JOUR/IR 246: International Communication Online

WEEK TWO, MONDAY The media as humanitarian factor by Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss

(Originally appeared in Crosslines Volume 3(1) March, 1995, published by The International Center for Humanitarian Reporting)

Major international crises such as Bosnia and Rwanda are showcasing the role of the media in influencing the tempo and thrust of responses by policy-makers and humanitarian organizations. Yet is the importance of that role quintessential or marginal?

A workshop in early December 1994 took a more in-depth look at what is too loosely termed "the CNN factor" -- a shorthand used to convey the impression that Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch are more in charge of policy decisions than Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Bill Clinton.

The gathering, convened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the World Peace Foundation and the Humanitarianism and War Project of Brown University's Watson Institute, featured two days of rolled sleeves discussions among media professionals, policy-makers, and humanitarian practitioners.

The result was a highly informed and informative exchange of views involving persons who, although joined by a common interest in getting the world's safety net to function more effectively, nevertheless brought highly distinct professional experiences and institutional perspectives to the table.

The group was largely preoccupied with the role of the media in the powerful US market, but the issues had global implications. Four major themes recurred throughout the discussions.

Theme One

First, the passing of the Cold War, which has created a sea-change in world politics, also provides an opportunity for reaffirming key humanitarian principles heavily compromised during generations of East-West conflict. Yet the present moment is also beclouded by great moral confusion given a lack of consensus about whether responding to major crises around the world is a matter of significant US national interests.

Several participants urged that the principles be defined, or redefined, to include active US leadership in humanitarian crises even in settings where no geostrategic considerations apply. Others suggested a case-by-case approach keyed to identifying specific US. interests directly affected by this or that emergency.

Anticipating retrenchment in US policy in the coming years following last November's elections, one person suggested that Washington attempt less and do it better. Despite the reality that people do still care about other people, she said, the cloth should be cut to suit the measure of the moment. The consensus seemed to be that a wide-ranging public debate is needed to help fashion a new understanding of the extent to which humanitarian involvement serves the national interest.

Theme Two

Second, it is essential to understand better the complexity of each of the three sets of institutions involved and, more importantly, their interactions. None of the three is a monolith, and discussions that fail to take into account their variegated natures obfuscate rather than facilitate dialogue.

Although often referred to in the aggregate, the media in reality consist of print and electronic entities, journalists and editors, owners and publishers, traditional and alternative news organs. Policy-makers include elites as well as mid-level staff in the State Department and other executive branch agencies and in the Congress. Humanitarian organizations are comprised of non-governmental and governmental groups, presidents and CEOs, headquarters and field staffs, program managers and specialized personnel such as public information officers.

Each set of institutions has its own gatekeepers and its own bureaucratic politics that impede tackling humanitarian agendas more effectively. Each is forced to be selective among crises. Each includes committed people dedicated to humane values. A discerning analysis of the media in its humanitarian interactions needs to involve greater precision in identifying which media influence which policy-makers and which humanitarian groups in which directions on which issues.

The hypothesis advanced by several participants that the print media have more influence on policy-makers, the electronic media on the general public was viewed by the group as requiring far more testing and detailed scrutiny.

Participants were divided on the extent to which the media have, or should have, a humanitarian agenda. One policy-maker described the media as morally neutral. The media doesn't have a humanitarian mission, observed one reporter. We simply report what we see, with news of humanitarian import quite properly competing for attention with business, sports, and entertainment news what critics wryly describe as info-tainment.

Another reporter agreed that a humanitarian correctness test which injected a certain positive spin on events or an arbitrary balance between bad news and good would be a mistake. At the same time, she pointed out, the media do make choices and there is a place for a presumption of concern for all humanity.

A colleague, speaking personally of why he is a journalist and now editorial writer, spoke with passion of his interest in the world and its people. I want to be involved with news that does solve problems, that does make a difference, he said.

Theme Three

Third, recent technological breakthroughs have enormous implications for information about humanitarian crises, for access by people around the world to such information, for the roles of gatekeepers, and for the capacity of the international community to respond to breaking events. Thanks to the new technology, the media is indisputably a more major player in the humanitarian sphere now than in earlier years. Both the immediacy and the intensity of its involvement have been affected.

Yet while aid organizations have a lot to learn about harnessing available technology for their own purposes, information is by no means the major constraint in monitoring or responding to humanitarian crises.

Despite far greater access to an overwhelming surfeit of information sources than ever before, said one of the papers prepared for the meeting, it remains debatable whether the general public, and policymakers for that matter, really have a more enlightened command of the humanitarian state of affairs in Angola, Afghanistan, or even the Bronx. In fact, the expansion of the global electronic village brings with it a Pandora's box of scourges.

Theme Four

Fourth, the sense of the meeting was that in light of the crucial humanitarian values and the institutional interests at stake, a new strategy should be devised. This would maximize the converging interests of the three sets of institutions while respecting their diversity and sometimes conflicting values and cultures.

Such a strategy would recognize that although the media has an indispensable impact in humanitarian sphere, it should not be harnessed with a humanitarian mission pure and simple. Moreover, although the media has a role to play in informing the public, there is no substitute for political leadership in articulating the various national interests and values served by active US engagement in complex humanitarian crises.

A strategy would energize humanitarian interests rather than ceding control of the new technology to the forces of isolation, disengagement, and cynicism. Those with a humanitarian agenda must be responsible for utilizing those technologies that do empower, commented one participant.

While the media does not like to think of itself as being used, its humanitarian potential is far from being exploited by practitioners on the ground. Of the essence is a long-term effort by all three communities to nurture working relationships with each other characterized by both trust and candor.

During the course of the meeting, recommendations from the practical to the wide-ranging were tabled. Aid groups were encouraged to Take a journalist to lunch ... but without any hidden agendas, government officials to treat the media as the most effective form of inter-office memo in capturing the attention of recalcitrant colleagues.

The media was encouraged to develop greater independence of judgment so that its reporting on humanitarian crisis would not have to rely on the views of interested parties such as the United Nations, NGOs, donor governments, or the belligerents in armed conflicts.

*The authors co-direct the Humanitarianism and War Project of Brown University's Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

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