The editorial of the Washington Post Monday was "Congo at Risk." Editorials show a paper's concerns, and this was a fine example.
The editorial starts from the riots resulting from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)'s election. It also warned that the UN should be prepared to act to prevent the current conflicts from triggering a humanitarian catastrophe.
The US is bracing for its presidential elections, so there is no shortage of news. But the Washington Post still chose to write about the DRC. Obviously, it wants to express its concern for world affairs by discussing what's happening in a distant African country.
But this means that not only was the person writing about the editorial concerned about Africa, but so are the newspapers' readers. If this wasn't the case, they wouldn't have picked this topic. The editorial also attracted dozens of comments online.
This might just be an American attitude. But this attitude is one of the factors that ensures the US is still the most powerful country in the world, and no other country is likely to replace it in the short run.
When could any mainstream Chinese media outlet choose editorial topics with such a global view? On the same day as the editorial was published, the homepage of Sina.com, one of China's largest portal sites at present, didn't even list the riots in the DRC in its world news section. Africa is far from us. This is largely a psychological distance rather than a geographic one.
We always say, "China is walking to the center of the world stage." If so, our eyes and minds should attend to the whole of the global theater, instead of just those actors around the center stage.
The DRC, with a population of more than 50 million people, shouldn't be crammed into a corner of the global theater.
Africa is closely bound up with China's development. But our media and readers care little about Africa. Is this because the media doesn't do enough to introduce the continent to readers, or because the readers aren't interested?
It's likely that both reasons are in play, feeding on each other. But as a journalist, I feel the media should take more responsibility.
We often say that no conflicts means no news. Conflicts can always draw people's attention. But the news should be more thoughtful. Thoughtful insight gives the news vitality. Good journalists are always skilled at finding those points among the news which can illustrate their own opinions.
Undoubtedly, what the Washington Post focuses on reflects the US media's perspective. Whatever the political considerations among mainstream US media, using this incident as the editorial topic makes readers feel a kind of humanitarian concern. This kind of concern should not only belong to the Western media.
China is a developing country and should be more concerned about other developing countries. The Chinese media should also choose the topic for discussion from the perspective of developing countries. It's not hard to let the DRC's riots, Pakistan's flood and Mexico's drought occupy a prominent space in our international news. As long as we can tear our eyes from the US and European media for a moment, we can do it.
The news in the developing countries is not unreadable. But we should be asking what kind of stories and ideas can we draw from these events.
The author is a senior editor with the People's Daily. dinggang@globaltimes.com.cn