The Media and Aid Organizations:

An Unravelling Symbiosis?

By Joe Lowry

Photo by an expatriate aid worker being interviewed by a New Zealand TV crew in Niger, 2010. morealtitude.wordpress.com

Submitted for the degree of MA in Communications (Journalism and Critical Public Relations)

12,900 words

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In this document Oxford IZE spelling has been used unless the original quote used ISE.

Table of Contents

Abstract 3Acknowledgements 4

1. Introduction 52. Literature Review 6

2.1 History of Aid/Media Relations 62.2 The Purpose of the Media 82.3 Dynamics, paradigms and paradoxes 92.4 “Don’t Chase Headlines, Chase Good Quality News”102.5 The Humanitarian Communicators’ Code of Conduct 112.6 A Crowded Compassion Market 122.7 What journalists really think 132.8 Defining the News 15

3. Methodology and Theoretical Framework 153.1 Methodology 153.1.1 Justification 153.1.2 The Candidates 163.1.3 The Questions 173.2 Theoretical Framework 183.2.1 The Public Sphere 183.2.2 Political Economy 183.2.3 News Values, News Production 20

4. Discussion 224.1 The Symbiosis: Who Really Benefits 22

4.2 Four Major Themes 224.2.1 Lack of Investment in Foreign Bureaus: Threat or Opportunity? 234.2.2 Guarding their independence and being accountable 244.2.3 Social Media. Deep, profound and total? 27

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4.2.4 The Symbiosis. Unravelling, regenerating, or both? 29

5. Conclusions and recommendations 30

6. Bibliography 33

Abstract

This interview-based study examines the relationship between humanitarian aid organizations and the media. It argues, from a political economy perspective that the lack of investment in traditional media has served to give aid organizations an edge in controlling messaging during disasters, often for reasons of financial gain. At the same time, journalists are more critical of humanitarian interventions, which agencies welcome – in theory. Both sides are defensive when encountering criticism, while both see similar pros and cons in the advent of social media in their interaction.

“A parallel existential crisis”. Thin Lei Win, ThomsonReuters Foundation, interview with the author

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Acknowledgements

This has been a tiring but enriching exercise. Over the past two years I have had several personal, family and professional crises, turned 50, been deployed to emergencies in the Philippines and Vanuatu, suffered a bout of Dengue fever, and managed to put together the 40,000 words that the essays, exam and thesis required. There has been a lot of learning and a lot of eureka moments. The best and simplest way I can put it is that I finally understand what I thought I already knew. I am not sure whether it is better to get a Masters in your 20s or wait till later in life, when you understand what you are learning through the prism of life experience. I am sure that if we mature distance learners had two years to devote to it, and it alone, we would turn out masterpieces.

Thanks are due to the academic and administrative staff at Leicester University, notably Dr Paul Smith, Lauren Botham and Charlotte Ratcliffe, as well as the support group on Facebook, with Nikki Jeffries and Andreas Anastasiou due particular mention. My participation was made possible by financial contributions from my employers, the International Organization for Migration, so I thank my direct supervisor, Regional Director Andy Bruce for alerting me to the possibilities and for supporting my application. Thanks also to my parents-in-law Vova and Alla for their firmness last Christmas when it would have been easier to join outings than to hit the books, and my parents and siblings for their support in all matters (particularly my father Nick who proofread the final manuscript). My interviewees, Oliver Lacey-Hall, Phil Robertson, Thin Lei Win, Veronica Pedrosa, Chris De Bono and Patrick Fuller have

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made this document feel much more intelligent than it would have otherwise. Thanks to Sinead O’Flaherty for help with the transcription of those interviews. Orla Fagan, Andy McElroy, Babatope Akinwande, Paul Conneally and Sean Deely were kind enough to read and critique the manuscript, which certainly made it better. But the most important support network was undoubtedly my family, especially wife Lena and daughters Maya and Polina who will no longer have to endure the regular mantra “but my essay is due in X days…”

1. Introduction

Rapid delivery of news from locales where death and destruction are taking place is an ancient phenomenon. The first evidence in humankind’s interest in “news from the front” was recorded as the ancient Greek courier Pheidippides expired at the end of his run from the battlefield at Marathon (Hill, 2002) with the words “Joy to you. You won”. The fact that we crave news of wars, disasters, famines, plagues and emergencies is not mere prurience, it may be legitimately viewed as a survival mechanism whereby forewarned is forearmed. (Whyte-Venables, 2012). By any criteria, humanitarian disasters are major international news, especially when there is large-scale loss of life and destruction. They are fast-breaking and fast-changing, but with a pattern that can form a written or visual narrative, they often happen in exotic places, and lend themselves to human interest stories (Galtung & Ruge, 1965).

Humanitarian activities have been recorded in times of war and peace. Ancient texts such as the Bible, the Koran and the Mahabharata have urged respect for civilian populations, their property and their environment, as well as the fair treatment of fellow combatants. Humanitarian action in the modern age was popularized by “the lady with the lamp”, Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, and later developed into the texts that formed the Geneva Conventions by Swiss businessman Henry Dunant after the Battle of Solferino (ICRC, 2004).

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However, this study argues that aid workers and their actions became a major part of the story – often the story itself – in the mid 1980s during the Ethiopian famine and the subsequent Band Aid/Live Aid phenomenon. (Kalcsics, 2011)

For many years, their activities were seen as purely philanthropic and it is ironic that the media has been scrutinizing their role in sometimes forensic detail at a time when aid agency budgets for public relations activities have risen steeply compared to the deep cuts in investment in investigative and international journalism.

The interviews in this study have been conducted with leading figures from the humanitarian aid field – most of them former journalists - and with journalists who specialize in covering large-scale disasters. The interviews support and add to the literature review in this study.

There is a growing tension between the two sectors, which in some cases is healthy, but in others can be viewed as harmful. Even though aid organizations are a crucial source of information, quotes, and soundbites, and a conduit by which media can reach affected populations, there is an inharmonious note sounded by journalists that humanitarian responders want the story told their way. This clashes profoundly with the journalistic principle of objectivity but there is often little an underfunded individual reporter can do, as he or she effectively owes their story to the well-resourced agency. As one interviewee put it “if we want traditional media to play a role in raising awareness and generating political will we need to understand that in this financial climate they need help to get to the story. We need ways to provide that help without creating a client relationship and also without wasting scarce donor money” (DeBono, 2015).

This study concentrates almost exclusively on the relationship between aid workers and journalists in times of natural disasters, and in the public relations or campaigning activities of aid organizations and how they are perceived and processed by the media; in other words how they become news. It also looks at how the aid organizations are using social media to interact directly with their primary audiences (institutional donors, governments, public donors and beneficiaries) and how they are using social media alongside traditional media to encourage journalists to spread their messages. The subject of aid organizations working in war zones is left to other researchers, as the primary

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interest here is not how the presence of the military influences media coverage of disasters and humanitarian operations. That subject is of immense interest, and could be the subject of a separate study, perhaps even a future doctoral thesis by this author. Similarly, this study does not investigate in detail the foreign policy behind either media or humanitarian coverage, nor other interesting debates within the humanitarian and media worlds such as the influence of Chinese expansion in Africa as an agent of development, the perceived restrictions on female empowerment in Muslim cultures, nor the fundamental question of the neo-colonial, paternalistic, client-customer nature of aid. These too are areas for other researchers, although they do have an impact on the way so-called humanitarian activities are covered in the media, and on the nature of poverty and prospects for real human development.

2. Literature Review

2.1 History of aid/media relations

The literature review below examines the history of media coverage of disasters from the 1960s to today; specifically what has been written about the relationships between the communications specialists within those same organizations and journalists, both in the field and at head office. It begins with an examination of the origin of the relationship, and moves on to look at it through the prism of news production, and the role of journalists as news definers. While there is a body of work which examines both the role of the media in disasters, and the role of aid organizations in disasters, there is very little academic research or critical writing about where the two worlds meet. This may be because the media, and media critics, had, up to recently, viewed disasters as simply another story, and aid workers simply as sources. However, the investment in public relations (often called “communications”) by the aid organizations, coupled with deep cuts in budgets for foreign news bureaus has meant that many media practitioners are finding their way into the humanitarian world (although the reverse is not true). At the same time, aid organizations are calling for more accountability, and the media is fulfilling its role as a definer of the democratic process, holding bodies charged with spending public money to account (McNair, 2011). As this paradigm is comparatively new, much of the debate thus far has been in position papers and

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newspaper articles, as well as in live-cast discussion on the Internet, and these media inform this study, to a large extent. The field of study is contemporary and fluid, and much of the debate is happening at the present moment. Therefore, many of the sources quoted below are non-academic.

The modern relationship between the media and aid agencies began with the Biafra Crisis of the late 1960s. Gourevitch attributes this directly to the coverage by the UK’s Sun newspaper, reporting a photographer’s work from the scene of the civil war. The reports and photographs of “stick-limbed, balloon-bellied, ancient-eyed... tiny, failing bodies of Biafra” (Gourevich 2010) struck an immediate chord with the public and the media, and led to Biafra becoming “the world’s first televised war”(Ibid). At the same time the world’s pre-eminent humanitarian aid organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, saw its international aid budget leap from a global US$ 500,000 per year to US $1.5 million a month for its Biafra operations alone. Other organizations, now household names, such as Caritas, Concern and Oxfam soon joined, and saw similar expansion.

There were limited humanitarian interventions in Cambodia in the late 1970s but the industry saw immense growth during the “Live Aid” phenomenon of the mid 1980s. Commentators like Ogrizek, 2007, claim that television exposed suffering in the poorer parts of the world to the West, opening a discussion in the public sphere which did not previously exist, as those affected had no access to the organs of the media. This is similar to a theme that underpins the writing of Suzanne Franks, 2013, in her analysis of the public response to the media’s portrayal of the Ethiopia Crisis.

The first decade of the 21st century shows the start of a deeper examination of the interdependence and interconnectedness of the two worlds. Ogrizek notes that both sides trade in misery – the media for a greater audience and aid organizations to provoke a financial reaction from donors. Former UK development minister Claire Short has described this as the “mutual parasitism of the media and the fundraiser” (Franks & Seaton, 2009), yet both media and humanitarian organizations agree that the responsibility for global development, for eradicating hunger and poverty, and preventing conflicts rests not with themselves but with Governments. “The truth is simple, NGOs should not exist” (on the decision of Medicins Sans Frontiers to stop taking funds to respond to the Asian Tsunami of 2005, believing it had received enough to do

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the work demanded of it) (Royal, 2005). This sentiment is true for the media too, according to Michael Buerk, whose seminal 1985 report from famine-hit Ethiopia inspired Band Aid and Live Aid (Burrell, 2014). This is starkly put by Franks and Seaton, 2009: “It is not our purpose to solve the world’s problems but to… inform a working democracy”.

2.2 The purpose of the media

This study seeks to establish the purpose of the media in reporting on disasters and crises, and how they uphold their role in the public sphere as vital contributors to the democratic process. The paper contends that journalists must not only report on the disasters, but also on the positive or negative impact made by all actors, including governments, parties to a conflict, local and international aid groups, affected communities, and the media themselves. McNair, 2011, notes that media must first be conduits of information; watching and monitoring societies and reporting what they see. They must have an educational role, interpreting and explaining the impacts of what is occurring to the affected society. Media must provide a platform upon which political debates take place, allowing public opinion to be formed, acting neutrally but ensuring that dissenting voices are heard. McNair argues that the media must give “publicity” to state institutions, using an interesting interpretation of that word, meaning holding governments (and in this case aid organizations too) to account.

Hall and the Glasgow Media Group’s views on the “structured relationship to power” can also be seen in relations between aid groups and media. The often-formulaic reportage from disasters can be attributed to Hall’s contention that “’news’ is the end product of a complex process which begins with a systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a socially constructed set of categories” (Hall, 1978). This point is taken up in the discussion section of this study, by a communications professional working for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The convenient narrative for what are often extremely complex emergencies is that poor people are affected by events beyond their control; benevolent westerners come to assist,; the media shows that money can solve problems; within days, when the death toll is known and stabilized, the caravan moves on.

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2.3 Dynamics, paradigms and paradoxes

This dynamic illustrates the aid/media paradigm, says Monica Kasics, in a Reuters/Oxford University study: “A mutual need and a mutual mistrust mark their complex interdependence. Either the audience is given simplistic donations stories which don’t give time or space to question the ‘how’, or the audience is confronted with sharp and increasingly polemical criticism of aid agencies. Neither of these two extreme attitudes helps to understand the complex situation on the ground” (Kalcsics, 2011)

The literature highlights many paradoxes. Media organizations, lacking funds, logistical means and personnel will take news material from aid agencies, who deploy media specialists alongside doctors and engineers in the first hours of emergency response (Cooper, 2011). This appears to trigger a loss of impartiality, and indeed a number of individual journalists and media organizations believe there is indeed a time to put impartiality aside, for ethical as well as practical reasons. Not all journalists would agree that “impartiality once lost cannot be recovered” (Franks and Seaton 2009). Media have long been actively providing technical and practical aid to local outlets during a disaster through so-called “media development organizations” to allow radio stations, television, newspapers to become aid actors themselves, providing disaster-affected audiences information on access to aid, as well as a platform to air their grievances. This forms the basis of the CDAC (Communicating with Disaster-Affected Communities) which is discussed later.

One cannot doubt the power of the media in provoking a humanitarian and political response, from Biafra to current crises in Syria, Sudan, and the Ebola-affected countries in West Africa. Former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali famously called CNN “the 16th member of the Security Council” (Gylboa, 2005). Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom chose to fly aid into Ethiopia in Hercules cargo planes against the advice of many in the aid world, and governments (and indeed aid agencies) still often opt for the dramatic over the pragmatic. This satisfies the 24-hour news cycle, salves consciences and provides employment for expatriate aid workers who themselves provide soundbites for domestic consumption and political justification, but all of that may not be in the best interest of the disaster victims. Orgizek (2008) suggests that true humanitarian aid and aid driven by media are mutually exclusive. Furthermore the aid industry’s Good

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Humanitarian Donorship Code states that agencies must “strive to ensure that funding of humanitarian action in new crises does not adversely affect the meeting of needs in ongoing crises” (Altinger, Hidalgo, & Lopes Claros, 2008). The dichotomy for philanthropists is similar to that of politicians – how to react to disasters without being seen to react out of self-interest, or under media pressure.

The relationship between media and aid organizations has come under the spotlight as both sides continue to stress their independence. The disconnect between established media and the aid agencies was further studied in a major report involving the Fritz Institute, Columbia University, Reuters and 54 major humanitarian organizations in 2004. It found that media training in covering disasters was, contrary to popular wisdom in the aid world, not generally needed as journalists were well informed and knew how to cover the story. In fact, it was the aid organizations that lacked the means to deliver information to the media, either through their own staff or via their corporate websites. (Ross,2004)

2004 was also the year of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, in which hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. It was the perfect mediatized disaster: the dramatic, cinematic catastrophe happened at Christmastime, in an idyllic tropical setting. Hundreds of European holiday-makers perished, and for the first time, mobile phone footage broke the news before international television crews arrived. Alongside the international media, hundreds of humanitarian agencies also poured into Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other affected countries, prompting an unparalleled crisis of coordination, which, after the initial reporting of the catastrophe itself, soon became headline news.

Up until the year 2005 humanitarian organizations placed emphasis on visibility, on attracting media coverage to the work they did in order to get funding. That year, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' published its annual World Disaster Report, entitled “Data or Dialogue?” It was compiled at a time of great flux in the media-aid nexus, in the wake of the 2004 Tsunami, after which media held humanitarians accountable as never before. It was also a time when coverage of disasters was beginning to be done by independent bloggers and freelance multimedia practitioners, who were more concerned with the welfare of affected communities than with ratings. (IFRC, Data or Dialogue? The Role of Information in Disasters, 2005).

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2.4 “Don’t Chase Headlines, Chase Good Quality News”

The aid industry, probably unintentionally, but certainly ill-advisedly, chose to adopt a paternalistic tone in 2008 when an interagency group called ALNAP (the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action) issued a “New Agenda for News Media and Humanitarian Aid”. It was provocatively titled “Don’t Chase Headlines, Chase Good Quality News… Don’t be First, be Accountable”. It called for increasing accountability from both sectors but was critical of the “flawed and simplistic narratives” and “media logic.” (ALNAP, 2008) This runs contrary to the earlier Fritz Institute report, and while it may have some merit, it was destined to antagonize the serious media which prided itself in understanding and reporting the complexities of international humanitarian crises (even though, as Franks, 2013, points out Buerk’s reporting of the Ethiopian crisis of 1984 was deliberately simplified for impact by the BBC.)

Media coverage of the aid response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake – ironically by the BBC – was – perhaps predictably, given the ALNAP report - intensely critical, resulting in turn in accusations of negativity and irresponsibility from senior figures within ALNAP (Mitchell, 2011). This marked something of a nadir in aid/media relations. It also coincided with technology leaving traditional media behind in covering the emergency. The micro-blogging site Twitter for the first time allowed aid workers, individuals, diaspora communities and others to communicate and share information outside of traditional media. An investigation into how communications worked in Haiti concluded that it was “a living laboratory for new applications” (Nelson, Sigal, & Zambrano, 2010). When aid workers can send SMS blasts to 100,000 people at once they may not need to invest to the same extent in their relationship with traditional media. (Humanitarian Practice Network, 2013)

2.5 The Humanitarian Communicators’ Code of Conduct

The research undertaken for this dissertation has revealed that there is only one (self-imposed) code of conduct generally agreed to by all aid organizations, and no other regulation - internal, official or otherwise - governing how they conduct their communications and advocacy work. There are many internal handbooks and training manuals for press officers working for humanitarian organizations, but none of these come close to regulation of public information

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activities. Nor is there any official complaints mechanism or means of censure or redress available to members of the public, peer aid organizations or beneficiaries who feel that responders have behaved in an unethical manner in their external communications or in how they have used the media. There are legal and moral codes governing fundraising, supply of food, impartiality of distribution and so on, and many of these are contained in the Sphere Project, 1998, the handbook of the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. This includes (as an annex, even in the 2011 edition) the only reference to how aid organizations should carry out their public relations activities.

The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, 1994, was originally co-signed by eight leading humanitarian organisations, representing the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response. It has ten points, the last of which deals with external communication. The original text, still offered on the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent’s website (IFRC, Code of Conduct) runs:

“In our information, publicity and advertising activities we shall recognize disaster victims as dignified human beings, not hopeless objects.”

The original complete text is found in an annex in the Sphere Project:

“Respect for the disaster victim as an equal partner in action should never be lost. In our public information we shall portray an objective image of the disaster situation where the capacities and aspirations of disaster victims are highlighted, and not just their vulnerabilities and fears. While we will cooperate with media in order to enhance public response, we will not allow internal or external demands for publicity to take precedence over the principal of maximising overall relief assistance. We will avoid competing with other disaster response agencies for media coverage in situations where such coverage may be to the detriment of the service provided to the beneficiaries or to the security of our staff or the beneficiaries.” (Sphere Project, 1998)

2.6 A Crowded Compassion Market

There is, in practice, intense competition for media coverage during disasters and during campaigns, “World Days”, anniversaries of disasters and more. The success or failure of Point 10 of the Code of Conduct would itself be an

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interesting study. The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has attempted to address the partisan nature of humanitarian communicators during disasters by establishing a “public information cluster” which is activated in “Level Three” emergencies – the UN classification for the most severe, large-scale humanitarian crises – such as the response to the Haiti earthquake of 2010, the Philippines super-typhoon of 2013 and the current conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic and South Sudan (OCHA). This is not a perfect solution, and has been criticised by field agencies for channelling all the media coverage through one spokesperson, and not sharing credit and access with non-UN agencies.

The points raised above may be addressed in a limited way at the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit which takes place in Istanbul in 2016. ALNAP, the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action is preparing a second “State of the Humanitarian System” report due for publication in July 2015. In its first report, issued in 2012, ALNAP, which, while involving media organizations such as BBC Media Action, gave scant attention to how aid organizations conduct their public communications in the media. The 100-page report, (ALNAP, 2012) makes only six mentions of media, and none of them in an analytical way.

A new phenomenon or trait in the aid industry is to attempt to run large-scale responses with the full involvement, in fact the lead role, given over to the host government, and “beneficiary led” response. A process generally known as “Communicating with Communities” “Humanitarian Communications” or “Communicating with Disaster-Affected Communities” has been instigated (and an organization known as the CDAC Network established) to ensure those affected by disaster can communicate with aid agencies, as well as receiving information on how to receive aid or protect themselves. This is an interesting development, as it builds on the success of social media, and allows aid organizations and beneficiary communities to communicate one-to-one, without the exclusive use of traditional media (press, TV, radio) as was heretofore the case. This has an impact on the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the media and aid organizations, unravelling it on one hand, while it is simultaneously reinforced on the other.

Tentative first steps are being taken by media foundations and humanitarian organizations to promote this new way of working, but they deserve more

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support. Initiatives such as First Response Radio, which aims to set up a radio station within 72 hours of a disaster should be getting more financial and logistical help from telecommunications and media companies – in fact pressure should be put on the networks to provide time and expertise to their local peers. (First Response Radio, 2015)

2.7 What Journalists Really Think

So far this study has concentrated on the literature available on how aid organizations communicate with the media, and this will be picked up again in the discussion section. There has not been much literature produced to date on how media organizations in general and journalists in particular, work with aid organizations. The challenges of getting news from disasters at a time of unprecedented cuts in budgets for foreign bureaus, the ubiquity of media, the “always on” nature of social media and the commercialization of news means that large disasters are covered as never before, but the quality of journalism may be suffering. Journalists, both on the desk and in the field, rely on aid organizations spokespersons as the voice of authority and few reports for the field are filed without an aid view. This has led to a sense of complacency, of a perception of entitlement, that the media are obliged to cover the story from the point of view of the relief organizations, a theme to which this paper will return.

Unsurprisingly, this unequal dynamic (the well-funded aid organization versus the over-stretched, under-funded reporter) has led to considerable strains in the relationship.

A 2015 report on journalists’ views of the aid industry (Magee, 2014) focussed on “The Aid Industry - What Journalists Really Think”. In it, 11 named journalists, and several other unnamed ones, gave a series of frank and candid interviews. Three non-governmental agencies also gave their views. The report was somewhat sensationalized upon its release, with selective quotes such as “Corporate, Patronising and Obstructive” finding their way into headlines (Guardian, 2015). However, the main findings, when objectively reviewed, reveal a deep understanding of a complex relationship, which is often carried out in the most chaotic and dangerous conditions imaginable:

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o Negative press has increased. This may be due to an “ideological antipathy” (ibid) towards overseas aid found in the right-wing press, but it is clearly based on growing concerns among people who have considerable knowledge of development issues.

o Overseas budgets, and the influence of NGOs, are increasing at a time of austerity.

o NGOs are too corporate, too competitive, and too self-absorbed, and have a too cosy relationship with the media.

o NGOs shy away from telling uncomfortable truths about their failures, and from debates about the fundamentals of development aid.

o “NGOs are stuck in a Victorian model which requires people to suffer and die to get on the front pages of newspapers, and the newspapers trigger public donations and that triggers political will”. Sean Lowrie, Start Network, in Magee, 2014)

o The aid industry may never convince the most hard-line critics in the media but they need to get better at explaining their work and accepting responsibility and criticism when things go wrong. (An interesting recommendation is for a fly-on-the-wall reality TV show set inside an aid organization.)

The reaction from the aid industry was mixed, but shows a clear line back to Galtung and Ruge. A Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) communications officer recalled that her organization had been advocating for more media coverage of the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa for a considerable time before the story became headline news. A critical moment which changed that was when Westerners started to get infected. (Madden, quoted in The Guardian Newspaper, 2015)

The media were also charged with painting too simplistic a picture, although the NGOs admitted that the blame for this may lie with the marketing of their own communications departments. A former representative of an influential donor, the UK’s Department for International Development, felt “International NGOs are not the only organisations to have a dysfunctional relationship with the media, but they can find themselves at the crossroads of a toxic mix of cynicism about politics and overseas aid. It is incumbent on them to change this through better strategic communications, and not to act like victims” (Darlington, ibid).

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2.8 Defining the News

One key question is whether journalists, or aid workers, are the primary definers of news, and the news access/source power paradigm. This question has been asked and opinions have been offered in bars and restaurants from Virginia to Vanuatu, and in various publications, and will again feature in the discussion section of this paper. An interesting approach was recently taken by the Frontline Club in London, which hosted a web-streamed discussion entitled “Embedding with Aid Agencies: Editorial Integrity and Security Risks” (Frontline, 2015). This was further reported and analysed both by comment on Twitter and on the former United Nations news agency IRIN (now an independent not-for-profit) in an article entitled “Aid Workers or Journalists: Who Should Report the News?” (Leigh, 2015).

With the cuts in foreign news budgets, financially empowered humanitarian organizations are taking it upon themselves to produce news reports, which can be wholly or partially broadcast, in much the same way as press releases have been used in the past, but with a greater degree of editorial control. The discussion at the Frontline Club, which itself became a news event, centred on the need for transparency and openness; with journalists being asked to be honest about their editorial intentions, and aid agencies to be frank about what access to the story they can offer, as well as respecting the integrity and independence of the media representatives.

A shift of paradigms is urgently needed from both sides and the establishment of the internet as the medium of choice for aid agencies to relay their messages offers an opportunity to do that, if they are brave enough. “While it appears that the internet has given NGOs more opportunity to peddle their wares and get their voices heard, these voices have been trained to deliver what mainstream media organizations are crying out for – news that conforms to established news criteria and provides journalistic copy at little or no cost. The line between the professional PR agency and the large-scale campaigning NGO has blurred into near extinction” (Fenton, 2010).

3 Methodology and Theoretical Framework

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3.1 Methodology

3.1.1 Justification

The original research question asks if the symbiotic relationship between media and aid agencies is unravelling. The overall topic stands up to the scrutiny posed by Wimmer’s eight questions (Wimmer and Dominick, 2012). It is sufficiently focused to allow study. It can – and to an extent has – been investigated and the results, while open to wide interpretation, can form the basis of conclusions. The topic is of relevance to several sectors, not only within the media and the aid world, but also to governments, groups and individuals that fund aid and to the communities who receive it. At the outset it was expected that the research would show tension and strain between both parties, and that the findings would be useful and applicable to media institutions and aid organizations.

There were no costs associated with the research as it took place within the author’s city of residence (Bangkok). A review of the traditional research methods and their respective strengths and weaknesses indicated that the methodology most appropriate to this dissertation would be a series of semi-structured interviews with significant personae in the media and the aid world, and with those who had a function which could be described as crossover.

3.1.2 The Candidates

The interviews were conducted in the main by Skype for ease of logistics and recording, although the informal conversations were conducted face to face with all subjects prior to the interview to ensure that the subject was understood and that the interviewees had time to internalise the questions and prepare for the interview. One interview was carried out face to face and another by email. It is not felt that this compromised the integrity of the interview process as all the subject are a) known to the interviewer; b) used to being interviewed, and c) direct observation of their physical responses to questioning was not an essential feature of the research.

The candidates were (in order of interview):

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o Oliver Lacey-Hall, Director, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Asia and the Pacific;

o Phil Robertson, Deputy Director, Human Rights Watch, Asia

o Thin Lei-Win, correspondent, ThomsonReuters Foundation

o Veronica Pedrosa, Correspondent, Al Jazeera

o Christopher de Bono, Regional Communications Chief, Unicef, Asia-Pacific

o Patrick Fuller, Regional Communications Manager, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Asia-Pacific Zone.

They were selected to represent a cross-section of authoritative expertise in journalism, disaster reporting, the views of the United Nations, of the world’s largest community-based humanitarian organisation, and a human rights perspective. An attempt has also been made to address gender and cultural balance, although it leans towards a Northern hemisphere perspective. The omission of voices from Africa and Latin America is acknowledged, and regretted. The interviewees were all based in Bangkok, Thailand, apart from Fuller who is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Lei-Win has since returned to her native country, Myanmar.

The questions for the interviews received ethical approval in August 2014. The interviewer met with all of the subjects prior to the interview and gave an outline of the topic of the dissertation. Interviews were conducted generally between one week and one month after the initial contact, depending on the availability of both parties.

3.1.3 The Questions

The questions were devised to “reveal or understand, rather than to measure or describe” (Mytton, 1999) and interviews generally lasted from 25 to 40 minutes, with, as mentioned, a prior scene-setting conversation taking place in the days or weeks leading up to the interview. The questions were not rigid and allowed for flexibility to explore related issues, or one particular area of expertise possessed by the subject. Consideration had been given to other research methods, such as surveys and participant observation, but the intention not to quantify the depth or otherwise of the mutual dependency between aid workers

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and the media, but rather to understand it from both sides. At the outset content analysis was briefly considered but following consultations with academic staff at University of Leicester it was decided that while this might reveal the degree of symbiosis it would not provide the needed analysis.

The questions were as follows:

Subject: The Symbiotic Relationship between Aid Agencies and the media.

Developing question: Is the long, cosy relationship between aid organizations and the media coming to an end as both try to assert their independence and transparency? Is this important, and what are the implications for both parties and for society at large? Are new models emerging, inside both worlds, which might accommodate the constructive symbiosis? (The same questions were asked, sometimes slightly rephrased, to media practitioners and to senior figures in the humanitarian aid community. Sometimes candidates answered two or three questions at once, and sometimes the responses provoked further questions).

1. What, in your opinion does each side gain from the relationship?2. How does each side guard its independence in the relationship?3. Is there a quid pro quo in aid/media transactions? Is this ever tacitly or

explicitly discussed between the parties?4. Does your organization have a written code of conduct covering this

aspect of your work?5. What is your opinion of the ethical behaviour of your industry, and of the

other?6. What is your opinion of the agencies (news or aid) with which you have

interacted?7. Is it ever permissible for money to change hands while a story is being

prepared?8. Does the lack of investment in traditional media make your job easier or

more difficult, with regard to aid/media relations?9. Do you believe media is more critical of aid organizations than in the

past? Why has this happened? Are aid agencies sufficiently accountable for their actions and how they spend public money?

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10.Describe the impact social media has had on your organization and interaction with the other, and compare it to the arrival of the “CNN factor” in the 1990s.

11.How do you see the relationship between the media and aid agencies evolving?

3.2 Theoretical Framework

3.2.1 The Public Sphere

Much of what appears in this study can be read in the framework of Habermas’ original conception of the public sphere as “a forum in which individual citizens can come together as a public and confer freely about matters of general interest” (Habermas, 1962, trans 1989). The relationship between the two groups being studied could justifiably be seen as elitist and with a privileged access to power and decision-makers. But the advent of social media is giving the public in gerneral better access to the public sphere, and enlarging it to make it more equitable. Not only can communities now learn about impending disasters before they strike, but they can also discuss and share mitigation strategies. It also allows them to enter the debate on how the aid they receive is being administered, and the very composition and appropriateness of that aid (IFRC 2005), (IRIN, Integrated Regional Information Networks 2012).

Although two independent groups are examined in this dissertation – journalists and aid workers – they have at heart a similar objective: to tell the story of emergency situations. Their ultimate objectives may differ: journalists would say that their purpose is to objectively report the situation, or to make a commentary on it, whereas the communications staff of an aid organization will say that they wish to highlight a situation in order to raise funds to allow their agencies to bring relief to suffering populations. Cynics will point out that the ultimate objective of both is money – most media are part of corporations who exist to turn a profit, and the humanitarian organizations have to raise enough money to fund their staff and operations. This aspect deserves some attention, before looking more deeply at news production theory.

3.2.2 Political Economy

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Political economy has been defined as “the study of social relations, particularly the power relations that influence the production and consumption of … communications resources” (Mosco, 2004). This study was interested to see how those creating and reporting on the story viewed disasters in the political economy of news production, as an intrinsic part of how humanitarian stories are covered. Many wars, famines, mass displacements, technological disasters, health emergencies and natural calamities fail to be reported, even though on paper they would seem to have as much merit as those that do make headlines. Moreover, the increasing consolidation of private ownership of news organizations makes it more difficult for the media to fulfil their primary role as watchdogs for a democratic society (McNair, 2011). Consolidation is only one facet; many media are part of large multinational corporations whose primary business is not news, but entertainment, banking or investment. This phenomenon, a by-product of the 1980s trend towards deregulation, has an inevitable impact on editorial integrity, selection of news items and the ability to be critical of corporate capitalism. Machin and Niblock (2006) draw on the work of theorists such as McChesney, Hollingsworth, Wasko, and Herman and Chomsky to illustrate that media owned by such multinationals tend to support conservative policies and view neo-capitalism as the natural way of things. Government involvement in conflict-related disasters such as Cambodia and East Timor struggles to get into the news agenda. War movies, produced by the same companies which own news channels, simplify, distort, and produce “shoot ‘em up” films which are often indistinguishable from video games, such as 20th Century Fox’s 2001 Black Hawk Down, a depiction of a US operation in war- and famine-wracked Somalia in 1993. Not only does this tell a narrative exclusively from one Government’s standpoint, it also removes the salient narrative that the Somalia crisis, like many others, was a humanitarian disaster built upon years of military aid from the superpowers, in a proxy war that ended rapidly, with no thought to the consequences. Furthermore, as media corporations are among the biggest and richest in the world, they have unique capacity to lobby and influence, both by their financial clout and their control over the means of transmission.

3.2.3 News Values, News Production

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Going back to the relationship between journalists and aid workers in the field it can be safely stated that both groups are involved in the production of news. The key here is how the news is selected and produced, and who defines it.

The oft-quoted adage “news is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising” is variously attributed to Randolph Hearst, Lord Northcliffe, George Orwell and others (no definitive source exists). It may not stand up to scrutiny in today’s news market, where what passes as news is thinly-veiled advertising, or reflective of the vested interests of the conglomerate that owns the media organ. In fact, the jaundiced definition offered by Corker, the hack journalist in Evelyn Waugh’s book Scoop rings truer today than ever: “News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead” (Waugh, 1943).

A more academically acceptable definition of news criteria was developed by Galtung and Ruge in the mid-1960s. The original criteria, which have been added to in the intervening years, were:

o Frequency, or how close a story happens to the moment of publication;

o Threshold: the level the event must reach in terms of scale for it to stand out;

o Proximity, how close the intended audience is to the story;

o Negativity, which covers aphorisms like “if it bleeds, it leads” and “good news is no news”;

o Predictability, or how the story is expected to unfold;

o Continuity, or how stories relate to the most important news of the moment;

o Composition: Balance, by region or type of story

o Personalization: when the person illustrates the news, a human interest story;

o Narritivization: Storyboarding the news, telling the news in the form of a narrative;

o Visual Imperative: The use of pictures, moving images or computer-generated graphics.

(Above adapted from Branston & Stafford, 2010)

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Placing Galtung and Ruge’s lens over natural and man-made disasters one can conclude that they are, indeed, news. But, this dissertation contends, news is not simply what the journalist reports, or perceives as news. Another point worth considering is the transactional value of news, rapidly blurring due to the advent of social media. Journalists, aid agencies and the audience are the new and emerging symbiosis.

In the 1980s, Hetherington said that “anything which threatens people’s peace, prosperity and well-being is news and likely to make headlines”, which gives as good a reason as any for why the media cover disasters (Hetherington, 1985). More recently, Whyte-Venables has used the work of psychologists and primatologists to postulate that news consumption is part of innate survival mechanisms, whereby people constantly monitor their environment for “risk signals” to their well-being or status (Whyte-Venables, 2012). Journalists, lobbyists and publicists can manipulate that risk of change – a strong example being the certain sections of the media’s reaction to the “war on terror” and how it affected the security of not only Moslem, but also Sikh and Hindu populations in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and others. These risk signals are used by aid agencies to highlight the plight of far-off groups following wars and disasters. It briefly became news earlier this year following the “Charlie Hebdo” killings, when the death of several journalists in Paris dominated the news, while a mass slaughter by the Boko Harem group in central Nigeria was comparatively unreported.

Patrick Fuller, Asia-Pacific Communications Manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says that humanitarian organizations are fully cognizant of “newsworthiness”, (Boyd, 1994) and in tune to what Galtung and Ruge refer to as the “unspoken values” of news. (Fuller,2015)

With ten years’ experience as a journalist, and 20 more as a communications manager for humanitarian organizations, Fuller is well placed to map out how communications professionals operate during emergencies. His methodology mirrors, almost exactly, what is described by Galtung and Ruge:

“You have to be agile and quick off the mark, you have to put your feet in the shoes of a journalist and think about what they want from an aid organization.

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That’s not just words about how bad the situation is on the ground, or platitudes that are more self-promotional than having any intrinsic news value.”

Fuller describes the “formulaic” news cycle around emergencies, and the part played by humanitarian actors: An initial 24-hour period where the reports are dominated by the event and scale, search and rescue efforts, and then a transition to the international response as aid starts to arrive along with humanitarian workers. After this honeymoon period - when the aid workers are the story - comes criticism, and difficult questions about why aid is slow arriving. This too, can be an opportunity for humanitarian communications professionals, notes Fuller: “the important thing is to think one step ahead, how the media move the story along and how you can anticipate their needs by giving them ideas and content.”

4. Discussion

4.1 The Symbiosis – Who really benefits?

At first sight, few would argue that the relationship between aid organizations is anything other than symbiotic. Taken from its Greek roots “living together” it implies a healthy coexistence, mutuality, where each side needs the other to survive. Of course this is not always the case, only when the aid agencies have something to say and when the media is looking for a story, or some extra information to embellish something that is already in preparation. Even in times of crisis media may overlook aid agencies in order to find the authentic or local experience, and aid organizations will shy away from media to protect victims from unneeded exposure which could place them in danger, to avoid political fallout, or when things go wrong.

A tempting description of the relationship is Commensalism, from the Medieval Latin concept of “sharing a table”. In this model, one party benefits while the other is not significantly harmed or helped. The relationship cannot be termed fully mutual, as there is a risk of harm to the aid organizations from negative press, but very little risk to media organizations from bad practices by the aid agencies. However, by refusing to share information, transport, footage and intelligence, the aid organizations can recuse themselves from a story, making the journalists’ job more difficult, and preventing a full picture emerging.

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4.2 Four Major Themes

Four major themes supporting the rationale of this paper emerged during this discussion, and are presented here in chapter form. There was near-unanimous agreement on the features of the core concept, that there is a symbiosis between the media and aid organizations, but divergent views on what the causes and effects may be, in the present as well as the medium and long-term.

Firstly, the lack of investment in traditional media is bad for news agencies and quality reporting of disaster response. This offers an opportunity to aid agencies to be primary definers of the news, but simultaneously impacts upon good journalism as an agent of accountability, which aid organizations say they desire (but that may itself be a platitude).

Secondly, both parties try to protect their independence as a) objective reporters of events and b) agents of disaster response. These aims are, however, rarely met in practice.

Third, Social Media’s impact is yet to be fully understood by either side but there is no doubt it is a big feature of the work of both parties during emergencies. Its reach and relevance is under question in certain contexts.

Finally, while the symbiosis may be unravelling in some respects, it is regenerating itself in other ways which have yet to fully eventuate.

4.2.1 Lack of Investment in Foreign Bureaus: Threat or Opportunity?

Over the past four decades investment in foreign news has declined, with staff cuts and bureau closures commonplace. UK and US media report respectively a 39 per cent and 53 per cent drop in foreign news coverage over the period (New Statesman, 2010), (American Journalism Review, 2011). The argument that this does not matter, that all the foreign news anyone could need is – literally - freely available over the internet does not hold up to scrutiny. Bill Keller, in a 2013 op ed for the International New York Times claims while news is more global, the consequence of the demise of the foreign correspondent is a reliance on young freelances, who work for less, have a higher (though not necessarily higher quality) output and will go to ever-more dangerous locations.

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“These are massive, massive numbers, not just belt-tightening for a short period,” says Thin Lei Win from ThomsonReuters, referring to bureau closures and lack of investment. “We are now increasingly reliant on aid agencies which I don’t think is good. I fear it will lead to another embed situation with aid agencies instead of the military.” For Unicef’ s de Bono, the cuts in spending on traditional media make getting the story out more difficult which has affected good journalism to the extent that – with a few notable exceptions - “what were once widely acknowledged media ethics are no longer possible for many journalists. Thanks Fox News!” At the same time, de Bono claims that traditional media are “far less important to us than in the past because of drastic changes in traditional media and the multitude of alternate public information sources that the public accesses. If we want traditional media to play a role in raising awareness and generating political will we need to understand that in this financial climate they need help to even get to the story. We need ways to provide that without creating a client relationship and also without wasting scarce donor money.”

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch says the lack of investment in journalism poses a significant problem. “We end up being depended on for more, as we are doing more investigative journalism. The second thing is that we end up with a lot more inexperienced journalists who either come out [to disasters] or are emailing from somewhere in the US or somewhere else. They’re doing a story but we have to spend a lot more time explaining it, and sometimes that’s worth the trade-off, sometimes not. If you’re a freelancer who’s making 200 dollars a story why would you spend three or four days on that, that’s insane. There is no way to survive. “ Robertson concludes that the increased demand for content is incompatible with diminishing resources. “That expansion of choice means also that advertising revenues and other things that used to support journalism have taken a knock.”

4.2.2 Guarding their independence and being accountable

Thin Lei Win believes that both parties in question are undergoing “a parallel existential crisis”. For the media, much of this stems from the lack of finance. “We are increasingly reliant on aid agencies” she notes. The media may have better access to disaster sites but this is contingent on the terms of “extremely

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secretive” humanitarian agencies who rebuff criticism with the attitude “we are doing all this good work so we should not be questioned,” according to Lei Win.

This point was echoed by Al Jazeera Correspondent Veronica Pedrosa, who felt that humanitarian organizations should “stop moaning” about negative press. “I think the days when aid agencies would get away with simply being seen as morally upright is enough to protect them from scandal within their ranks are gone. Her advice to aid organizations is “decide what you do and what you want in a sharper way. [Your] messages are a bit woolly: ‘we are wonderful and we mop up the blood off the floor when no one else will.”

Oliver Lacey-Hall, UNOCHA’s Asia-Pacific director welcomes the greater scrutiny that aid responses have been attracting in recent years. “Notwithstanding the fact that it makes me feel uncomfortable I think it is a good thing… but the media also has the habit of holding us to account for things we are not responsible for.” He points out that the humanitarian agencies are criticised for not getting access to crises like Syria, when in reality, the conditions for delivering aid should be created by the parties to the conflict and all the member states of the United Nations. There is confusion about “who is responsible for humanitarian assistance, negotiating for neutral and impartial access. Our sense is that they get part of the story but they haven’t got the whole thing.”

Lacey-Hall recalls an incident shortly after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 when the aid effort was vehemently criticised in the press. As early as a week after the quake influential media were calling the response “chaotic, devastating and anything but coordinated” (The Lancet, 2010) . In a harbinger of what was to come, the Lancet’s editorial continued “Politicians and the media make easy targets for criticism. But there is another group involved in disaster relief which has largely escaped public scrutiny – the aid sector… Polluted by the internal power politics and with the unsavoury characteristics seen in many big corporations, large aid agencies can be obsessed with raising money through their own appeal efforts. Marketing and branding have too high a profile” (Ibid).

However, Hall notes, the large daily meetings of “clusters” (sectorial mechanisms specifically designed to ensure coordination across health, water and sanitation, food, logistics etc.) also came in for criticism, when journalists observed dozens of people attending meetings in air-conditioned halls . “The

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media picks up on this kinds of stuff and says ‘oh there’s always a big mess’. Good coordination and good humanitarian response doesn’t make half as good a story as us screwing up.”

In disaster situations, the media response is generally governed by the “if it bleeds it leads” principle (Williams, 2012), also referred to as “body bag journalism” (Randolph, 1989). Lacey-Hall is critical of media treatment of disasters, citing a December 2014 cyclone (Hagupit) which appeared to be on course to hit the same area of the Philippines that had been devastated by typhoon Haiyan a year previously, but which lost strength and killed relatively few people. “BBC, CNN, they were all there, they were in there for the kill and the kill didn’t come”.

Patrick Fuller of the IFRC does not accept that coverage of disasters has been dumbed down but feels that the media may be more selective in how they invest in covering major calamities. “The wires agencies, the main broadcasters, they will all be there. CNN – and this is verbatim from the mouth of a senior producer – rarely move to a big disaster unless there are more than 100,000 people affected”. Other media are even increasing the resources they put into disaster coverage: “During typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines the Wall Street Journal deployed four correspondents from Beijing and further afield because they were interested in the most powerful cyclone we ever experienced. They were looking at it from a climate science point of view and not just a humanitarian one.”

On news values, Lacey-Hall also referenced the media’s blanket coverage of the “Charlie Hebdo” killings in France, when 11 people, most of them staff at a controversial satirical publication, were murdered, contrasting it with the paucity of coverage of a slaughter in Nigeria by the Boko Haram group in which some 3,000 people died. “Which story prevailed? France absolutely.” Again, this follows Galtung and Ruge’s proposition that proximity (either geographic or as a sense of common identity) will prevail. Human Right’s Watch’s Robinson is sceptical about the “unravelling symbiosis” proposition, claiming that the relationship is far more important to the aid organizations than to the media: Commensal, in fact. “Feeding children, helping migrants, supporting refugees: unless there is a really explosive story it’s considered somewhat mundane. A lot of the time the work of humanitarian agencies, on a day to day basis, is not that interesting to the media”

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He contends that “senior execs” at humanitarian agencies have unfounded fears of the media, unless there is “wasted resources or malfeasance. The media is not going in to do a hatchet job. I don’t see that kind of gung-ho, knives out kind of journalism going on. I think that journalists have interests in ensuring that their reports are credible and well done. He feels that aid agencies have to accept that “the good comes with the bad” and is critical of the “bigger agency culture; they are like a porcupine and want to be left alone to do their projects”. He has developed a different model of media relations, focussed on collaboration. There have been cases where the advocacy work of Human Rights Watch is deemed – by the organization itself - to be adequately covered by media: “if you had three or four journalists you trusted going in one way to do a particular story there’s no reason for us to tag along and do that. We decided not to report on [the riots between Buddhist and Moslem communities in central Myanmar/Burma in 2013] because Reuters, AP and AFP all sent in investigation teams so it made no sense for us to try to duplicate what they were already doing. ”

Human Rights Watch does not run humanitarian aid or disaster relief programmes, but uses its reports to advocate, when human rights abuses are committed. Robertson does not believe that the provision of ready-made reports for media constitutes a quid pro quo but rather a sensible way of ensuring wide coverage of their messaging. “We’re approaching them when we have something but the media is almost always, invariably interested… we’re relying on them for getting the word out but they’re relying on us most of the time for information and content.” Robinson admits that the decline of investigating reporting is an opportunity to “fill a niche”.

Pedrosa takes this one step further, saying humanitarian organizations run newsrooms. (Most aid organizations have “newsroom” sections on their websites, and employ several communications professionals, often on significantly higher salaries than those available to journalists with similar experience (Storify, 2015). “I would say that journalists [are the primary definers of news] because of their direct access to the technology that puts news out, but it’s not a zero sum game any more, it’s a pretty even landscape. I can define a story but so will the next person with Mashable or Buzzfeed or the IOM or the Red Cross … they are effectively newsrooms and there is no reason

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why one is more credible that the other, except for what we do is we stand by our stories.”

4.2.3 Social Media. Deep, profound and total?

“Deep. Profound. Total”. Such has been the impact of social media on the way humanitarian agencies tell their stories, according to Unicef’s Chris de Bono. He quantifies the impact as far bigger than the CNN factor of the early 1990s. “CNN changed a couple of markets and a few donor relations – but meant next to nothing in Sabah or Mongolia. Social media changed everything.”

Social media has certainly revolutionized many aspects of life for the 40 per cent of humanity that have access to the internet (ITU, 2013). However, there are differing opinions of how this affects interactions between journalists and the media. Three factors are at play:

o The ability of aid organizations to “virtually” connect with media across the globe, simultaneously, with short messages and posts which lead to, or entirely obviate, traditional press releases;

o The ability of aid organizations to connect directly with their target audiences, cutting out the intermediary or filtering role of the media;

o The ability of beneficiary groups to communicate as individuals or as groups with the media, with aid organizations, or with both.

A useful model of communication theory, illustrating social media’s characteristics is the “long tail” model espoused by Napoli. This theory propounds the disintegration of the mass audience, with a long tail evolving. Audience attention clusters around a head of the main options, followed by a tail composed of a multitude of options with small audiences. (Napoli, 2012). The long tail underpins the needs for a multi-platform, polysemic approach. The audience is multi-dimensional, as are the delivering media.

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Fig 1. Long tail communications model (www.designdamage.com)

This is illustrated by Oliver Lacey-Hall’s views on social media. He feels important global events are eclipsed by the latest news on Justin Bieber and Beyoncé (although this is muddied by the fact that Beyoncé Knowles was chosen to launch “World Humanitarian Day” in New York in 2012, using a social media device knows as a Thunderclap in an attempt to reach and interact with one billion people). (CNN, 2012)

“The world can operate now on messages of 140 characters, or a 45 second video… so getting the media interested in the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 is going to be an extremely hard sell,” he feels. In practical terms, before the advent of media like Twitter and Facebook, Hall says the UN media response to a major crisis would a be a twice-weekly press conference in New York where the Public Information Officer would address the media. Now the expectation is that Helen Clark and Valerie Amos [senior UN figures] are going to be tweeting, and we will be updating our Facebook ten times a day.” Hall questions whether this improves the quality of information, or the UN’s accountability. “There is certainly a lot more [United Nations news] that there used to be, but I am not sure that it’s added any intellectual rigor to what we produce.”

However, Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch knows that Social Media can break news. His organization’s emergencies director was caught in the midst of heavy conflict at the start of the ongoing troubles in the Central African Republic, and his activity on Twitter was quickly picked up by media, and then

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by the global political community. The large-scale intervention that followed, Robertson believes, stemmed from those early tweets, before international media or other advocates were on the ground. “I think it that case we were a media leader. We assessed that there was a major human rights crisis taking place and the media wasn’t covering it.”

This episode seems to clearly indicate that the humanitarian agencies are indeed the primary definers of news in grave humanitarian crises. But their performance in trying to force their way into the daily news agenda is suspect, according to Thin Lei Win. “We’ve done stories where we ask ‘really what exactly is the point and how are you going to measure this flashy new campaign?’ A lot of advocacy campaigns we look at and say ‘nah, that’s just PR’ and they [aid agencies] don’t like that, they don’t like being told that this idea of them wanting to have ‘text justice’ or whatever it is, is just flashy and nothing else”.

Her media colleague Veronica Pedrosa thinks the impact of social media on news in general, and specifically in the aid worker/journalist relationship has been that authority has been usurped by authenticity. “People are looking at the last tweet of the kid that got shot in Chapel Hill; they are not going to the North Carolina News.” Crucially, Pedrosa believe, core news values are still in place, although lack of investment is imperilling these values on a daily basis. “You may see one person in a newsroom who has been there for more than ten years and they are seen as financial burdens because of their seniority, but in fact they are trying to uphold the standards. That’s more important than the money.”

It seems that journalists are ensuring that in the new media age, they themselves will be the standard-bearers. A “Web Summit” held in Dublin in November 2014 expressed optimism about the appetite for hard news and foreign affairs among the so-called “millennials” who make up the most active demographic group on social media. (Guardian, 2014) Kevin Sutcliffe, head of news programming at the online news agency Vice News noted that “old-fashioned” journalistic values still held sway: “can I find out, is it true, can I stand by it”? And while social media is prone to abuse, social media, and the instant triangulation it offers, makes it the perfect “fact-checking desk” according to Storyful CEO Mark Little (Ibid).

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Despite Human Rights Watch’s success in bringing attention to the crisis in the Central African Republic, Asia Director Phil Robertson questions the value of the time spent investing in social media. “I do a fair amount of it but my view is that you are basically spreading information to people and you have no idea whether they are going to use it. Where Twitter is interesting is that you can establish yourself as a news leader.”

Patrick Fuller of the IFRC tends to agree. “The days of relying on the media to get the story out are long gone. Interest is very short-lived so social media has become mainstream, part of our core response. It gives us audiences and opportunities to communicate in quicker, faster and more efficient ways.”

In the end, as with all tools, it’s not their existence that is important, it is what they are used for. “Social media isn’t journalism,” says author and columnist C.J. Chivers. “It’s information. Journalism is what you do with it”. (Chivers,2013)

4.2.4 The Symbiosis. Unravelling, regenerating, or both?

Robertson believes that we will continue to see a growth in the long tail model. “It’s [currently] very dynamic and fluid. Media is going to become more diffused, with different outlets and options. Over a period of time, I think the UN agencies and the big NGOs will have an increasingly central role in finding information to sell the stories that need to be written up. People are going to move towards writing shallower stories that are not as in depth or investigative, and that’s a shame.”

For her part, Pedrosa foresees more engagement and less “operating in silos… the vision of the information landscape is still in formation.” She agrees that the lines are blurring between what constitutes an aid worker and what constitutes a journalist, with CNN correspondents performing first aid in Haiti, and aid workers doing “stand-ups” in the Philippines. “Cooperation is valuable for both sides but you have to be very smart and at some point say ‘stop, I can’t go any further than this’”.

There is, it seems, concurrence on a way forward. While journalists are reluctant to be coordinated, or be trained, seeing it as patronising and interfering, Oliver Lacey-Hall still believes that a lot can be achieved by demystifying the discussion: “going back to simpler times if you like and

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explaining how this money we are getting from these people is going to help these people”. This has to be balanced by “helping the journalistic community to understand the level of complexity that humanitarian organizations are now being asked to deal with in the absence of solid political processes, and the ability for political consensus to solve some of the humanitarian situations we are dealing with.”

Lacey-Hall proposes an ongoing, global and massive one on one with the media: “This is humanitarian action, this is how it works, this is how we understand our interaction with the media in times of crisis, outside of times of crisis. Journalists are aware and they are well trained. Their job is to get the story. Are there ways and means so they can get their story without it being a disaster?”

It would appear so. Thin Lei Win sees “idealistic journalists and idealistic aid workers” as different sides of the same equation. “We believe in rights, equality and justice.” Like Lacey-Hall, who says that the “current humanitarian model is running out of steam” (hence next year’s World Humanitarian Summit), Lei Win sees a new kind of media model, funded by philanthropists and foundations, emerging. “There’s been a push to raise the game because it’s become so saturated”. This new model will allow “some of us who actually want to do something great to strive for better stuff, improve our writing and our reporting – it forces us to re-evaluate and to do better”.

For Lei-Win it’s all about trust. Her message to the humanitarian industry is “talk to us. Seriously, talk to us. We don’t know who to trust; the only way you know who you can trust is when you start talking to people”.

These interviews show that the media is in a state of flux, with the advent of internet communications as significant a development as the arrival of cheap radio sets, but with the advantage of participatory, two-way communication. Media and humanitarian organizations have to seize the opportunities offered. It would appear that the media, so long the gatekeepers of access to the means of dissemination - and as such widely courted by the aid world - has lost the most. Mass media will always be important in terms of political access and spreading messages, but there are new and powerful tools in the hands of skilled “humanitarian communications” officers, who can, when strategic, bypass the press. The symbiosis is thus, unravelling, but may re-emerge, strengthened, in a new media landscape.

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5 Conclusions and recommendations

This paper set out to determine, from a political economy perspective, whether or not the lack of investment in traditional media has served to give aid organizations an edge in controlling messaging during disasters, often for reasons of financial gain, thus unravelling the symbiotic relationship that had existed for many years. At the same time, it examined the extent to which humanitarian agencies truly welcome journalistic criticism of their interventions as a form of accountability. It found that both sides are defensive when encountering criticism, while both see similar pros and cons in the advent of social media in their interaction.

Disaster reporting will become increasingly prevalent as the media is able to access almost-real-time footage and accounts of events almost anywhere in the world, as long as there is a mobile signal and/or internet. At the same time, budgetary restrictions may mean sending a film crew and reporters to cover a disaster may become proscriptive. This represents a solid opportunity to aid organizations to supply their videos, their photographs and their spokespersons to fill the 24/7 news cycle. It does however, unquestionably mean that the breadth of coverage will be limited. Again, this is not necessarily a negative: better quality journalists will provide better analysis and understanding, which may not always be to the aid organizations’ liking.

There is already evidence of tension in the perceived notion that many aid communicators are unseasoned, overpaid, and have unrealistic or unfair expectations of how “their” story should be covered. Aid organizations will have to ensure that the ease of access that they have to the media, and the content they generate, is high quality and has news value. If it is merely propaganda it will not be used. This would represent not only a missed opportunity, but would also mean letting down the communities they purport to serve: if the disaster disappears from the news agenda the political will and the donations needed to bring relief and sustainable solutions also disappear.

Journalists are victims of their own narrative. They often arrive at a disaster scene and expect there to be a fully-fledged relief operation up and running within days or even hours. As soon as one media representative starts to

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question the effectiveness of the aid effort it becomes de facto the story. Explanations by aid organization representatives are often seen as dry, self-serving or evasive. Because the visual suffering contrasts so sharply with the lack of immediate aid it is an easy story to tell. These are not the only times that the aid organizations shy from the spotlight. There was much embarrassment cause by the well-reported expensive apartments and lobster dinners in quake-wracked Port-au-Prince (Birrell, 2012).

On a more macro level, it is estimated that 40 per cent of the aid spent in Haiti went to pay the salaries of those handing it out. (Ibid). Exposing wastage like this, exploring different models, and encouraging debate is as vital to the humanitarian organizations as it is for the taxpayers and public that fund international aid operations.

While there are many umbrella organizations for NGOs, charities, International Organizations and the like, there is also intense competition among them for donor money, and this can be played out in disaster scenarios, particularly as agencies compete for media attention, in what has been described as the “competitive compassion market” (Kalcsics, 2011).

Tension between the media and the humanitarian world is essential for good reporting and honest coverage to survive. However, the predictable (though obviously effective) model described by Fuller could be improved in the interests of better quality journalism and better humanitarian communications.

New media has cut communications costs for both sides in the equation. At the same time, a new party has emerged and is able to speak for itself – the affected population. That population also contains journalists, and their infrastructure is as important to their communities as the schools, hospitals and workplaces that get destroyed by earthquakes, wars and storms. Similarly, the voices of local journalists are often only heard in the first few hours, before the star journalists land. The audience is already tired of perfectly-coiffed and toned anchors, who generally have little understanding of the context, history and local community (Queerty, 2010). The practice subtly reinforces the white saviour mentality. The media training done by media foundations should be backed up by real commitment, from within the newsrooms, to let local journalists be the real “foreign” correspondents, and pay them accordingly, ensuring that the vast

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sums spent on air tickets and hotel bills instead go towards nurturing talent and get spent within the community.

The same holds true for aid workers. While there are many people who work their way up the ranks from developing countries, and often go on to lead aid organizations, the aid communications sector, inexplicably, lags behind. While the capacity in local NGOs to provide spokespersons and media experts for major media outlets is perhaps currently underdeveloped, it is inexcusable that for many, the main go-to point for the media in hubs such as Bangkok, Nairobi, Delhi, Beijing, Johannesburg – and even New York and Geneva – are Caucasians. Thus the public dialogue tends to be North-North, invalidating much of the raison d’etre of humanitarianism. There are cogent reasons for this – much of the funding for aid operations comes from richer nations, but even this dynamic is rapidly changing, with a significant share of aid organizations’ budgets coming from the likes of Turkey, South Korea and the Gulf states. (Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, 2013) Thin Lei Win’s appeal for a new dialogue “Talk to us, really talk” (op cit) is the way forward, but it needs to be a multidimensional, honest conversation, and take place at all levels. The Code of Conduct for Humanitarian Workers has one section - the last section - covering how disaster relief is marketed. It has remained unchanged in 20 years. For all the “lessons learnt’ papers that have been written since then, one practical step would be for that Code to get a makeover, with the participation of the media and the intended beneficiaries.

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