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Global News Skins |
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BBC World News The BBC tends to represent Cameroon in the global news through the role of football in Cameroonian culture. For example there is a story that details all African goal scorers across European leagues. For Portugal, Cameroon striker Albert Ze Meyong sealed a victory for Sporting Braga who defeated Olhanese 3-1. Culture is a predominant force within the BBC’s representation of Cameroon under its country profile. Sport and Music sections appear to take up most of the page and BBC News related to Cameroon falls into the lower right corner of the page. The BBC iPlayer has various audio clips related to popular music in Cameroon such as DJ Edu who is bringing new music from Cameroon, Zimbabwe and Morocco. The main news story dealt with ticketing for the World Cup in South Africa. Fans in African countries such as Cameroon are unable to buy tickets online because of limited access and lack of credit cards needed for online purchases. This story puts Cameroon in a negative light where it is portrayed as being ‘technologically behind.’ If Africans cannot get access to the web to buy tickets they won’t be able to attend the World Cup and the administration at Fifa doesn’t plan to do much about it. Another news story focuses on the ineffectiveness of African Malaria drugs which shows that there is some kind of cultural slant where BBC is looking at countries in Africa such as Cameroon and portraying them as behind in terms of health and treatment for illnesses. Overall, an emphasis on culture and people tend to come through with this news skin analysis rather than politics or economics.
New York Times World The New York Times World web site appears to lack continued reporting on Cameroon. On the country profile page, the most recent article dates back to Nov. 2009 and looks at how Cameroon qualified for the World Cup this year. With the New York Times there also seems to be an emphasis on sport as a part of Cameroon culture that comes through this global news site. The next story listed represents Cameroon as a country in need of assistance and guidance from more industrialized nations such as the U.S. It mentions Mbah a Moute, a Cameroonian who was an alumnus of Basketball without Borders which is part of an NBA program to create social change in areas of education, health and wellness. The story has a kind of slant where it is portraying Moute as having been influenced immensely and had life changes as a result of this American based program to deal with social issues in the developing world. Other stories have to do with political issues, global pandemics, environmental and health related issues. Overall this analysis of New York Times coverage of Cameroon represents it as a country within the developing world that is laden with problems and needs the help of the developed world in order to modernize technologically, culturally and socially.
MSNBC There is very minimal coverage of Cameroon itself on the MSNBC world section as it is mostly lumped in with the rest of Africa. The only place where Cameroon is indentified as its own country with news specifically to its culture, politics, and people is on the NBC Sports page that looks at football and Cameroon in the World Cup. There is a very short story published on March 2, 2010 that describes Wednesday’s match between Cameroon and Italy. On the main Africa page within the World News section there is very little coverage of Africa in general and most of the page is taken up by advertisements. Directly or indirectly MSNBC is making the editorial decision not to cover Africa and Cameroon specifically as detailed as other world news organizations such as the BBC or New York Times. By making this editorial decision, the news site is making a statement about the value of African news in the context of the rest of the world. In a sense the Editors in chief are saying there is more important news to cover than to go in depth and analyze on a regular basis, political, economic, social and cultural news within Cameroon and the rest of western Africa. When a search for ‘Cameroon’ is run an article about the World Cup Group E which includes Cameroon, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Japan and how The Netherlands will play the U.S. on Wednesday Mar. 3. This really has nothing to do with Cameroon but it is the most relevant article. The next article dates back to Mar. 16 2009 when the pope visited Cameroon. This illustrates the lack of Cameroonian coverage on MSNBC and how the news organization is choosing to represent the country with minimal recognition.
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