What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched?

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/01/12/what-if-tunisia-had-a-revolution-but-nobody-watched/

by gregory80 • 16 years ago

126 49 16 years ago

gregory802• 16 years ago

the revolts and demonstrations, and even murdering of journalists, continues to get very little attention in the US media. Despite blogs, social media and video sharing sites being part of the vehicle of dissent. I wonder if mass media feels a bit burned by the previous Iran 'twitter revolution' not leading to a greater outcome.

johnny222• 16 years ago

what is "very little attention" ?

I saw it on CNN at a pizza place a few days ago.

Not saying that people shouldn't talk about it more, but whenever somebody says something isn't being covered by the "main stream media" I can usually show otherwise with a quick google search.

Often it is just code for: "Why aren't people caring about this issue that i care about?"

Not always the case, I'm just tired of hearing people say that.

gregory802• 16 years ago

excellent point, often that is the case. I should have followed up with more concrete evidence, but as jdp23 points out, CNN coverage was after the fact. As is my posting of this article to HN. jdp23 comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110158

It will definitely be interesting to see how long CNN and others covers the events in Tunisa moving forward.

[edited for clarification]

norswap• 16 years ago

Here in Europe, it sure has been in every newspaper and every newspaper for quite some days.

delackner• 16 years ago

A baseline comparison is all that is needed. If a story gets about as much coverage as any random fluff piece about a star tripping on the sidewalk, then no it is not really being covered.

jdp233• 16 years ago

Ethan had a followup a couple days later at http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/01/14/brocks-insight...

Josh Shahryar also had a great piece on Enduring America on Friday, after Ben Ali fled the country:

"Today, as dismayed as I was, I got an answer to my question: What happens when the media ignores a revolution? Sometimes,the answer is: Nothing. The media can help mobilize support for victims of earthquakes like the one in Haiti. The media can also help create an atmosphere where people can feel that they should care about those overseas. But, when the media refuses to cover a revolution, it really does not carry any impact.

That’s what people in Tunisia proved today by forcing their dictator to jump ship and leave the country. In a few hours, those US outlets who paid no heed will tell you how important it is that, for the first time in decades, a country in the Middle East has forced out an autocrat. Then you’ll have analysts telling you how important it is for US interests that this wave continues or maybe doesn't continue. There will be cute little graphs that Anderson Cooper can pull around on those big computer screens. Hey, it’s all going to be happening!

But this will be too late. The mainstream will not be part of the global wave of online support who witnessed a ground-breakingly inspirational event that will live on in memories for years to come and that could influence views on the Middle East, democracy, and human rights for decades."

More at http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/1/14/tunisia-specia...

barredo• 16 years ago

Well, to be fair, Al-Jazeera played a somewhat important role (but lesser than mobile phones and self-organization) on Tunisia's movement.

And we can all agree that Al Jazeera is 'media'

fxj• 16 years ago

it was big news in europe and got a lot of coverage. also because 10000 german (among french, belgium, british, etc) tourists were in tunesia at that time and had to be brought back with specially chartered flights. almost everyone of my friends knows somebody who was stuck in tunesia until today. tunesia is like florida for the europeans. you go there when you want to enjoy some sun and beach in the winter time.

woodpanel2• 16 years ago

It was indeed big news in europe. but i have to add, that none of the coverage that i've seen, provided what i wanted to see in it: an urge to support the protesters. It didn't mention if these protesters were 'the good ones' at all. and i didn't see any european representative supporting them, at least none in germany. we use this country as our own florida for generations, but don't seem to care that their generations have to live in some sort of soft-lybia.

arethuza• 16 years ago

The coverage on BBC Radio 4 this morning certainly made it sound like the outgoing regime was pretty corrupt and that the protesters had legitimate grievances. As I am about 90% asleep when listening to the news in the morning they couldn't have been very subtle about this message.

nodata• 16 years ago

> It didn't mention if these protesters were 'the good ones' at all.

I'm not sure if you are purposely using an Adam Curtis-ism or not here.

In Curtis' "Power of Nightmares" he discusses the simplification of news to "good versus evil". This is obviously a huge oversimplification. Sometimes the "good" swap places with the "evil", the victims become the people committing attrocities. This causes a problem: the changeable nature of "who is the goodie?" doesn't fit in with simplified news reporting. To explain the role switch to viewers, a lot of additional information needs to be provided. This would kill ratings. He argues that this change has led to the death of tv news.

You can download the dvd here: http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

maxklein• 16 years ago

I believe the issue is more than Tunisia is not a country of interest, even for people who are interested in foreign policy. Take a look at the average person who actually follows foreign news - countries like Iran, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt rank much higher than Tunisia, Botswana, Azerbaijan, Guyana.

Some countries have just been in the news more, so have been noticed more and have more 'fans' or interested observers than others.

Even for the educated crowd here, if I said that the government of Sao Tome had been overthrown, that would be a lot less interesting than if I said the government of Libya had been overthrown.

smackay• 16 years ago

The driving force behind the revolution, as presented by the media here in Portugal, was one of a large group of disaffected youths with little prospects for advancement. This is a recurring issue across the majority of Arab nations and throughout the region. The ramifications for other countries would appear to be rather profound.

izend• 16 years ago

Spain and Portugal as well...

Volscio• 16 years ago

My friends in DC and in the military are following it since it's a big deal in terms of precedents for Arab/Muslim revolutions. But no one else I know is really paying attention to it.

jdp233• 16 years ago

Agreed in general. Fans of EFF and Anonymous are also paying attention; but even a lot of online activists are overlooking it. Too bad, because there's a lot to learn ...

eliben• 16 years ago

> Some countries have just been in the news more, so have been noticed more and have more 'fans' or interested observers than others.

Not to mention that tiny scrap of land about the size of New Jersey on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, where a local conflict has been keeping the world media drooling for 60 years.

cdavid2• 16 years ago

That's most likely an American bias. In Europe, it has been followed quite heavily, especially of course in France: Tunisia is very close to Europe, and there are strong ties between several European countries and Tunisia (political and economical).

It is also the only country from Northern Africa ("magrheb") which is secular, with all the ensuing geopolitical consequences w.r.t. terrorism of islamic ideology. That's one of the main reason why European union supported Ben Ali quite heavily (EU represented 2/3 of international trade for Tunisia).

radu_floricica• 16 years ago

Wonder if this will change now...

mtalantikite2• 16 years ago

Secular in what way? The Tunisian constitution states that Islam is their official religion and that the President must be Muslim. Religious freedom is granted by their constitution, and 99% of the country practices Islam.

Algeria might be considered more secular. When the Islamic Salvation Front won the first rounds of the Algerian elections in 1991, the military took control of the government in order to stop Algeria from becoming an Islamist state under sharia law, which caused the civil war. The Algerian constitution also states that no political party may be formed if it is "based on differences in religion, language, race, gender or religion". Still, 99% of Algerians practice Islam.

elvirs• 16 years ago

The news are also being intensively covered in Turkey and Russia. It is just United States media that does not cover the events for some reason. May be moves toward democracy are not interesting for the States if there is no oil involved.

jdp233• 16 years ago

George Brock had some interesting thoughts about why this didn't get a lot of coverage in the US: http://georgebrock.net/the-power-of-social-networked-media-i...

gordonguthrie• 16 years ago

I am watching the main evening news on the BBC and it is the lead item (as it has been for days now).

It was the major multi-page article in all the Sunday Papers here.

rwmj2• 16 years ago

I too have been following this on the BBC News (UK) website for several days. Does it appear on the US version of the BBC website?

uxp• 16 years ago

The American version of the BBC website, bbcamerica.com, is devoted to entertainment for the most part. Scrolling the top are plugs for The Tudors, Ramsay's Best Restaurant and Anglophenia.

As far as I know, the BBC News site for us yanks is identical to the version served to you in the UK. I don't believe bbc.co.uk uses geolocation content filtering or modification. bbc.com and bbc.co.uk appear to be resolving to the same address as well.

bbc.co.uk does have "Battles in Tunis as key aide held" as its top story as I write this, so it is not like Americans are blocked from seeking out information using the same sources as the rest of the world.

PostOnce• 16 years ago

NPR, New York Times, etc. also covering it.

baby• 16 years ago

Well. I don't watch TV. But I guess my friends do. And pretty much everyone is talking about in facebook status in France.

nraynaud2• 16 years ago

As far as I know every French newspaper made his first page about Tunisia since one or 2 weeks.

http://www.liberation.fr/

http://www.lefigaro.fr/

http://www.lemonde.fr/

Spain: http://www.elmundo.es/

Germany: http://www.spiegel.de/

I suppose that the US media don't focus on news that are not on the national political agenda and they tend to be more focused on the inside.

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

It might also be locality. Tunisia is what, 300 miles from France? No matter how inwardly focused they are, you can be sure US newspapers would cover a revolution in Mexico or Guatemala.

(Admittedly, CNN would wait until after the revolution had a twitter page.)

cabalamat• 16 years ago

> It might also be locality.

It is. It is also that Tunisia is a former French colony.

qw• 16 years ago

Norway is 2500km[1] away with no noticeable Tunisian population, but the media has shown a lot of interest. but locality can't be a factor here. It is a relatively popular Tourist destination of course, so that may make the country more relevant.

[1] Distance between capitols according to Wolfram Alpha

afterburner• 16 years ago

There is a sizable Tunisian population in France.

nraynaud2• 16 years ago

and Germany ?

hasenj• 16 years ago

As far as I can tell there was (and still is) continuous coverage on all major Arabic media channels.

dataminer• 16 years ago

The author concluded with "because real change in the world is a rare thing, and it’s a shame that people would miss the chance to watch it unfold."

I really hope that real change happens in Tunisia, most of the revolutions even though successful in short term do not bring the real change, because people falsely assume that removing a single dictator will change the course of a country, however its only the end of the beginning.

The hard part comes next where the society as a whole has to make a concerted effort to create independent political and economic institutions which keep check on each other. Most of the time, specially in Asian and African region, this step is forgotten and the only result revolution achieves is replacement of old dictator by a new dictator.

troymc• 16 years ago

I found out about the events in Tunisia through the Wikipedia homepage, which lists significant current events.

natch• 16 years ago

The Revolution will not be televised. It had to be said. [Edit: if you missed the cultural reference, this will bring you up to speed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0]

nkassis• 16 years ago

It was pretty big news here in Montreal Canada. We have a large tunisian community(they had a celebration march a few days ago downtown) so the news did cover it (french CBC did give the story a lot of time) I'd like to see how this influences the.events in Algeria.

csomar• 16 years ago

_When authorities confiscated his wares to punish him for selling without a license, Bouazizi set himself on fire. He died in hospital on January 4, 2011._

That's not true, Bouazizi put his degree in front of his cart, which annoyed the authorities. So they confiscated his wares. No one really here have a license for selling fruits.

Edit: I'm a Tunisian (born and living here), if you have any question about the situation you can ask me.

kleiba• 16 years ago

Could you please rename the title of this post to "...nobody in the US watched?" - the topic is well-covered in European news.

kra• 16 years ago

I don't get this. The story has been in the NYT every day last week, and it's been front-page news there since the weekend, with articles on the Wikileaks cables' relevance and possible similar effects in Egypt.

Was the NYT 2-3 weeks late in giving this story a focus? Were they just waiting to see if it would become relevant among the US wars and domestic political violence? Or did they get caught off guard until Al-Jazeera scooped them? Either way, it doesn't look like they egregiously sandbagged the story, they were just later to it than they could have been.

What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched?

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