The auctioning of hundreds of African immigrants in Libya is perhaps one of the most underreported news stories of today. After CNN first published video footage of “slave auctions” in Libya last month, further news coverage has largely failed to provide context for understanding the crisis, some media professionals warn.
Communications professors and a human rights lawyer caution that news coverage without the proper historical, social and economic understanding of Libya – and U.S. foreign policy in the region – leaves newsreaders largely unaware of the origins leading to this modern-day human trafficking crisis.
“In this age of the 24-hour news cycle, we tend to get the headlines and the most controversial pieces, but we don’t get the full story,” said Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead, associate professor of communication and African and American Studies at Loyola University Maryland. “What is unclear is exactly what the U.S. can do to respond. It’s unclear what individuals can do to respond. It is unclear whether or not Libya is complicit in what’s going on.”
Whitehead acknowledges that seeing headlines such as the one that CNN published, “People for sale,” is alarming, but journalists should be asking, “How long has this been happening?” “Can we really organize in such a way that we can either halt this or stop this?” or even, “How is it also connected to Libya’s economy? Is this an economic base for them in the same way that, for example, American slavery was an economic base for us?” she added.
After reading coverage of the migrant auctions, Whitehead says that she wanted a historical angle of the current crisis, and wonders if the United Nations or the U.S. has any power to place any pressure on the Libyan government to address the issue.
“I felt almost powerless when I read [the headlines],” she said. “I was concerned, alarmed, upset…but I felt almost powerless because it is not a country that we tend to be directly involved in when you think about our political network.”
Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of National Action Network (NAN), announced on his syndicated radio that he intends to lead a fact-finding mission to Libya before Christmas. A NAN press release states that the reports of the African immigrants being auctioned off have “brought back horrific memories of one of the darkest chapters in human history — when millions of Africans were enslaved and auctioned to the highest bidder across the globe.”
