The hosts of NPR podcast Code Switch searched for sociological explanations in their quest to understand why so much attention was paid in G
By: Jennifer Kouzi
On an episode released the day after this year’s Yom HaShoah, when Jews around the world commemorated the Holocaust, NPR’s podcast Code Switch spent 36 minutes asking “Gaza commanded our attention. Why hasn’t Sudan?”
Hosts Gene Demby and Leah Donnella explored why the U.S.-declared genocide in Sudan lacked the profile of the conflict in Gaza, which Code Switch labeled a genocide in its Sep. 17, 2025, episode. Neither Demby nor Donnella reflected on the media’s role in this discrepancy. Instead, they focused on race, U.S. financial involvement, and the “foreignness” of Sudanese culture and geography. For critics of the media’s Gaza fixation, the answer is simpler.
No Jews? No news.
Double Standards Despite Double the Death Toll
The hosts failed to see the double standards in their own discussion of why Gaza was discussed more than Sudan.
They featured a long-time listener’s comments, who said he knew very little about the genocide in Sudan. He wondered why there had been little public outcry after then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias had committed a genocide in Sudan in January 2025.
Donnella told listeners that estimates suggested more than 150,000 people had died since the Sudanese civil war began in 2023. Despite child soldiers at checkpoints, starving people, and victims of sexual violence, torture and brutality, very few in the media seemed to care about Sudan.
