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Bruno Giussani

European Director, TED

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Which relevant/important events currently unfolding around the world are being ignored by the media? Why are they relevant?

Open a newspaper or watch a newscast, and along with a couple of important news (say, Egypt and Tunisia) and a couple of surprising and insightful stories, you will read or hear a lot of irrelevant stuff. Yet world-changing and life-altering events are happening all the time around the world - just not where the media are focusing their lenses (I'm not suggesting active censorship here - just a structural problem in the way "news" is identified, selected and distributed). What are the events currently unfolding, anywhere in the world, of any kind, that are 1) underreported 2) regionally or globally truly relevant 3) may have a broad impact and 4) people should know about?

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Topics: change globalization media politics press social media
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    Matias Gurmandi 30+

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    TED TranslatorAssociate
    Feb 26 2011: In my country (Argentina), and probably in many other, some of the world's leading seed production companies are hiring underpaid rural workers in near to slavery conditions. They are paid wages that in many cases don't exceed $500 a month for working up to 12 or 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a country with a raging inflation. They are deducted the price of anything they need, from food and water to even work tools, and they don't have access to other ways of getting those materials, since they are confined inside this "estancias" or ranches, with different kinds of threats if they dare leve before the season is over.
    They don't hace access to showers, they don't have electricity, hygiene tools, medical treatments, or safety mesures whatsoever.
    What's more shocking is that this is a common thing among this kind of companies. Pretty much all companies dedicated to this kind of seed production are involved in the same fraud, includins some of the world leadres in this industry like Nidera SA; Southern Seed Production SA; and Status Ager SA.
    Thousands of workers in this conditions have been found, and yet almost none of the major local newspapers is reflecting the case. Of course, it's worth mentioning that the two major media holdings have echonomical interests in the form of shares in some of these companies.

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