UNITED KINGDOM | AFRICA | ENVIRONMENT | CULTURE
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas Time?’
Unravelling Forty Years of Media Bias
WORDS BY ELIZABETH SYKES | SYKES@THEIWI.ORG | 18 November 2024
On its forty-year anniversary, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s hit Christmas single, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’, remains representative of Western understandings of environmental disasters impacting the African continent, as well as the continent itself. Originally questioning whether an ambiguous ‘They’ (in reality, Ethiopians), living in a land ‘where nothing ever grows’ (a country facing severe famine) could know if it was ‘Christmas time at all?’ (despite being one of the first region’s in the world to adopt Christianity). Helpfully, Geldof and Ure’s choice to refer to Ethiopians as ‘they’ has allowed the song to be repurposed on several occasions in response to other famines as well as the Ebola crisis. Beyond the convenience of this pronoun, Geldof and Ure’s choice might be seen to stem from and perpetuate the persistent flattening of 56 countries into a single collective: Africa.
Whilst these lyrics have come under increasing fire as publics awaken to their inherent racism and ignorance, the song remains popular annually during the British festive season. Upon re-release in 1989, 2004 and 2014 the single claimed number 1 on UK charts and it has featured annually in the UK top 100 since 2009 (Official Charts). Evidently, understanding the problematic nature of the song is not enough to get in the way of playing it at your Christmas party.
The ongoing popularity of this Christmas hit speaks to a wider phenomenon in media presentations of Africa. Whilst news outlets are clearly a source of information distinct from Christmas hits, Africa No Filter’s ‘New Global Media Index’ indicates how this song is reflective of broader media tendencies. Highlighting ongoing global ‘media obsession with the old tropes of an ailing continent where (bad) politics, poverty, corruption, crime and war are the main newsworthy events,’ the report also finds that ‘powerful men’ remain the ‘primary definers of news worth quoting.’ (Africa No Filter, ‘Global Media Index for Africa’, p.11).
In contrast, the report finds that major news outlets tend to avoid topics covering culture and innovation or stories told by women, people with disabilities, traditional leaders or medical professionals (Africa No Filter, ‘Global Media Index for Africa’, p.15). These findings demonstrate how the media sustains the division between public and private. This tendency, the report suggests, facilitates ongoing global misunderstandings of the continent, much like the continually popular BandAid single. To rectify this, Africa No Filter suggests increased investment in ‘media diversity and gender equity.’ (Africa No Filter, ‘Global Media Index for Africa’, p.22). Faced with a climate emergency, this critique feels especially pertinent.
‘Where Nothing Ever Grows, No Rain or Rivers Flow’?
The intersection between BandAid’s 1984 hit and this year’s media index is perhaps best encapsulated by media coverage of climate emergencies across the African continent. As highlighted by Jasmin Blessing, Gender Advisor for the UNDP’s Climate Change board, environmental crises disproportionately impact women in Africa (UNDP, 2023). The BBC reports that since the 1980s ‘the land surface affected by extreme drought has trebled’ with 30% of the global population experiencing extreme drought for at least three months last year (BBC, 30/10/2024). At the time of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas time?’, this figure was 5% of the population. Ironically, Geldof and Ure’s generalising use of the othering ‘they’ could be argued to be more accurate today.
This BBC article, like the song, focuses on disaster and victimhood. The BBC reports on a series of disasters faced by individuals Nyakuma and her husband Sunday, in South Sudan where more than 700,000 people have been affected by the flooding (BBC, 30/10/2024). Whilst clear in their identification of temperature increase and weather change as causing the precarity and grief faced, Stephanie Hegarty and Talha Burki avoid recognising that the suffering faced by the people of South Sudan is caused by consumption habits of the West. Instead, the article presents a series of victims faced with an existential threat separated from its actual cause.
Undeniably, the challenges faced by individuals in areas of climate disaster are incomprehensible to those of us who are not (yet) impacted. However, as Africa No Filter’s report suggests, this singular focus omits the significant efforts taken by individuals and activists across the African continent to protect a planet continually harmed by Western consumption. Moreover, deep analysis of individual suffering allows the continued shifting of focus away from Western responsibility. As readers, we are able to feel sympathy whilst avoiding guilt. It is clear that in an age of crisis, British singers and the public who buy the single do not have the responsibility to let Ethiopians know that it is Christmas: it is not possible to be the villain and the saviour at once.
The White Saviour Complex vs. Indigenous Saviours
Published on the 15th of October 2024, The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD) report entitled ‘Women-Led Solutions for Drought Resilience’, highlights the central role played by indigenous women in mitigating the impact of and providing relief from droughts. The convention’s key finding is that ‘despite systemic barriers such as limited land ownership, women are developing innovative solutions that enable their communities to adapt to the increasingly harsh environmental conditions.’ (UNCCD, 15/10/2024). Detailing 35 women-led projects from across the globe the report illustrates that the individuals facing the climate crisis head-on, are not powerless victims as news coverage may otherwise suggest.
Learning from women-led solutions, the report underlines the importance of ‘[a]ncestral knowledge held by women on drought adaptation’, imploring that this knowledge be ‘documented, disseminated, and replicated’ (UNCCD, 15/10/2024, p.49). The significance of this knowledge flies in the face of the patronising question/title sung against a backdrop of sleighbells by BandAid participants. Far from custodians of knowledge, educators of the ‘global south’, studies such as the UNCCD’s illustrate the extent of Western ignorance.
Part of the successful dissemination of this knowledge will rely upon shifting media presentations of women from across the globe, as well as of the crises they face. Through recognising women as pioneers of climate activism, rather than a mass of victims, news outlets might start to contribute to a long overdue shift in attitudes towards women of colour. As suggested by the African Training and Research Centre for Women (ECA) in 1985, [i]f women are portrayed only in traditional roles in the media, society's attitudes and women’s expectations for themselves will necessarily be confined to these toles.’ (‘Women and the Mass Media in Africa’, Journal of Eastern African REsearch and Development, p.198).
An article focusing on African development potential, this article betrays a limited mode of thinking which understands women to be incapable of thinking and dreaming beyond the limits imposed by the media. Moreover, the finding suggests that traditional practices function as a barrier to development, particularly for women. Knowledge, however, of the initiatives highlighted by the UNCCD underline the invalidity of this claim. Nonetheless, this line of argument does demonstrate the media’s pervasive power in shaping external understandings of African women.
The media, therefore, can be argued to impact Western understandings of African women much more so than it shapes self-identification across the continent. Highlighting this as the central problem of media representations of Africa, historian David Olusoga argued in 2015 that whilst it is possible to have ‘forward-looking’ discussions of modern African in Lagos and Kinshasa, ‘Europe’s image of Africa, although changing fast, is too firmly tethered to history to be easily or quickly recalibrated’ (The Guardian, 08/09/2015). Hence, we are able to bop along merrily to a song on an annual basis which implores us to ‘say a prayer for the other ones’. This overt othering encapsulates Olusoga’s point: the West, and particularly the UK, is far from seeing Africa beyond a point of view embedded in a colonial-era superiority complex.
Beyond Saviour Complexes and Victimhood: Celebrating Indigenous Women
Despite temporal distance from 1984, Africa No Filter’s media index and analysis of reporting of the climate crisis demonstrate how and why the Western world continues to view the 56 countries with a shared population of about 1.5 billion individuals as a collective mass to be saved. In this era of climate crisis, the media has obvious scope to build new narratives celebrating well-documented efforts led by indigenous women to alleviate the impact of the crisis. Supporting this necessary shift in narrative, should come a long-overdue concession of responsibility for the crisis on the behalf of the West as well as an acquiescence of self-awarded superiority. This, however, appears to be far from the BBC’s agenda.
On the 25th of November 2024 the BBC will release a documentary commemorating the forty-year anniversary of the song entitled: ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?: The Song that Changed the World’. Yet, the changes witnessed across the world over the last four decades demonstrate that ultimately a single song cannot adequately confront the reality of the deteriorating climate. Let alone a song which, at best might be described as ignorant (and is really thinly veiled racism). This celebration feels uncomfortable, amplifying limited efforts undertaken by celebrities whilst ignoring the pioneering efforts and resilience of those who face crises head on.
The media perpetuates the categories of victim and hero. This year, instead of questioning whether or not an ambiguous ‘they’ knows it is Christmas, it might be more constructive to ask whether this celebration of minimal effort has grown stale. Let us instead pay attention to our contribution to the climate crisis and avoidance of meaningful change. The time to celebrate celebrities has passed. It is instead time to celebrate and learn from the women across the globe battling the consequences of our actions.