2008 – what a year! First the price of petroleum doubled, then a global food crisis, now a complete financial meltdown. People can be forgiven for wondering ‘what next?’ The runaway cost of basic foodstuffs hit hard earlier in the year. The Western media played it as an unfortunate, but far away, tragedy. Most people in the industrial world barely noticed as the prices on the supermarket shelves edged up. But for those in the Global South living on $2 or less a day – about one in three of us – it was catastrophic. Figures vary, but most estimates, including that of the Food and Agriculture Organization, hold that the runaway price spiral of basic foodstuffs (rice, grain, corn) pushed another 100 million people into situations of life-threatening malnutrition. This is on top of perhaps 900 million people already in this position. That’s a billion people without the means to survive. How many actually died? Or are dying? No-one really knows.
The global financial crisis is a much bigger media story. The nightly TV news, most of the main sections of the newspapers, rumours and analysis whizzing around the internet – it was as if people could think of little else. Everyone was worried. Some you could sympathize with – pensioners worried about their future, mortgage holders about their homes, workers about their jobs. It was rather more difficult to muster up any sympathy for the bankers and politicians who had presided over and benefited from this bubble economy built on mystification and dubious credit. Yet, to my knowledge, few people have as yet died as a result of this crisis. So why the difference in coverage? As the late Chicago folksinger Steve Goodman put it: ‘It ain’t hard to get along with somebody else’s trouble.’
