Oh Oceania, where art thou?

Australian Prime Minister John Howard was defeated by Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd in last Saturday’s election after 11 years in power. This election story was covered by the New York Times and is posted on the Asia Pacific section of the World on their web page. I note this only because Australian and New Zealand news is not always reported by the Times. And it is not because of a dearth of news stories of substance in Oceania. In June of this year John Howard announced that the federal Australian government would take the unprecedented step of intervening in aboriginal affairs after a report was issued that there was widespread child abuse and alcoholism occurring in aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory. The story was reported by the BBC.com but not at the Times. On October 15th New Zealand police raided a number of alleged Maori terrorist training camps in the North Island, seized weapons and invoked the Terrorism Suppression Act of 2002 for the first time since it was enacted. Earlier this month the New Zealand solicitor general threw out the Terrorist act charges (illegal weapons charges are still pending) faulting the law for its “complexity and incoherence”. Neither the original arrests nor the dismissal of the terrorist charges was reported by the Times.

Bill Bryson in his wonderfully entertaining book on Australia, “In a Sunburned Country” noted that he researched the 1997 index of Times news stories and found 20 articles about Australia while Peru was reported on 120 times and Albania had 150 new stories. I would venture a guess that New Zealand faired worse for being under reported. If the Times can make room for Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan can’t it do a little better in it’s coverage of this region?