Comparing news shows.

It’s interesting to watch BBC World News, then flip over to ABC’s World News Tonight and compare the stories. (KVIE shows the BBC news nightly at 5 p.m.) It was especially interesting after the July 7 bombings in London. I could watch the full BBC version, then watch the summarized ABC version. ABC is pretty good at summarizing (and at infographics) and I discovered that they borrow a lot of video from the BBC. Obviously ABC’s producers watch BBC World News too.

Knowing this, I find it disturbing lately that ABC News—and, for that matter, the other American news—have left the famine in Niger completely unreported.

Back in October 2004, Niger had a plague of locusts. That’s right, a plague of locusts. It doesn’t just happen in biblical history. Bearing in mind that Niger is a desert country, and you can’t grow squat there (which always reminds me of that old Sam Kinison stand-up routine: “See this, people? This is sand. Nothing grows in sand. Move to where the food is!”) the people are now starving.

It has nothing to do with bad government, food-stealing warlords, or civil war (not that those things are any excuse for the world to ignore suffering); it’s entirely natural causes. Like the tsunami. Yet while people responded immediately to the tsunami disaster, the world has been sitting on this famine for nine months—and now that children are starting to die, the U.N. and Oxfam and other agencies are finally getting off their collective asses and shipping them food. And I don’t blame you for knowing nothing about it; I knew nothing about it until Monday, when the BBC decided to get off its ass and start reporting on it.

Anyway, donate to Oxfam here.