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| Photo: Humanitarian Affairs
Review | Aid
agencies often complain about the role of the media in mobilising
the public’s response to crises. Fred Cate, professor of law at
Indiana University School of Law, argues that agencies also help to
distort the public image of humanitarian emergencies. This article
originally appeared in the summer issue of Humanitarian Affairs
Review.
Observers often argue that public support for foreign
relief activities is directly in proportion to the amount of media
coverage given to specific emergencies. These days, few humanitarian
crises seem to produce a public response unless they have first
attracted the attention of the press and television - the so-called
"CNN effect".
Bernard Kouchner -- a former health minister of France and
first U.N. governor of Kosovo from June 1999 until January 2001 --
has been quoted as saying: "Where there is no camera, there is no
humanitarian intervention."
But leaders in the international humanitarian relief
community often bemoan the perceived power of the press.
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has referred to CNN as the
"sixteenth member of the Security Council."
He said: "The member states never take action on a
problem unless the media take up the case. When the media gets
involved, public opinion is aroused. Public emotion is so intense
that United Nations work is undermined and constructive
statesmanship is almost impossible."
Images of human suffering can also desensitise audiences. As
Marshall McLuhan commented more than 30 years ago, "The price of
eternal vigilance is indifference."
This seems especially true in the context of humanitarian
crises, where most people lack a framework in which to place stark
images of suffering, death, and destruction.
The flood of these images not only desensitises the public,
it can also distort policymakers’ perceptions of humanitarian crises
and their causes.
One problem is that the press focuses on "news" events, not
on issues or slow-developing processes.
News is composed largely of negative stories, particularly
when it concerns developing countries; the Third World and
Environment Broadcasting Project reports that two-thirds of
mainstream international news coverage is now concentrated on
conflicts and disasters.
What’s more, the media sometimes uses dramatic images to
attract an audience, whether or not they are relevant to the story.
To save money, Western press organisations have closed
foreign bureaus and have reduced coverage of non-Western news by 75%
or more over the past three decades.
As a result, the public in many Western countries is
astonishingly ignorant about life in other parts of the world,
particularly about the causes of humanitarian emergencies and the
practical tools for preventing and mitigating them.
Complicity of relief organisations
However, the media is not the only cause of these
problems. Increasingly, relief organisations find themselves
competing between themselves or with others for public support.
Motivated by the best of intentions, they fight for the
attention of the press and of the public, believing that it will
make the difference between life and death for the people they
serve.
Relief organisations, therefore, have a considerable
incentive to stress negative news about developing countries.
They too use eye-catching photos revealing suffering, focus
on single, dramatic events, like disasters and wars and suggest
simplistic and often unrealistic solutions.
They may also exaggerate the role of Western aid and overlook
the importance of indigenous relief efforts.
The relief community has already taken steps to combat these
communications problems, but more can be done.
First of all, it is important to recognise that the so-called
"CNN effect" is not as clear-cut as many people think.
This is not to suggest that the press is not powerful, but
rather that the relationship between press coverage and humanitarian
relief activities is complex and the power of media images to
motivate action has been exaggerated.
For example, many government and public activities attributed
to press coverage were in fact underway well before media images
were published.
There are also numerous examples where news reports and
dramatic stories have not resulted in humanitarian intervention.
Codes of conduct
Humanitarian relief organisations also need to adopt
standards for handling communications with the public and the press.
Some of the larger agencies have already done this. In 1994,
six of the world’s largest humanitarian groups joined with the
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to adopt a code
of conduct.
Under this code, adherents agree to recognise disaster
victims as "dignified human beings, not hopeless objects" in their
information, publicity and advertising activities.
InterAction, a membership association of US relief
organisations, also requires its members to "respect the dignity,
values, history, religion, and culture of the people served by the
programmes and neither minimise nor overstate the human and material
needs of those whom it assists.
Save the Children UK says: "The images and text used in all
communications must be accurate and should avoid stereotypes and
clichés. Wherever possible, the views and experiences of the people
involved should be communicated."
Many relief organisations have now made their communications
strategies public. But it is also important to develop working
relationships with the press before humanitarian emergencies and
maintain them afterwards in an effort to draw attention to broader
issues.
Most importantly, information supplied to the press needs to
be reliable and not overstate the scope of humanitarian crises.
Relief organisations should also evaluate media coverage for
accuracy, quality, completeness, timeliness, and professionalism.
They should recognise good coverage and correct inaccuracies
through direct contact with the media.
To raise awareness about media coverage, since 1998 Médecins
sans Frontières has issued an annual "'Top Ten’ List of the Year’s
Most Under-Reported Humanitarian Stories," which is often reported
by the press.
These strategies are not a panacea, but they reflect the fact
that just as the power of the press to prompt public and government
responses to humanitarian emergencies is not as great as once
thought, the capacity of relief organisations to misinform and to
dull public attention is very considerable.
Fred H. Cate is a professor of law at the Indiana
University School of Law and a senior policy advisor to the Hunton
& Williams Centers for Information Policy Leadership. He is also
a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the
author of many publications on the media and emergencies.
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