Gaza and Darfur

As a zone of ongoing, large-scale bloodletting Darfur, in western Sudan, has big appeal for US news editors. Americans are not doing the killing, or paying for others to do it. So there's no need to minimize the slaughter with the usual drizzle of "allegations." There's no political risk here in sounding off about genocide in Darfur. The crisis in Darfur is also very photogenic.

When the RENAMO gangs, backed by Ronald Reagan and the apartheid regime in South Africa, were butchering Mozambican peasants, the news stories were sparse and the tone usually tentative in blame-laying. Not so with Darfur, where moral outrage on the editorial pages acquires the robust edge endemic to sermons about interethnic slaughter where white people, and specifically the US government, aren't obviously involved.

Since March 1 the New York Times has run seventy news stories on Darfur (including sixteen pieces from wire services), fifteen editorials and twenty-one signed columns, all but one by Nicholas Kristof.

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