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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 21:51:56 -0700
From: Edward Hasbrouck <ehasbrouck@IGC.APC.ORG>
Subject: Nigeria News Non-Coverage

                                                      1200 Treat Street, #1
                                                   San Francisco, CA  94110
                                                        phone: 415-824-8562
                                                          fax: 415-824-0214
                                           Internet: ehasbrouck@igc.apc.org
                                                               30 July 1994

Letters Editor
The New York Times
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY  10036

To the Editor:
              I found the following item in today's Times, buried in the
second sentence of the fourth paragraph of the "Futures Markets" column on
an inside page of the "Business day" section, under the headline,
"Troubles in Nigeria Send Oil and Cocoa Up Sharply":  "The turmoil [in
Nigeria] escalated into chaos yesterday after the police killed a top
human rights official and protesters emptied a prison amid rioting in
Lagos, the capital and largest city, and surrounding towns." [National
Edition, p. 26]]
              This sounds to me like important news of general interest.
But I searched your pages in vain for any further details of these
developments in the ongoing crisis in Africa's most populous city and
country.
              Aside from the inaccuracy -- Nigeria's official capital is
Abuja, not Lagos -- have you really so written off Africa as not to regard
such events as news, or at least not as fit to print?  Are human events in
Africa really significant to you only in their effects on international
commodity markets?
              This is the sort of choice of what news to print, and from
what perspective, that makes the case for a New World Information Order so
compelling to most of the people of the world's South (a/k/a the Third and
Fouth Worlds).  But you should know that many Northerners, including many
of your subscribers like me, find such editorial judgements equally
appalling.

                                                        Edward Hasbrouck