Everything, and I mean everything, was focused on the phone hacking scandal and particularly evidence provided by Brooks and the Chuckle Brothers. Now that is fine and all.
But, I happened to see in a 2 minute segment at about 10:15 that the United Nations is about to declare a famine in Somalia.
Now this is quite a serious matter. No famine has been declared by the UN since 1992 and the conditions that must be met in order for an official famine to exist are as follows: "Two adult deaths or four children deaths from hunger per 10,000 people a day, more than 30 per cent of children must be suffering from acute malnutrition and the population must have access to less than 2,100 kilocalories of food per day." (see link at the bottom for source of this quote)
This is bad. I reiterate, this is very serious. However, I have heard almost nothing in the news about the drought, famine and also the recent onset of violence in Sudan following the official independence of Southern Sudan. And yet phone hacking has taken over. Completely. Even, usually eclectic, Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org/), spent 20 minutes of the hour long programme discussing the Select Committee hearings.
Now I'm fairly certain that the official declaration of famine in Somalia is far more newsworthy than some naughty journalists and policemen taking bribes and hacking phones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the imminent deaths of thousands, if not millions, of people from starvation is far more important 'hackgate' (or whatever they're calling it now).
I'm sure I've not made a new or previously unobserved point, but it's better than keeping quiet.
I think.
[quote taken from
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110719/un-security-access-somalia-relief-110719/ (accessed July 20th, 2011)]
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