Die Zeit im Bild (ZIB) 1 is undisputedly Austria’s most widely watched news program. According to its own announcement on its homepage, ZIB 1 brings “the most important news from Austria and around the world.” However, an examination of the geographical orientation of its reporting shows that, from a global perspective, the news format only lives up to this self-imposed claim to a very limited extent. Although 85 percent of the world’s population lives in the Global South, they account for only slightly more than 10 percent of the reporting on Zeit im Bild. Excluding the MENA (Middle East & North Africa) region, only 4 percent of airtime is devoted to approximately 75 percent of the world’s population. Even extraordinary events and devastating military conflicts such as “the deadliest war of the 21st century” (Tigray) and the current “largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis in the world” (in Sudan) receive little attention.
Media marginalization of even extraordinary events in the Global South
ZIB 1 remains by far the most widely watched news program in Austria, with a regular viewership share of over 50 percent (combined broadcasts on ORF 1 and 2). It is therefore fair to say that Zeit im Bild plays a major role in determining which news items are noticed by large sections of the Austrian population and remain in the public consciousness. On its website, ZIB 1 advertises its claim to report on “the most important news from Austria and around the world.”
Are “the deadliest war of the 21st century” and the current “largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis in the world” among the most important news stories in the world? Apparently not, if you look at the reporting on Zeit im Bild 1. The civil war in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, which was fought from 2020 to 2022, is considered the “deadliest war of the 21st century.” An estimated 600,000 civilians were killed in the conflict, which also involved troops from Eritrea. Amnesty International reported serious human rights violations such as crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. At least 120,000 women were raped during the war.
In March 2025, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell described the situation in Sudan, where a devastating civil war continues to this day, as “the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis” (“Sudan is now the largest and the most devastating humanitarian crisis in the world.”) before the World Security Council. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) describes the situation in the country as “the world’s largest hunger crisis.” This is a development that has been looming for some time. As early as 2024, the UNHCR warned of a “dire humanitarian crisis of epic proportions,” and the Secretary General of Welthungerhilfe, Mathias Mogge, noted: “Sudan is experiencing the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. More than 25 million people, half of Sudan’s total population, are in a critical food situation and 755,000 are at acute risk of starvation. In addition, more than 10 million people have been displaced within the country – more than in any other country.” Given these dramatic figures, one might assume that both civil wars would receive a high level of media attention. This is not the case. On the contrary, both extreme events have been heavily marginalized in the news and, in the case of Tigray, almost completely ignored. This applies to Zeit im Bild 1 (Fig. 2), as well as to other leading news formats in German-speaking countries, such as the German Tagesschau.
While ZIB 1 reported on the war in Ukraine for almost 94,000 seconds in 2022 (not including reports on the effects of the war, for example on the energy sector), it devoted only 40 seconds to the civil war in Tigray, “the deadliest war of the 21st century.” In 2023, just over 1,000 seconds were devoted to Sudan, a figure that fell to about half the following year, even as the conflict and humanitarian situation in the country worsened. Numerous other military conflicts have also gone virtually unnoticed. These include, for example, the dire security and humanitarian situation on the Caribbean island of Haiti, where rival gangs control about 80 percent of the capital Port-au-Prince and where approximately 4,000 people were murdered in 2023. The civil war in Myanmar and the fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 rebel militia in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where, according to UNICEF spokesman James Elder, a child was raped every half hour, were also largely ignored.
The coverage of Yemen is symptomatic: the country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula has been almost completely ignored in the news, even though a fierce civil war has been raging there for years, claiming around 377,000 lives by the end of 2021 alone. Even the outbreak of the largest cholera epidemic ever recorded in Yemen in 2017 did not lead to any noticeable increase in media interest.
It is only since the Houthi rebels’ attacks on merchant ships crossing the Red Sea, which were ultimately directed against Israel, that the country has appeared on the media coverage map. However, interest continues to focus not on the starving and distressed population of the civil war-torn country (in 2024, not a single report on ZIB 1 that mentioned Yemen dealt specifically with the civil war there), but on the economic and military impact of the Houthi attacks on ships transporting goods across the Red Sea to the Global North. Recently, there has been interest in the Houthis’ drone attacks on Israel itself. The fact that a large part of the Yemeni population is still dependent on humanitarian aid (every second child under the age of five is acutely malnourished) usually remains a side note.
Constant and stable media marginalization of the countries of the Global South
An evaluation of the reporting in Zeit im Bild 1 (and excerpts from ORF.at) for the year 2022 made it clear that only 9 percent of the broadcast time was devoted to topics related to the Global South. [1] As current analyses for 2023 and 2024 show, this figure has remained relatively constant. There have been changes in terms of media attention for the so-called MENA (Middle East & North Africa) region.[2] Due to the Gaza war – where reporting is divided between a country in the Global North (Israel) and the Global South (Gaza/Palestine) – the distribution of airtime for reports within the regions of the Global South has changed, but the overall share of the Global South in all reports has remained largely unchanged. This figure remained relatively stable at around 10 percent: In 2022, the Global North (including Austria) accounted for 91 percent of airtime, the MENA region for 4.7 percent, and the rest of the Global South for 4.3 percent. In 2023, the figures were 87.1 percent for the Global North, 8.9 percent for the MENA region, and 4 percent for the rest of the Global South. In 2024, 89.4 percent of airtime was allocated to the Global North, 7.6 percent to the MENA countries, and 3 percent to the remaining countries of the Global South. This means that the share of airtime for the Global South excluding the MENA region reached a low point within the three years evaluated (2022-2024). On average, 10.8 percent of airtime was allocated to the entire Global South during the evaluation period (Fig. 3). Within the Global South, this figure was divided as follows: 7 percent for the countries of the MENA region and only 3.8 percent for the remaining countries of the Global South. To put this into context: around 85 percent of the world’s population lives in the Global South, and around 75 percent of humanity lives in the countries of the Global South excluding the MENA region.
A look at the geographical orientation of the reporting in Zeit im Bild 1 reveals a clear concentration on the countries of the Global North and a simultaneous fundamental neglect of other parts of the world (Figs. 4/5). The regions that receive little media attention are Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia (in particular Southeast Asia). Compared to the countries of the Global North, there is very little reporting on the countries in these regions. Even more dramatic is the media neglect of top issues: countries of the Global South very rarely make it into the top news stories. The maps also show a marked increase in interest in the Middle East in 2023/24, which is linked to the military conflicts there (Iran, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank) and in particular the Gaza war. This confirms the findings of a long-term study of other German-language media such as Tagesschau, according to which there is media interest in wars or military conflicts in countries of the Global South when countries of the Global North are involved. Over the past 25 years, this has been particularly true for countries in the MENA region (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Gaza/Palestine). Interest in the Global South outside the MENA region – and here in particular in sub-Saharan Africa – has declined further as a result of the Gaza war.
Media marginalization of the Global South is inevitable: the distribution of ORF’s foreign offices
The distribution of ORF’s foreign offices (Fig. 6) is indicative of the lack of interest in the Global South. Of the 16 foreign offices, 13 are located in countries of the Global North, two in the MENA region, and one in China. Nineteen of the 23 correspondents work in the Global North (the Moscow office is currently vacant), two in the MENA region (in Cairo and Istanbul with a branch office in Tehran), and one correspondent in the Global South (in Beijing). The ORF does not maintain a single foreign office in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, or South Asia, and no correspondents report directly from these regions. With such an asymmetrical and one-sided distribution of foreign offices globally, oriented toward the Global North, geographically unbalanced reporting is virtually inevitable.
Counterexample and outlook
The example of ARTE Journal illustrates that a different form of reporting in news programs is fundamentally possible. It devotes up to a third of its daily 20-minute airtime to countries in the Global South. ARTE Journal thus takes enough time not only to report on the so-called K-issues (wars, crises, diseases, disasters, conflicts, corruption, and crime), which should neither be ignored nor downplayed, but also to convey positive examples. This type of reporting does not reduce the Global South to one-dimensional images, but allows its countries to be portrayed in a more comprehensive way, reflecting their diversity, multiculturalism, and multi-ethnicity. Constructive “can-do” reporting that also conveys success stories also counteracts a potential tendency among media consumers to become fatalistic and disengaged, as they risk losing interest and belief in their ability to bring about positive change when faced with exclusively negative images. However, a more differentiated type of reporting requires sufficient quantitative coverage of the Global South, because if only a fraction of the available airtime in the so-called leading media is devoted to the Global South, it is usually filled with reports on disasters and negative events.
Interest and empathy should not stop at national borders. In order to generate interest in a topic, comprehensive and, in particular, consistent reporting is necessary, because interest in a topic requires prior engagement with it in some form. Interest and the desire to engage more closely with a topic can only arise if it is reported on and topics and geographical areas are not ignored. It is to be hoped that leading media outlets such as Zeit im Bild will also be willing to give the countries and people of the Global South the attention they deserve in the form of airtime.
Extensive research on the media’s neglect of the Global South can be found on the author’s archive page and can also be viewed and downloaded free of charge at www.ivr-heidelberg.de
There you will also find a long-term study entitled Forgotten Worlds and Blind Spots, video summaries, and information on a traveling exhibition based on the study.
This article was originally published by the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) on 25th September.