A SENSE OF VALUES?

"The massacre of the silverback Senkekwe, along with five other rare apes, made the cover of US magazine Newsweek under the headline "Gorilla Warfare". In Britain, the "Murders In The Mist" prompted The Sun to launch its own campaign, and around the globe people wrote in to media outlets, telling of the sleepless nights and trauma the images had caused. For Anneke van Woudenberg, the Congo specialist for Human Rights Watch, it was a case of gritting one's teeth. "Kill a mountain gorilla in Congo and it gets much more coverage than five million dead," she says. "It irks me every time." Trawling through the archives of British newspapers for the first four months of 2008, the point is hammered home. The slaughter of elephants in Congo to make ivory chopsticks appears to be the most widely reported story. Another popular item is the arrest of sorcerers suspected of stealing or shrinking human penises. Breaking the trend of wildlife stories and wild tales are Financial Times articles about Congo's vast mineral resources, a Guardian feature on plans to build the world's biggest dam across the Congo river and a report about Kinshasa's vibrant music scene in this newspaper. Conspicuously absent are dispatches about the humanitarian crisis, the legacy of the worst conflict since 1945, and a crisis that is still killing an estimated 1,200 people every day. Although Congo's war officially ended in 2002, malaria, cholera and malnutrition mean that the equivalent of the population of Manchester will be wiped out this year. (Independent, 12 May) RD