• Home
• UK Politics
• World Politics
• Policy
• Media
• Lifestyle
• Sport
• Contributors
• Topics

Meanwhile, In Other News...

Sarah Hayward bemoans the lack of coverage in the media at the moment of oher important issues both at home and abroad.

By Sarah Hayward

20 Jul 2011, 09:55

There's no doubt that yesterday's events at two select committees were seizmic. And there's a sentence I never thought I'd write about select committees.The crisis facing the Murdochs, the political establishment and the police is real and deserving of a large amount of attention. It won't stop here either. It's likely the inquiries will uncover more widespread wrongdoing. Serious questions must be asked. But while we're all mesmerised by this story there are plenty of others that at any other time would surely be leading the bulletins.
 
In America, the Congressional Republicans are engaged in a foolhardy game of chicken over the debt ceiling. An artificial construct that George Bush raised 19 times in his eight years as President. If you want to see a global financial crisis, wait and see what happens when the worlds largest economy defaults on its debt. It hasn't got a mention on any of the bulletins I've seen today.
 
Closer to home the Greek economy is still in turmoil and Angela Merkel is getting cold feet about supporting a further bail out. Meanwhile who knows what's going on in Italy, which was at crisis point a week ago but has dropped so far down the running order it's difficult to find out what's going on. Maybe it sheds light on why the Germans are no longer rushing to help out Greece again. How far can the Eurozone crisis spread before the Germans and other ecomonies just say no. Getting a small mention on the international or European pages of websites, this could have a very direct impact on the UK economy, both in trade and pressure to contribute to bailouts from our European partners.
 
In Somalia the UN has confirmed a famine today. This is close to home. Camden where I'm a councillor has a large Somali community. Many fled the civil war and have seen more bloodshed than anyone should see in a lifetime. The famine is isolated to Southern Somalia at the moment but is likely to spread due to a drought affecting around 11 million people in east Africa across several countries. This has made the broadcast and print media, but would surely be higher priority but for the hacking story, and I have to wonder whether this is having a depressing impact on donations to the DEC appeal for help - which could litterally be life and death.
 
Back in the UK some Labour people have been trying to spot the government burying bad news, I tend to give a little more leeway. There's always a rush to get stuff announced before the long summer recess, many may have been planned before the hacking issue exploded. It's likely the Government may actually have wanted publicity for. Just because Labour people think some of these annoucements are bad news, doesn't mean the Coalition does. But either way significant Government announcements have been made on business rates, Building Schools for the Future, a badger cull, the NHS and more in the last few days. But hacking is so pervasive that most of the announcements and all of the detail has to be sought out rather than being covered and debated as they normally would.
 
Two weeks in to the crisis, with new revelations and resignations happening at a relentless rate, it seems that we'll continue to be obsessed for a while longer. I'm not criticising the attention this issue is being given. The impacts are likely to be far reaching, and no one really knows or can predict where it will end - this is a crisis truly worthy of a 'gate' suffix. But meanwhile other, very serious events are happening across the globe, and many people simply won't know.