Darfur is still a huge issue....

This is an area where the US should be leading....

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking on the international response to the ongoing murders and gang rapes in Darfur by Sudan's soldiers and Janjaweed military, told the BBC on July 3: "We have learned nothing from Rwanda." A month later, Dr. Rowan Gilles, international president of Doctors Without Borders, added: "Our teams (in Darfur) are still witnessing repeated violence against the population."

Eric Reeves of Smith College in Massachusetts — the principal historian of the horrors in Darfur — wrote on Aug. 11 (www.sudanreeves.org) that the genocide there could become "much worse" as "the international community has abandoned these people to genocide by attrition." And on Sept. 8, Salih Booker, executive director of Washington-based Africa Action, warned: "The death toll continues to mount."

The American media, with few exceptions, have also largely abandoned Darfur. In "All Ears for Tom Cruise, All Eyes on Brad Pitt" in the July 26 New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof, who has often reported from the killing fields, writes: "If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur."

Kristof noted that: "According to monitoring by the Tyndall Report, ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in its nightly newscasts all last year — and that turns out to be a credit to Peter Jennings.

"NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS only 3 minutes (except for '60 Minutes') — about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks.

"Incredibly, more than two years into the genocide, NBC, aside from covering official trips, has still not bothered to send one of its own correspondents into Darfur for independent reporting."

This appalling performance by broadcast and cable television is not surprising if you believe newspapers are invariably the source of in-depth coverage of vital stories.