Why do some wars become global stories and others stay invisible? | DW News

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Iran is dominating the news right now, but there are dozens more armed conflicts happening. So, we want to look at two things. Why some wars become global stories yet others stay invisible and what it actually takes to get a conflict in the news cycle.

[00:00:17]>> There's this idea that um with conflicts in Africa um it's just it's just Africans killing Africans. And I think that's not only it's that's not only an immoral stance, it's also wrong. The old and still standing knowledge is that people care first and foremost about themselves and their interest in themselves and the person who looks like them or lives like them is endless. But their interest in the other is very very short and it's a bit of a dated reading of audiences and their interests. And a lot of that even stems from the very people who make up the newsroom and set the agenda deciding which stories are covered and how.

[00:01:04]>> There is um sort of an implied um hierarchy of visibility. And I think those um you know victims of war um who are seen as uh having more in common with white western Europeans are afforded more news coverage and afforded more visibility um in Western news media. One way forward could also be about hearing more from the ground. The voices of journalists from and in the affected areas.

[00:01:31]>> Journalists across Africa have a huge role to play and in fact in fact I think they have the primary role to play in getting the truth out about what's really happening um in Africa.

[00:01:40]>> All of our reporting is by contributors in the countries pitching and our entire reporting team is distributed across the continent.