some of the rsources such as AlertNet from Reuters

It is an up to the minute portal which keeps one up to date with himanitarian problems throughout the world.

As I said in commenting on Charlie's link,maybe this is systematic of the media as a whole.Not wishing to get into a deep discussion on Western news values,there is a distinct lack of coverage outside of the "main events".Some areas of the world,notably Africa get scant attention from the Western media.