In his latest column, Nicholas Kristof acknowledges that blame for passivity toward the ongoing genocide in Darfur does not lie entirely on President Bush's shoulders. In addition to being invisible on the political radar, Kristof says it is also invisible on the media's radar, too often overshadowed by celebrity trials and other more popular stories:

The real failure has been television's. According to monitoring by the Tyndall Report, ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in its nightly newscasts all last year - and that turns out to be a credit to Peter Jennings. NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS only 3 minutes - about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks.

If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur ... And, incredibly, mtvU (the MTV channel aimed at universities) has covered Darfur more seriously than any network or cable station.

While Kristof makes a valid point, the blame-game can be taken a step or two further. Yes, the administration has done nothing of consequence in the region to stop the genocide and the media as all but ignored it, but wouldn't these two groups be a little more involved if they were pressured a little more by the public? I don't mean protests and petitions and any kind of active involvement. But what is the incentive of the government to fix a problem that its constiuents don't care about, and what will motivate the media to cover a topic that viewers don't care to watch?

Idealists may say our public institutions have a responsibility to work toward a common good, regardless of popularity or ratings. As one communications professor puts it, "The media give the public what the public wants, but maybe it’s time to give the public what it needs instead. Is it naïve or idealistic to expect the media to operate outside a capitalist and competitive system in which profit is the bottom line? Perhaps we should start exploring new ways to fund the media so they won’t be susceptible to market forces."

But what if instead the public changed what it wants? Afterall, this common good is defined by us, the public. It is what we value and talk about and desire. We have a responsibility, as much as the media and the government, in helping define what is the common good for our society. The media is just the forum through which we express it, and the government is just the tool with which we enact it.

Let me simplify what I'm trying to say: I don't know how many times, in casual conversation, I have heard phrases like, "Did you hear what Tom Cruise said about antidepressants?" or "Do you think Michael Jackson is guilty?" or "Did you hear about Tom Cruise and that girl from Dawson's Creek?"

I try to pretend I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do. The questions I don't have answers for are the ones that aren't being asked: "What can we do to stop the violence in Darfur?" or "What kind of impact will this genocide have on the rest of the world down the road?"

Like Kristof, I blame the government and the media for not bringing this to the public's attention, but I also blame myself. I read the Michael Jackson stories and I write blog entries about Tom Cruise.

We may not really care about Darfur until a decade or so down the road, when it's being taught in the classrooms and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' child is winning an academy award for a film about the tragedy. Then we'll start to ask questions, the same question we ask about Rwanda and the Holocaust: "How many times does this have to happen before we learn to stop it?"

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