Chances are in the last few months you may or may not of heard of the so called threat off the coast of Somalia, pirates! yes as you can see we may be facing a huge threat here!
This article is typical of most of the stuff written about the "pirate situation" off the coast of Somalia, a prime example of media sensationalism at its best. The article in question uses emotive anecdotes and statistics which elevates the threat these pirates really pose. sure, yes they are dangerous, but the extent to which the media has attached on to this otherwise relatively small problem has almost reached farcical levels.
I have thought long and hard about this issue over the last few months, and to be honest at first i thought these pirates were really just these greedy thieves of the ocean, trying to take what wasn't there's and that they get what they deserve. But as i read more, i started to swing towards, hey maybe they're not the bad guys, and then i realised that hey, this probably isn't that big an issue, and i'm probably blinded by trying to romanticise this in my head, that these people are more like lovable rogues, when in reality they're just people trying to survive.
It wasn't really up until when these pirates siezed a freighter full of tanks a few months ago, that the world didn't really care what they were up to, even though their plight has really been going on for a much longer time. Really this problem started all the way back in the 90's, but why all of a sudden is this a problem now? Theoretically we should care that many western corporations are in league with the italian mafia and are dumping toxic waste off their coast. But the sad thing is, is that most people don't really care, we only really care what the media is reporting to us, which in this case is that these people are, simply a threat to us and should be put in jail.
I mean seriously, so now that we're being inconvenienced, that people are being held hostage, and cruise ships are being attacked do the media suddenly care that these pirates are even there. The pirates themselves are well off, in more ways than one, and they do not often harm their hostages, and i'm getting sick of these feel good stories of the "brave" men fighting off these vicious sea bandits. It would be nice to think that with all the attention the media has given them, the "plight" of these pirates and their people would reach us and our governments would step in to help but we all know that's very unlikely, so i say lets move on to swine flu.
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To be honest, I actually forgot about the whole "pirate" situation, and I think it's due to the prominence of Swine flu stories recently.
ReplyDeleteI also have to say I'm guilty of too often being a statistic of the media. In this case, taking what I see on the news as headlining issues, when really there's a lot of things going on that aren't broadcasted. It's true there are two sides to every story, and perhaps we need to be more aware of what "news" we're being fed.
Yes, maybe they don’t have nuclear missiles or warships, but they are still pirates, don’t forget they are kidnapping people and hijacking ships around.
ReplyDeleteAll the waste dumping and illegal fishing…… Now the world know about it, can we do anything about it? At the end, Africa remains a forgotten continent.
I just wondering how it will end, basically it turns out to be some kind of war show now, as other countries keep sending navy to Somalia, but they are not solving the problem.