Gibbons had been working in the turbulent region as a teacher and had caused deep offence to many Muslims after allowing her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed. The school teacher faced charges of inciting hatred and disregard of Islam. She escaped lashings and incarceration in a Sudanese prison thanks to pressure by British Muslims to pardon her.

The interest in this case has been immense in both the media and political sphere. Gibbons was in essence a victim of misunderstanding and clearly did not deserve the treatment she received in Sudan. Thankfully her story will not have the harrowing end that so many of the Sudanese population continue to face. The level of media attention that Sudan has received over the last few weeks disturbed me.

In fact, I cannot recall such a vast amount of airtime dedicated to this region on the news channels. This is hard to reckon with, as acts of genocide and human rights violations affect thousands in Darfur all the time. Human Rights Watch reported that towns are being burned to the ground whilst innocents are raped and murdered. As a result the death toll is rocketing whilst the spread of disease worsens, claiming more and more lives, particularly within refugee camps.

It could be argued these issues deserve more coverage than a Brit facing fifteen days imprisonment. Civil war in an African country may make for tiresome reading or viewing everyday but a gross lack of prioritisation in the media became particularly obvious in this case.

The degree of coverage regarding the trial and release of Gibbons was profuse, irresponsible and quite embarrassing when one considers the atrocities occurring in Darfur in relation to a possible fifteen day sentence. Mohammed the teddy story is clouding the really pressing issues of human rights violation in Sudan in the context of the current civil war.

Subsequently, the representation of Sudan of late in the press may result in a sizable amount of the population being aware of Mohammed the teddy case rather than the desperate situation in Darfur. Perhaps the media will show more interest in Darfur in ten years time with a Hollywood blockbuster that shocks and angers the masses? Genocide tends to sell more copies after it’s happened, when it’s too late. This will hardly compensate for the terror and loss the region's citizens experience or the lack of representation of this by today’s mainstream media.