Darfur Media Accountability Project

Did you know that NBC owns the exclusive U.S. broadcasting rights to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games?

And that they paid almost $900 million for this privilege?

With privilege comes responsibility. NBC will broadcast more than 1,000 hours of the Games on its network and cable stations. Yet from January 2003 through June 2008, NBC has dedicated only 6 hours and 45 minutes to covering the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

China, a first-time host of the Olympics, is using this occasion to show the world that it is an international player. But there is a darker side to this story—while paying lip service to Olympic ideals of peace and brotherhood, China is underwriting genocide in Darfur.

As both a leading news provider and broadcaster of the Games, NBC has an obligation to tell this story. Television is the most powerful medium for informing people about their world. AJWS, with partners in the Darfur advocacy movement, is calling on NBC to give appropriate coverage to China's economic, diplomatic and military support of the Sudanese regime and to devote 100 minutes of prime time public service announcements or similar programming—before and during the Olympics—to covering the situation in Darfur and China's relationship to Sudan.

On July 23, 100 Darfur activists protested the lack of media coverage devoted to Darfur and the China-Sudan connection during the outdoor taping of NBC’s “Today Show” and were seen on national television. Chanting and carrying signs brandishing, “Darfur: Not Being Covered,” we called on NBC—the sole U.S. broadcaster of the Beijing Olympics—to tell the whole story and report on China’s complicity in Sudan’s genocidal campaign in Darfur. Watch the video.