By Cathy Guiles

Perspectives Co-Editor

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, news media outlets began reversing a disturbing trend towards declining coverage of international news.

No longer were news agencies consolidating their foreign bureaus in order to free up money for stories on health, technology, entertainment and other so-called ``softer'' subjects they thought readers and viewers wanted. Instead, they began sending correspondents en masse to countries neighboring Afghanistan and promoting their ``in-depth'' international coverage relentlessly.

But just how serious is this newfound commitment? Surely Americans, faced with attacks on their country and way of life, are learning more about the tyranny of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the problems Arab countries face, but that should have been a concern long ago. There's something unsettling when, as Baltimore Sun columnist Kevin Cowherd wrote on Sept. 24, ``People who couldn't have found Afghanistan on a map two weeks ago if you highlighted it in Magic Marker suddenly know exactly how a ground assault by U.S. troops should be conducted in that hostile, mountainous country.''

Despite this recent resurgence, news coverage still has a long way to go before it can truly call itself ``international.'' The ongoing war in Nigeria between Christians and Muslims which has killed hundreds of people barely merits a scrolling line on the bottom of the TV screen on CNN while some expert is going on about anthrax for the millionth consecutive hour. (Anthrax and bioterrorism are issues worth being concerned about, particularly in light of the innocent people who recently died of the disease, but the fact remains that only 17 people out of a country of 260 million have contracted it, and most of them have been treated successfully.)

Media agencies aren't the only ones overlooking critical developments in foreign countries. U.S. government leaders are ignoring the situation in Sudan, where black Christians and animists in the south have been enslaved, brutally mistreated and murdered by their northern Arab Muslim neighbors for 18 years, as the United States tries to get the Sudanese government to support its military campaign. Sudan, where Osama bin Laden was harbored from 1989 to 1996, has a great deal of information about terrorist networks, including Al-Qaeda, that America wants to get its hands on. And so the government has chosen to overlook the inhumanity of the northern Arabs by putting legislation on hold that would condemn slavery. Also largely absent from media and government view is the possible role that companies like Canada's Talisman Energy have played in aiding and abetting the torture by doing business with Sudan.