Sir, - Congratulations to Vincent Browne for highlighting the tragedy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Opinion, August 8th).
It is to the shame of journalism in Europe that the deaths of 3 million Congolese people have gone unreported.
My attempts over the past year to get the situation into the media have met with little success. I cannot understand why news editors do not consider this war to be worthy of coverage. On statistics alone it rates as one of the worst tragedies since the second World War.
Mr Browne asks why Africa and its problems are the cause of such indifference in the rest of the world. That question has bewildered me for many years and is one that senior figures in the media should ask themselves regularly.
Why is an African disaster less newsworthy than a European or American one? Is it because there have been so many of them that we have reached a point where we can't care any more? Or could it be that we have a collective guilty conscience about past and present actions and prefer to look the other way?
I know that ordinary men and women in the street do care about the plight of people around the world, so why do the media not bring them what they want to hear?
I have asked the Irish Government before, and I am now pleading with it, to use its influence at the UN Security Council's top table to try and convince world leaders to show an interest in finding a solution to this horrendous humanitarian tragedy. - Yours, etc.,
John O'Shea, GOAL, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.