There was a bit of an uproar on my Facebook page when I woke up yesterday morning over this story: ‘Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Mali: Africa’s ‘axis of evil’ by news.com.au. My response: ‘Sensationalism taken to a whole new level!! Nice work news.com.au (**insert sarcasm here** then add some annoyance) apparently The Central African republic is worse than hell. Didn’t know anyone went to hell and lived to tell the tale! We know that there are issues in Africa, but COME ON!!!’
Another misrepresentation of Africa. Tell me something new!
The article was OTT with some truths. The issue however is you don’t know where the truth begins or where the writer’s circus of unneeded words ends. This article reminded me of an Australian news satire titled Frontline which we analysed for English class as part of a module titled Telling the Truth in my final year of High School. There is one episode (Playing the Ego Cards) which sums up this article for me. The main character Mike Moore (Rob Stitch) is the face of a Current Affairs program, but wants to be taken more seriously as a journalist. He goes to Bougainville to cover a story about the civil war and ends up adding his own twist to get the ‘real story’. I can imagine this is the type of shenanigans that went on in the lead up to this story whether in the office or over emails. If you have a spare 30min to spare, you will have to watch the episode to get what I mean.