Year in review stories lost in the noise

December is usually the time of year when many of us look forward to some “down-time” to spend with loved ones and the opportunity to look back on the year, reflect on both the good and bad times, and see what we can learn from them.

In the world of news, it is also very often a time to look back at some of the biggest stories of the past 12 months. Stories like:

The alleged Chinese spy balloons shot down over the United States; the Coronation of King Charles III; the resignation of New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern (incidentally also the topic of my first column for FlyNamibia back in March); the arrest of Italian Mafia boss, Matteo Denaro, after 30 years on the run; the war between Israel and Hamas; the coups in Niger and Gabon; the death of Silvio Berlusconi; the expansion of BRICS; the brief loss and relief-inducing rediscovery of a radio-active capsule on an Australian highway; the Titan submersible fiasco; thousands of migrant deaths; Uganda criminalising homosexuality but Mauritius decriminalising it; the launch of the biggest oil refinery ever built in Africa; and the rise of ChatGPT; to name just a few.

It is also the time of year when it is worth remembering some of the other news stories that have slipped out of the general consciousness but that have not yet been resolved. Stories like:

The Syrian civil war that is still unresolved 12 years later; the 96 “Chibok girls” who remain in captivity after being kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014; the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia and the war in Sudan; the investigation into the 2020 Beirut port explosion; the fate of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar; the fact that Pretty Nkambule, Yvonne Mnisi and Solomon Nyirenda were only declared dead in October this year, despite having been trapped by the collapse of the Lily Mine in South Africa on 5 February 2016; or, sticking with miners, the fact that to this day no-one has been held accountable for the deaths of 44 people at the Marikana Mine in 2012.

Why, you may ask, does this happen? Why do some stories seem to just slip away? Why do people seem to stop caring? Part of it probably has to do with the fact that since the advent of the so-called “24-hour news cycle” in the mid1990s, and increasingly so with the rise of online publications and social media, we are just inundated with so much information all the time that we need to be able to shut some things off. While we do not become unfeeling about the plight of those in the stories that fade away, we are simply not able to care about all the things all the time. Case in point: as I write this, the focus on the ongoing war in Ukraine seems to have shifted to a focus on Israel, Palestine and Hamas, but even the latter war is starting to be reported on less, or at least the journalism that is still being done to highlight the war is being shared less, and taking a “back seat” in people’s consciousness as we all return to our day-to-day concerns and try to find the bits of joy we can in the world around us.

December is also very often a time to look back at some of the biggest stories of the past 12 months.

As newsrooms are fighting for survival due to declining income and growing threats from social media organisations and AI-powered search engines, the only “agenda” of “The Media” is merely to “live another day”, and the best way to do that is to provide their audiences with the news that they want to hear. This is a far cry from “The Media” having the kind of power some people think it does to influence the narrative. As far back as 2018, Nieman Lab reported that “the news cycles for some of the biggest moments of [the year] only lasted for a median of seven days – from the very beginning of higher-than-normal interest until the Google searches fizzled out”, and that “bad news seems to go away faster than good news.”

So, as we head into the festive season and most of us try to relax and maybe cut ourselves off from the rest of the world to find those little bits of joy, perhaps we should take a little time to also remember the stories and the people we have not thought about in a while.

Until next month (which will be next year), enjoy your journey.

David Bishop