By Philip Jenks
The president of CNN International yesterday accepted the criticism that his network
"is a mile wide and a half-inch deep" in its international news coverage
He earlier said his network tries to cover the world as broadly and accurately as
possible, but a Kenyan woman said the only time Africa makes news is when it’s bad
news.
"Internationally, when you watch television you have to wait for something really
horrible to happen before you know Africa exists," Dr Musimbi Kanyoro, a panelist in
a Padare discussion sponsored by the World Association of Christian Communication (WACC),
said yesterday.
Kanyoro, general secretary of the World YWCA in Geneva, recalled the years she lived in
the United States and watched coverage of Africa on US television. "I didn’t
know that the continent being discussed was my own," she said. "Events were
always portrayed out of context."
International media coverage even threatened plans for the current assembly, she said,
"because Africa is portrayed as very, very violent".
Nearly 200 people trekked across the campus of the University of Zimbabwe to find the WACC
Padare offering in the Science Lecture Theatre.
One of the attractions was a high-ranking CNN official, Chris Cramer, a former BBC newsman
who said he was hired by CCN boss Ted Turner to make the network more international in
scope.
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