News & Current Affairs

A DECADE-LONG PEACE IN MOZAMBIQUE NOW IN PERIL Oct. 22 (GIN) – Mozambique, profiled as the next Norway enjoying a windfall from its recent finds in off-shore gas, may be…

WAR CRIMES COURT TOLD TO BACK OFF SITTING HEADS OF STATE

Oct. 15 (GIN) – The African Union has given notice to the International Criminal Court that it should end trials of sitting heads of state and postpone the active trials of the president and deputy president of Kenya, both tied down by the recent Westgate shopping mall terror attack.

DESMOND TUTU TURNS 82, KEEPS HOPE ALIVE FOR PEACE

Oct. 8 (GIN) – Outspoken peace advocate, former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, marked his 82 birthday Monday amidst well-wishers including former U.N. chief Kofi Annan who delivered the third annual Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture at the University of the Western Cape.

JOBERG ART FAIR CENSORS LOSE BID TO BAN PORTRAIT OF DEADLY MINERS’ STRIKE

Oct. 1 (GIN) – Solidarity among artists rescued the larger than life painting of a tragic miners’ strike in 2012 where some 44 people were killed and 78 wounded in a murderous onslaught by security guards against workers that horrified the nation.

By Abiodun Oluwarotimi

President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday said that Nigeria deserved to have a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

President Jonathan made this comment while addressing the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Election for who occupies the seat will take place in October, this year

GRUESOME PHOTOS OF KENYAN MALL SHOOTINGS SPARK DEBATE

Sep. 24 (GIN) – The shocking terror assault at a popular shopping center in Nairobi sent shivers around the world as global news media supplied minute to minute coverage of the deadly event.

Some 68 people were killed and 170 injured in the attack by alleged Somali Al-Shabab insurgents who, for four days, held hostages in a siege at the upscale store.

News photographers at the scene snapped graphic images of frantic store visitors but also victims who lay bleeding and possibly dying. Horrific pictures, on page one of a New York daily and in several papers in Africa, soon sparked a fierce online debate.

“How much blood is too much?” asked columnist Richard Prince in his column Journal-isms. In a piece titled “Race Factor Raised in Graphic Images from Kenya,” he quoted Michael Deibert, a white journalist, who observed: “Quite honestly… I was shocked and dismayed by this… Would the New York Times run photos of blood-soaked dead white Americans after one of the many mass shootings that occur in the United States? I doubt it.”

Senior faculty member Kenny Irby of the Poynter Institute told Prince: “There continues to be an apparent double standard which I refer to as the ‘exotic rule’. The farther away and the browner the faces, the less sensitive I find the ethical rigor. For instance, I could not find a body in the Navy Yard or Boston Marathon shootings.”

NY Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan defended the occasional use of sickening pictures such as those recently published from Syria. “Images of war matter,” she wrote, citing such iconic shots as the brutal execution of a Vietcong guerrilla, a naked Vietnamese girl burned by napalm and the charred corpses of American contractors hanging from a bridge in Falluja, Iraq.

Photo editor Michele McNally added: “I think our audience is very sophisticated. They don’t want us to pull our punches.”

Meanwhile, back in Kenya, a front page picture of a blood-spattered woman shrieking in agony sparked a torrent of furious complaints. It prompted Nation Media Group CEO Linus Gitahi to issue an apology. “Kenyans, we made a poor judgment on our front page photo today. We sincerely apologize for the hurt caused.” The apology was forwarded on Twitter 1,192 times.