Scary CNN

Apparently George W Bush revolutionised health care in Africa making extremely popular across the continent in a way that he is not anywhere else in the world.This courtesy of a CNN bulletin today. In fact he is so popular based on this report that the incoming Obama administration could not match this in any way. The only evidence alluded for this broadcast is the comments by a retired US diplomat and a reporter from South Africa. I suppose anything is possible since Africans are the 'wretched' of the earth. You must really wonder if CNN actually thinks Africans are from a parallel universe. George Bush follows Bono and Bob Geldof another white male saviour for the hapless Africans.

Lagos Islands

The first set of pictures are Lagos from the Atlantic Ocean side, industrialised, turbulent and urban on the other set his agos from the lagoon and how I imagine Lekki was not too long ago, tranquil, rural and green. There are many aspects to Lagos that is unexplored and even unrecognisable from the caricature of chaos and urban decay. The recent article in Time magazine and the hatchet job that is regularly done in CNN always tallies with the cynicism of elite Nigerians. I celebrate this great city and its possibilities. There is a lot more photographs to share enjoy.

What is the media role in this election?

Quick post! It has been sometime since I commented on the US elections, the primaries was delightfully exhausting and I am still processing the dynamics.

I watched my usual battery of News Channels yesterday and came away with an impression that the new narrative is that Senator Obama is an innocent abroad and naive on foreign policy. This even though quite openly Senator McCain was at the same bulletin stealing his opponents policy clothing by prioritising Afghanistan as security focus and increasing troops there. None in the media pointed out that if the candidates were political pundits, Obama had called Iraq right, his point on attacking Al Qeida in Pakistan and challenging President Musharraf efforts as an ally that Mccain called naive also turned quite right, his call on making Afghanistan the real war of National Security also turning out to be quite accurate. On the other hand McCain appears right on the surge in Iraq working because it has reduced but not eliminated violence. Looking at this record how can anyone be the more savvy of the two. Even though i do not agree with Senator Obama on Zimbabwe it is his voice that is on record, the same applies on his view of America budget deficit and its security implications. Is it that the media cannot actually analyse fine points of policy or it chooses no too? For me racism as an explanation is to easy , a low hanging fruit .

In fact CNN and BBC perhaps the more worldly news networks actually locate Obama as struggling to define his Foreign policy pitch even though his major speech was given a subsidiary tag to Senator Mccain's speech in response. I thought this was itself just an issue of my timing in watching the bulletin until this morning. My usual quick check of the polls in http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/ showed the ABCnews/ Washington Post polls as Obama up 3% points on Mccain. If you do read the Washington Post today you will see it as a 8% lead. Which is true?

The reality is that they are both true but Real Clear Politics a blog in Time magazine always chooses the most negative spin on any Obama situation since the primaries. 8% is the gap when looking at all registered voters but 3% is the difference on likely voters ( a more subjective test). In the same vein CNN reported that Mccain does better with voters 47% to Obama's 45% on Iraq in another poll without saying that this is actually within the 3% point margin of error. Add this to the so called satire in the New Yorker you start seeing that the corporate media has an angle it is playing and it is not 'fair and balanced' although they are all yet to go as far as Fox News in being totally without credibility where Obama is concerned.

My warning to you all before Senator Obama morphs into Robert Mugabe choose your media poison with the garden variety scepticism fully at touching distance. It is not the broader reporting but the sting is the spin.