No one wants to report on the REAL curruption. There is a posterboy curruption story every now and then when a highranking official goes dwn. No 1 reports on teh average Joe, low level guy type of curription I think. What do U think? Aren Agopian Hoover

I am African and I actual;ly believe whenever I read or watch the news... and actually I think probably way too many images/news content labels the continent as "Malaria", "HIV/AIDS", OR "Corruption". I do not deny that we have our problems and issues that have to be reported and overcome. However, there is also a positive side to my continent. For instance, I just read that we now have the highest mobile growth rates in the world behind Asia. This will bring numerous benefits. One other thing, I am 22 representing 68% of Africa's population who are youth. We are energised, full of great ideas and optimism to move our continent out of the dark shadow that has been cast upon it. You better wear your shades, coz the nicknamed 'dark' continent is about to shine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is it really possible to have a healthier society and more effective medical care without, first and foremost, reducing the need and thus the demand for medical treatment?

It would appear the new notion of community journalism which involves taking the microphone/pen down to the grassroots, (who constitute the greater majority of the people) is yet to find its way into the schedules and programmes of media practitioners. Nevertheless, the truth remains that those grassroots/down-to-earth people are in the majority and they should be heard louder than the high-ups/decision-makers who seem to dominate media space. Governance and politics should be from down to up and not the other way round. Unfortunately, the media seems to be contributing to the hegemony of governors by allowing them dominate the media space. The 'snobbing' of the majority is already having an adverse effect on especially the print media where sales have been dropping drastically and many big newspapers are closing down the presses and resorting solely to online editions. National life is lived by the majority, whose trials and tribulations, (inability to educate their children because of poverty, lack of health care and other social amenities, marginalisation by the rich) are not given enough coverage.

Hi I think journalist should cover stories that deal with how science technology can be embeded into the society. in order to ease dependency.

There is no doubt about the fact that politics, HIV/AIDS are over reported across the world. though these areas are worthy of coverage being sensitive issues. However, issues like human rights, rural/community reporting are still under reported. No body cares about what goes on in the rural settings but an average journalist wants to cover the politicians or HIV/AIDS stories that seem more juicy. But the truth is that news is about the people, its about the grass roots, though we may argue that we have to go for 'prominence' first, the people must be well covered.

Dayo Emmanuel Lagos, Nigeria.

Food: Food security, food safety, food shortages. Water: Water security, water safety, water shortages. Without food and water, we cannot live. The world is headed in that direction and no one is talking about it.

In Uganda the mostly reported on issues is politics and sports.This has covered all the programmes in our country which are social ,economic, culture and this has hindered the development of our country, the focus is on European sports, laliga etc. The list reported on issue is culture and agriculture which are important for the development of our country. much labor in Uganda is on agriculture, it is actually the back born of Uganda. KISUBI JACKSON UGANDA KAMPALA.

Esa es una muy buena pregunta para los periodistas venezolanos dadas las circunstancias por las que atravesamos. Sueño con el momento en que la política no sea, semana tras semana, noticia de primera plana en todos y cada uno de los medios de difusión. La cobertura noticiosa de cualquier tema que ponga sobre el tapete los abusos cometidos por CONATEL, o por cualquier otro ente oficial, es insidiosamente perseguida. Aún tenemos un resquicio de libertad de expresión, pronta a ser asfixiada por las nuevas leyes que incluyen la prohibición de protección a las fuentes. Adiós al anonimato de nuestros informantes, adiós al seguimiento de los voceros del gobierno a menos que escribas loas al presidente. Hace unas horas un reportero de un medio privado fue agredido en la población de Curiepe mientras ejercía sus funciones, durante la toma forzada de la sede de PoliMiranda por efectivos de la Guardia Nacional. Ese es nuestro día a día, en el cual no nos preguntamos qué nos falta por reportar sino ¿podremos hacer el trabajo?.

ZE Venezuela.

Well, in my country, Tanzania, the media is giving much emphasis to political stories ignoring issues concerning children such as malaria and their general welfare. This group does not have a forum through which they could air their grievances nor do they have anybody to talk about them. The ministry for gender, women and children affairs is there just for personal gains of the appointees and not for the interests of children. In Africa once you ascend to the top political post it's time for you to enrich yourself through whatever means including fraud and corruption. You don't have to bother about those who voted you to power. So, that is, we badly need the international community support to change our mindsets so that when we engage in electoral process for our leaders we should aspire to get committed leaders not plunders of the national economy. It's only when we change our approach of dealing with issues, we journalists shall be able to cover all aspects that affect human life. Failure to that we shall continue to engage in writing articles that promote sales of a respective newspaper and at the same time sing the usual song that our state of affair has been brought about by our colonial masters while we do nothing to relieve ourselves from the shackles.

Rayner Simon Ngonji, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

HIV/AIDS, political injustice, killings, celebrities, and more are unduely reported. Journalists in this mordern age wants to report government woes just to get know as a tough reporter or even as political favours.

Issues like malaria that is killing thousands should be focused on. Remedy, rather than exposition on the cause of various disasters should be addressed more. Preventive Medicine should be more 'evangelized' rather than cures /proposed infestations.

It is precisely because so many of our politicians are "mostly corrupt, inept and self-serving" that we need to monitor what they are doing, and hold them publicly accountable. Although a search for truly untainted leaders is also admirable, and not something that need be neglected.

In my country, politics is over reporteod leaving little romm for coverega of development and health issues, which even when covered are given a political angle. Gender issues, meternal health rarely see the light of day and these are key issues that need coverage. Milennium Development Goals are also rarely covered and so up to this day and age most people might not know what they are all. Could we spend less time on self serving politicians and concentrate on development agendas?

Linda Ogwell

In Australia, host to the two largest multimedia conglomerates in the world, transparency via the media is ironically tragically lacking.

The topics that are not covered that should be are those that comprise the typical Fourth Estate ideal of the media fulfilling its role in scrutinizing the government. Whilst immense pressure is more than visible via the push for the 'public right to know,' little pressure is exerted on the public right to know about what shareholder interests the media companies have and the editorial biases that exist in-house.
As a consequence the mainstream media generally serves up spin for general public consumption, with little competition, and few independent voices in a tabloid style form. A lack of socio-economic and racial diversity in mainstream media employment also prevents a range of viewpoints being presented to a large multi-racial population, sadly. The public are ill-informed and fed daily on a diet of subtle but insidious class vilification and racism by over-worked journalists who do not have sufficient time to onsider their work but solely to produce massive amounts of content. due to each having to cover the work of a dozen people who have been made redundant.

I believe that HIV/AIDS is clearly over-reported at the detriment of malaria which kills more people in Africa than AIDS. Of course, the reason is that HIV/AIDS attracts more funding from governments and international organisations with little or nothing for malaria. However, the facts on the ground are clear that more people in Africa die from malaria than HIV/AIDS and as such deserves more attention and reportage. Another under-reported issue in Africa is maternal mortality which is taking away many women everyday during the process of child delivery. Our women deserve to live to see their children and it is very unfortunate that a womwn should die in the process of giving birth. It is important therefore, for journalists to pay more attention to the problem of malaria and maternal mortality than HIV/AIDS which has become big international business. Thank you. Prince Cookey Lagos, Nigeria

To my mind, the media, especially in Africa, dissipates too much energy and waste precious space and time on politicians, who are mostly corrupt, inept and self-serving. It's high time we focussed more on the core issues of development and begin an intensive search for new, untainted leaders; and they are everywhere-the academia, organised private sector, organised labour, civil society organisations, religious organisations, the professions, even the entertainment circuits. There are authentic leaders in all of these sectors, it's just that we are not beaming our searchlight in the right places. Thank you. SHOLA OSHUNKEYE, LAGOS, NIGERIA