News 5 August, 2015

Should News be Like this?

I wonder when an event becomes a news. I usually watch news on EBC focusing on societal problems here and there in Ethiopia. The opinions of the residents of different areas expressing grievance about lack of clean water, parking areas, recreational environments, problems of good governance, and so forth are asked by the journalists. The people comment that they were suffering for a long time, but now, thanks to the government, they would no longer live as they were before.

It happens to be that only when the government either launches or finds the solution that the lifelong problems of the people become news. When the government officials officially announce a particular project to tackle the problems of people in a particular area, the media give coverage to the previous tough situations the people were going through.

But is that what the media have to do? Which one should come first? There is no doubt that what the government does in response to questions of the people is worth news. But it could have been after a number of other episodes of programs that have been hosted to show how the people were feeling when they didn’t get any attention. The news could have triggered the actions of the government and I think not the vice versa.