Many questions, even saying many accusations, prolonged what some called the failure of the Arab and international media to transmit the true image, and the suffering suffered by a sector of Sudanese who, within days, became homeless and without money as a result of the floods that swept the country in the previous days, which were not witnessed. Since nearly 100 years, which claimed the lives of more than 100 people so far.
The most prominent question was: Do the media operate within certain agendas?
So that you cover an event and turn a blind eye to another?
Why was it absent from its agendas to cover the floods in Sudan, which is an important event that deserves to be properly covered?
Why were these media so busy with similar events such as the explosion in Lebanon, and did not pay attention to what is happening in Sudan?
This reduced people's level of sympathy for the disaster.
By referring to the determinants and standards of journalistic work, what happened in Sudan is an event that deserves the attention of the media, and deals with all its contexts with a degree of importance, to occupy the first place in television broadcasts and the front pages of websites and newspapers, as it is an event of interest to a wide range of people, as it caused the loss of lives. Shelter is destroyed and money lost, not even animals.
Where are the noble and generous people who chanted # From_My Heart_Salam_Beirut ?!
Where are their abundant money and overflowing feelings ?!
Doesn't Sudan deserve brothers as much as Lebanon deserves ?!
From my heart, peace to Khartoum pic.twitter.com/KFCJmShxOj
- Muhammad Al-Mukhtar Al-Shanqeeti (@mshinqiti) September 6, 2020
The lack of those who are able to complete and
in an attempt to search for answers to these questions that have spread through social media, it can be said that the failure was not only from the Arab and international media, but that the local and official media, in particular, did not fulfill their duty in this regard. The extraordinary circumstance in order to provide the main source on which the international media can rely in covering the disaster.
The Sudanese media were late in dispatching their reporters to the disaster sites, and it seems that they chose to tweet in another valley, so their agendas remained as they are saturated with the usual programs of songs, soap operas, and others.
Unprecedented floods in # Sudan, affecting more than half a million, and the state declares a state of emergency.
Sudan needs international support and solidarity, similar to what it was with the recent Beirut bombings.
pic.twitter.com/3mS5TzF7S9
- Dr. Abdullah Al-Amadi (@Abdulla_Alamadi) September 6, 2020
The behavior of the local media did not appear strange, given the behavior of the official authorities and their personalities who make the news, at a time when the Nile was killing its residents, the Chairman of the Sovereignty Council, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, was on a foreign visit to the state of Eritrea, or he received figures who were part of the president's regime Omar al-Bashir was isolated, and other political forces were busy searching for future political gains, and all of this is of the kind of actions that may be delayed in such circumstances, or even cut off if it was initiated at all, as many evidences and precedents say.
Although Al-Burhan and Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok recorded lightning visits to some affected areas in the early days of the disaster, this did not spare them when the terrible effects of the disaster on the people were revealed, which Sudan has not witnessed for nearly a century.
What are the people in?
The Sudanese were looking for the shortcomings of the people of the home and their delay in a situation that required courage, as the means of communication filled with a lot of criticism, and the participants in them poured out their anger at the behavior of the authorities, which were too late to reach the affected, and the losses were not accurately monitored, and the urgent needs of those affected were not specified. It did not seek help from the international community, which is indispensable in such circumstances.
The Sudanese have resorted to history and drew their weapons from the memory of proverbs and governance, and described the authorities and officials ’preoccupation with what is less important, with the lack of those who are able to complete, and they invoked the most famous Sudanese proverb,“ People in Sheno and Hassaniya in Shino, ”a proverb whose interpreters claim that the Hassania tribe apologized for Attending a fateful meeting that the last king of the kingdom of Sennar called for in 1821 all the country's tribes to confront Muhammad Ali Pasha's campaign to invade Sudan, under the pretext that on the day of the meeting they had a donkey race festival to mark the circumcision of the sons of the tribe.
Al-Hassania denies the occurrence of the incident, but some of them say that their ancestors knew that King Sinnari did not really intend to confront Muhammad Ali’s campaign, and therefore sought to disperse his efforts with that argument.
Comparing international sympathy with the events of Beirut with its counterpart with the events of # Sudan is an illogical comparison.
Many people do not like this, but it is ...
Posted by Amjad Al-Nour on Sunday, September 6, 2020
The absence of action and sensational images The
absence of coverage of the flood disaster in Sudan from the Arab and local media had other explanations. Some attributed it to the media’s preoccupation with other issues such as the war in Libya and Yemen and the conflict over gas in the Mediterranean, and not the issue of the victims of the flood disaster in Sudan, whose news only emerges if It related to issues such as the position on the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam or normalization with Israel.
Sudanese film director and poet Amjad Al-Nour had another opinion on explaining this absence, as he saw that comparing international sympathy in the disaster of Sudan's floods with what happened in the disaster of the Beirut explosion is illogical.
He said in a post on his Facebook page that people are programmed to link sympathy with the visual influence, and in this regard he saw that the events of the Sudan flood disaster despite the large number of victims, among the events that are seen annually and in different places, were not visually exciting, and the action was absent from them. Who was present in the Beirut explosion, which was filmed with high-tech and from many angles.
A group from my heart, peace to Beirut, I don’t see, not one, who said: From my heart, peace to Khartoum!
?
, Although what happens in Sudan is a disaster, and people die every day, and more than 40,000 homes have collapsed and not in the midst of the opening of Khushmu. The celebrities of Lebanon stood up for Beirut, but the famous people of Sudan knowingly stop our hearts and answer Lina the clot. Pic.twitter.com/lFnGCnMJrO
- Mohamed Aweida (@ aweida88) September 6, 2020
Weak internet and limited activity by means of communication.
We conclude by talking about another reason for the absence of the disaster of the floods in Sudan from the Arab and international media scene, which is the weakness of activity in social media in Sudan. Although most of the scenes that found their way to the media were from these means, only Its size was modest compared to the scale of the disaster, and perhaps that deficiency justifies the weakness of the Internet infrastructure in Sudan, as the service, despite its high prices, is very weak.
According to a recent report on the Dataportal data portal site, among Sudan's population of nearly 44 million, there are only about 13.4 million who have an Internet connection, and the number of people using social media does not exceed 1.3 million, although the number of those who own phones is 32.8 million.
Here, it must be reminded that the Sudanese are still technically suffering from the effects of US sanctions that deny them the benefits of the digital age, despite the partial lifting of these sanctions.
The mantle of the Arabs still does not cover us physically ....
All the Arabs came to the rescue of Beirut, and here they are deaf blind people who do not see the flood of the Nile in my country # Flood_Sudan pic.twitter.com/6vmrfo418g
- Heba Al-Mohandis (@HibaAlMuhandis) September 6, 2020