AllAfrica.com reported on Sunday Nov. 1 that a total of 1.76 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are subjected to child labor in Uganda. As compelling as this headline is, the article is awful. It’s unorganized, vague, and all around badly written. Because of the following reasons, I was unable to comprehend details of the story.
1. The first statistic listed above was attributed to “an official” in the opening sentence of the story. I have no idea who the reporter is talking about and whether or not they are an official of the Uganda government.
2. The focus of the story, I think, is how these children are not receiving a primary or secondary education; however, this nut graph is unclear. It is mildly and arbitrarily introduced in the first quote, but the reporter doesn’t use a proper transition to tell me what the story is about.
3. “She explained that 57% of the children look for jobs after failing to get fees, adding that most of them are ignorant of the law and where to report cases of abuse by their employers.” This excerpt is confusing. What are fees? Why do children fail to get them? Where do they get them from? What do they have to do with education? Also, the word ignorant portrays these children as making the conscious decision not to report workplace abuse. THEY ARE FIVE YEARS OLD FOR GOODNESS SAKE! Do they even know what abuse is?
4. sh3,000 per day doesn’t convey how little money these children make to an international audience. This amount equals $40 (according to this blog).
5. The reporter hardly addresses what type of labor these children in Uganda are forced into. This illegitimizes the statistics and dehumanizes the subject.
6. Lastly, it is unclear who the last source in the story is. He sounds like he represents the side that constitutes child labor because of his negative perspective on child education. This definitely needs clarification and context.
Beyond this initial article, all other coverage of the subject is non-existent. I didn’t find anything on NYTimes.com or LATimes.com. Even a Google search revealed less than a handful of news resources. Child Labor in Uganda was a hot topic on the Human Rights Today website with over 15 related stories in the past 24 hours. However, these articles are hidden from the public because you have to be a member to the site to view any of their articles entirely.
I don’t know why such a breaking international story has received such poor coverage. Perhaps there’s not enough concrete information to create a thorough story, limited sources for U.S. media outlets or because no one cares. Could this be enforcing the “lost cause” stereotype of Africa?
No comments:
Post a Comment