Judging from my google alerts, the Christmas hook was what the conflict mineral campaign really needed to take off. If I open another story about conflict minerals in Congo, my eyeballs are going to shrivel. NPR literally pegged their conflict mineral coverage to the holiday — “Is your Christmas Gift Fueling War?” — unintentionally, no doubt, letting all personal electronic device-owning Jews and Muslims off the hook. A Guardian column did the same.
The Enough Project also had the media savvy to release its conflict minerals index right around the time of gift-buying hysteria. I’d guess this is the weakest time for any real action — who’s not going to get their kid whatever new fancy Apple do-ma-hickey they want because the index came out? — but they sure played the press game right.
Meanwhile, I’m taking this as my personal Christmas present: More proof that we need journalists. After some meticulous recounting of recent conflict in eastern Congo, an Enough blogger says this:
“So what prompted the recent outbreak of fighting? Busurungi and villages around it, as well as Kimua forest, where the FDLR keeps its Walikale HQ, are known for their gold and cassiterite mines, which have been under FDLR control since the early 2000s. So it should come as no surprise that the area where the fighting broke out this week is precisely where the FDLR continues to control mines. As the UN experts describe this in their recent report, the Congolese army is ‘is more focused on profiting from natural resources than on dealing with armed groups.'”
That’s the biggest leap I’ve seen in awhile. “So it should come as no surprise” is not something a I’d get away with writing in any of my news stories. And as the fulcrum of an argument that tries to prove, again, that the conflict is about minerals, it’s a pretty weak sentence. Exit idiosyncratic fact — were you all used up above? — and quotes; enter inference and generalization.
I’ll take that as a little, “Merry Christmas, journalism, you still matter,” greeting. And if anyone wants to throw a little late Hannukah gelt my way as a bonus, bring it on. My “funds for the next Congo visa” jar is empty at the moment.
