A little while ago, Nick’s blog included a comment by a student, Loren, who explained eloquently why she did not apply for the “win-a-trip” contest. She did not want to participate because she believed that too much of the coverage on Africa was negative, and thought that more of the coverage could be positive to highlight successes.

I disagree with Loren. Though it is important to celebrate successes, I do not believe in sugarcoating the truth. I believe in telling it as it is. Frankly, Africa as a whole is not doing well. By many accounts, it is caught in a poverty trap, and is the only region that had negative per-capita income growth from 1980 to 2000.

Let’s talk about the three countries visited on win-a-trip. We just left the Congo, embroiled in a brutal civil war that has claimed at least 4 million lives. Conflict and insecurity reign. Due to warring rebel factions, much of Eastern Congo in particular is on a downward trajectory. Soldiers attack each other and the population. Even government soldiers and the police loot, rape, and kill.

There is Burundi, the country we are in, ranking at the bottom of international poverty lists. Even Rwanda, our example of stable governance, is ranked 158 out of 177 countries on the 2006 U.N. Development Program’s Human Development Index. More then 83% of people live there on less than $2 per day. Its social indicators reflect the widespread poverty, for example, with one of every six children dying before the fifth birthday.

In all of the countries we visited, we heard stories of suffering and death, of lifetimes lost to disease, family, poverty, and violence, of bad politics and atrocious governing. These are real stories, and real issues that our readers need to know.

Are these stories unpleasant and difficult to read? Absolutely. Stories about successes, however small, are easier to digest than stories about failures. Who wants to hear about how an HIV program is failing to decrease mortality when they can hear about how many more people are on ARVs? Isn’t it easier to applaud the success of 2,000 bed nets being distributed than to ask why the mortality from malaria is still not decreasing?

But just because people could be turned off by difficult topics doesn’t mean that journalists should stop covering them. Covering only the good is abdicating a critical social responsibility: to inform the world of what is going on, and to incite people to action.

Nick calls reporting on the negative stories like the war in the Congo “serving the spinach”: there are just some things that the world needs to know, even if it’s not our favorite thing to hear about. If we don’t know the stories, how will we know to act? We needed to know about the genocide in Rwanda before close to one million were massacred. We need to know about Darfur. We need to know about the failures and problems with Africa. It may be tempting to opt out of talking about death and destruction, but to cater to the whims of the audience and covering just “fluff stories” about run-away brides and sex scandals is denying reality, and is not responsible journalism. Similarly, trying to find success stories where the failures dominate is misleading and not productive.

I do agree that “serving the spinach” does not mean that only bad stories should be covered. I have reported on the successes when we came across them. I mentioned in an early post that Rwanda is a country that has shown amazing signs of progress, and could serve as a good economic model for the entire region. We came across some excellent programs, including those delivered by the World Food Program, Care International, Women for Women, and HEAL Africa. I have been inspired by many individuals on this trip, including villagers, pastors, Presidents, and civil society leaders. When the good stories are there, I am thrilled to report them. But until the successes outweigh failure, there will have to be much of the bad along with some of the good.