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COPENHAGEN, Oct 31(AlertNet) - Humanitarian spe-cialists and
journalists attendinga meeting in Denmark last weekchallenged the
widely-held viewthat media attention is thestrongest factor in
determininglevels of aid, while technology ismaking more
information avail-able faster.
Representatives of humanitarianagencies, often critical of
themainstream news agenda forignoring crises, and delegatesfrom
media organisations attend-ed a conference in Copenhagenon
"Forgotten HumanitarianCrises" organised by the DanishRefugee
Council.
Nik Gowing, a BBC presenter
who has written on the role ofthe media in humanitarian
emer-gencies, said: "It is a self-perpet-uating myth that
increasinglythere is less media coverage ofhumanitarian
emergencies.
"It's a mindset and a paradigmthat doesn't represent
reality."
Gowing cautioned against thetemptation to regard the media
as a monolith, adding: "It'swrong to assume that the teno'clock
news is all of it."
He reminded delegates thatthere were websites devoted
toproviding information forhumanitarian actors. "IRIN,AlertNet,
ReliefWeb -- it's outthere."
He said: "The revolution in infor-mation technology and
low-cost,lightweight means of recordingand transmitting means
morereporting than ever from eventhe most remote, tense and
dan-gerous theatres of conflict and
natural d isaster."
He said that the new spectrumof "information doers"
includedpeople who would be classifiedas advocates rather than
journal-ists.
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"It is a myth that there is lesscoverage of emergencies"
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According to Gowing, the ten-sion between reality and real-time
reporting could lead to lessbalanced, less accurate report-ing.
"Those of us lucky enough towork for a massive, well-resourced
news machine like the
BBC, which seeks at all times toreport accurately, objectively
animpartially by double-checkingand not rushing to judgement,face a
major challenge as otherplayers rush to report, ratherthan
check.
"In real time, even the sourcescan be wrong."
He continued: "It's a question ohow it's being filtered. You
havto know what it means. There'sa gap between the collection
(oinformation) and how it's deliv-ered.
"It's up to us to filter that in away you trust.
"How do you distinguish the
news from the rumours, becausthe rumours can steal the
highground more easily than theactual facts?"
Despite the good reputation ofthe BBC, not everyone was
pre-pared to trust its filters.
Sorious Samura, a Sierra Leoneajournalist, said it was difficult
tpersuade international news
organisations to transmit "CryFreetown", his graphic
exclusivefilm coverage of brutalities in hhome country in 1998.
"Why are we scared of reality?"he asked.
Gorm Rye Olsen, one of threeresearchers who examined what
Humanitarian action does not depend on media coverage
31 Oct 2002 By Ruth Gidley
North Korean cooperative farmworkers transplant rice in
Kiljucounty, North Hamgyong province.
File photo
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determined the level of emer-gency assistance in crises,
saidmedia coverage was not themost important factor.
Olsen, from the Centre for
Development Research inCopenhagen, carried out thetask with Nils
Carstensen, infor-mation officer with Dan-Church-Aid, and Kristian
Hyen of theDanish Refugee Council.
They found that media coverageof floods in Mozambique in
late1999 had led to greater assis-tance than floods in the
Indian
state of Orissa the same year,even though the number of peo-ple
affected was greater in theIndian case.
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"In real time, even thesources can be
wrong"-----------------------------------------
Olsen said there was a common
perception that media attentioncould persuade governments
torespond to crises in poorer coun-tries. His group's research
foundevidence that media coveragehad increased assistance in
someinstances, such as Western inter-vention in Iraqi Kurdistan in
thespring of 1991 and humanitarianintervention in Somalia
inDecember 1992, but it was morecommon for governments to use
the media to communicate theirmessage to the public.
"According to 'aid motivation lit-erature'," the researchers
found,"the allocation of developmentaid from big donors... tends
tobe motivated by donor interests,whereas small and middle-size
donors, like the Scandinaviancountries, are mainly motivatedby
the needs of the recipients."
This was confirmed by a compar-ison of aid to North Korea
andAngola and Sudan, when NorthKorea continued to receive
largeamounts of aid, despite a dearthof media access or
coverage.
The researchers examined theimpact of media attention anddonor
security interests, and athird hypothesis of the signifi-cance of
what they labelled"stakeholder commitment", bywhich they meant the
existenceof specialised humanitarianagencies, donor
administrations,early warning systems and rapidreaction units,
codes of conduct,specialised information structures
and coordinating networks.
In their analysis, this was one ofthe most important factors
inattracting and maintaininghumanitarian assistance.
"The widespread conviction inthe aid community that theKosovo
crisis 'stole' or divertedemergency assistance from Africato Europe
(the Balkans) is diffi-cult to substantiate," they said.
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"The allocation of aid frombig donors tends to be motivated by
donor interests"----------------------------------------
They came to this conclusionafter finding that, althoughKosovo
received a great deal ofmedia attention and humanitarian
assistance, Angola and Sudaalso received ongoing assistancedespite
not featuring in themainstream media.
This was attributed to pressurefrom a well-informed aid
com-munity in the African countries,lobbying for their needs.
The researchers said that in theabsence of donor security
inter-ests, the presence and strengthof humanitarian stakeholders
inthe region, and the persistenceof the international press,
coulddetermine the volume of emer-gency aid allocations.
"In relation to the allocation ofemergency aid, media
attentionis no more crucial than donorinterests are, and certainly
not aimportant as the so-called CNNeffect would have it. Rather,
thecase seems to be that the mediplay a crucial role in
influencingdecision-makers only when therare no vital security
issues atstake," the report said.
