The main reason extreme poverty still goes on today is that the world is (a) unaware of its severity and (b) believe it is a reality that cannot be fixed.
So two things need to be addressed before anything can happen. First of all, the world needs to be informed that extreme poverty is the most serious issue taking place in the world today. It is the most serious issue due to its magnitude, ie, up to two billion people perishing on less than $1.25 a day and at the very least 25,000 people dying every single day from hunger and chronic malnutrition. Most of these deaths occur in children and most occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
Secondly, the myth that this is a reality than cannot be fixed is also allowing extreme poverty to continue. The Millennium Development Goals drawn up in 2000 outlining the steps required for extreme poverty to be history by 2015 were plausible objectives. However, due to a failure to honour commitments from nearly every country which signed this treaty, and a lack of lobbying from voters for their respective administrations to meet these goals, these objectives haven't been met.
Lobbying by the public was not made mainstream due to the public's lack of awareness that 25,000 people were still dying each day. These deaths did not make it into the newspapers or news bulletins.
This failure by our world's media to inform its audiences of the abominable death toll each day due to extreme poverty, contributes to its audiences failure to lobby their governments over foreign policy relating to the Millennium Development Goals. Therefore, the media, via news omission, is allowing extreme poverty to continue, hence, allowing two billion people to continue dying each and every day.
What makes this even worse is the world's news mediums have governing bodies that deal with each country's media system. These bodies are known as media accountability systems which deal with complaints made by audiences when they believe their newspaper or broadcaster has published or aired something they deem unethical.
These media accountability systems all contain codes with various names, for example codes of conduct; codes of ethics; journalistic rights and responsibilities etc all outlining a set of guidelines aimed at our making sure our media, with all its power, behaves ethically and responsibly.
The problem is, most people don't know anything about their local press councils or media accountability systems. Most people don't even know they exist. Some journalists don't even know they exist. This low profile has meant no one complains to our press councils about news omission. No one complains that leaving out news such as the biggest news story of the day: that 25,000 people died today for reasons that were preventable, giving our press councils no reason to intervene.
Omitting extreme poverty deaths from our daily news is not only unethical, immoral, destructive and tasteless, it is also a breach of the very codes the media accountability systems are put in place to protect. This is almost criminal. Not to mention, it places improper emphasis on thenews stories that do make the daily bulletins.
What we can do as media consumers is complain. But even for the meek, this is something worth complaining about.
The way you can help, is by writing to your local press council and complaining to them that you were not informed of the biggest casualty of the day. And let them know how things would have been different, had you been informed.
Good luck, and read on for details.
