What if Tunisia had a revolution, but nobody watched?

Ethan had a followup a couple days later at <a href="http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/01/14/brocks-insights-on-the-tunisia-media-attention-disparity/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/01/14/brocks-insight...</a><p>Josh Shahryar also had a great piece on Enduring America on Friday, after Ben Ali fled the country:<p>"Today, as dismayed as I was, I got an answer to my question: What happens when the media ignores a revolution? Sometimes,the answer is: Nothing. The media can help mobilize support for victims of earthquakes like the one in Haiti. The media can also help create an atmosphere where people can feel that they should care about those overseas. But, when the media refuses to cover a revolution, it really does not carry any impact.<p>That’s what people in Tunisia proved today by forcing their dictator to jump ship and leave the country. In a few hours, those US outlets who paid no heed will tell you how important it is that, for the first time in decades, a country in the Middle East has forced out an autocrat. Then you’ll have analysts telling you how important it is for US interests that this wave continues or maybe doesn't continue. There will be cute little graphs that Anderson Cooper can pull around on those big computer screens. Hey, it’s all going to be happening!<p>But this will be too late. The mainstream will not be part of the global wave of online support who witnessed a ground-breakingly inspirational event that will live on in memories for years to come and that could influence views on the Middle East, democracy, and human rights for decades."<p>More at <a href="http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/1/14/tunisia-special-what-happens-when-an-uprising-is-ignored-sha.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2011/1/14/tunisia-specia...</a>

I believe the issue is more than Tunisia is not a country of interest, even for people who are interested in foreign policy. Take a look at the average person who actually follows foreign news - countries like Iran, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt rank much higher than Tunisia, Botswana, Azerbaijan, Guyana.<p>Some countries have just been in the news more, so have been noticed more and have more 'fans' or interested observers than others.<p>Even for the educated crowd here, if I said that the government of Sao Tome had been overthrown, that would be a lot less interesting than if I said the government of Libya had been overthrown.

it was big news in europe and got a lot of coverage. also because 10000 german (among french, belgium, british, etc) tourists were in tunesia at that time and had to be brought back with specially chartered flights. almost everyone of my friends knows somebody who was stuck in tunesia until today. tunesia is like florida for the europeans. you go there when you want to enjoy some sun and beach in the winter time.

I am watching the main evening news on the BBC and it is the lead item (as it has been for days now).<p>It was the major multi-page article in all the Sunday Papers here.

The news are also being intensively covered in Turkey and Russia. It is just United States media that does not cover the events for some reason. May be moves toward democracy are not interesting for the States if there is no oil involved.

As far as I know every French newspaper made his first page about Tunisia since one or 2 weeks.<p><a href="http://www.liberation.fr/" rel="nofollow">http://www.liberation.fr/</a><p><a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lefigaro.fr/</a><p><a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lemonde.fr/</a><p>Spain: <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/" rel="nofollow">http://www.elmundo.es/</a><p>Germany: <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/" rel="nofollow">http://www.spiegel.de/</a><p>I suppose that the US media don't focus on news that are not on the national political agenda and they tend to be more focused on the inside.

_When authorities confiscated his wares to punish him for selling without a license, Bouazizi set himself on fire. He died in hospital on January 4, 2011._<p>That's not true, Bouazizi put his degree in front of his cart, which annoyed the authorities. So they confiscated his wares. No one really here have a license for selling fruits.<p>Edit: I'm a Tunisian (born and living here), if you have any question about the situation you can ask me.

The author concluded with "because real change in the world is a rare thing, and it’s a shame that people would miss the chance to watch it unfold."<p>I really hope that real change happens in Tunisia, most of the revolutions even though successful in short term do not bring the real change, because people falsely assume that removing a single dictator will change the course of a country, however its only the end of the beginning.<p>The hard part comes next where the society as a whole has to make a concerted effort to create independent political and economic institutions which keep check on each other. Most of the time, specially in Asian and African region, this step is forgotten and the only result revolution achieves is replacement of old dictator by a new dictator.

Could you please rename the title of this post to "...nobody <i>in the US</i> watched?" - the topic is well-covered in European news.

The Revolution will not be televised. It had to be said. [Edit: if you missed the cultural reference, this will bring you up to speed: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0</a>]

I found out about the events in Tunisia through the Wikipedia homepage, which lists significant current events.

the revolts and demonstrations, and even murdering of journalists, continues to get very little attention in the US media. Despite blogs, social media and video sharing sites being part of the vehicle of dissent. I wonder if mass media feels a bit burned by the previous Iran 'twitter revolution' not leading to a greater outcome.

It was pretty big news here in Montreal Canada. We have a large tunisian community(they had a celebration march a few days ago downtown) so the news did cover it (french CBC did give the story a lot of time) I'd like to see how this influences the.events in Algeria.

I don't get this. The story has been in the NYT every day last week, and it's been front-page news there since the weekend, with articles on the Wikileaks cables' relevance and possible similar effects in Egypt.<p>Was the NYT 2-3 weeks late in giving this story a focus? Were they just waiting to see if it would become relevant among the US wars and domestic political violence? Or did they get caught off guard until Al-Jazeera scooped them? Either way, it doesn't look like they egregiously sandbagged the story, they were just later to it than they could have been.

Well. I don't watch TV. But I guess my friends do. And pretty much everyone is talking about in facebook status in France.

As far as I can tell there was (and still is) continuous coverage on all major Arabic media channels.