Transcript The News Media and Humanitarian Aid: from Biafra to Cyclone Nargis Jonathan Benthall

The News Media and
Humanitarian Aid: from
Biafra to Cyclone Nargis
Jonathan Benthall
23rd ALNAP Biannual Meeting
4th June 2008
Back in history…
 The Crimean war
 NGO origins in stirring opinion against
blockades
Save the children – east Europeans – WW1
 Oxfam – Greece – WW2

 Some turning points in late 20th century

Biafra 1967-70
 Cambodia 1979-80
 Ethiopia and live aid 1984-5
 Armenian earthquake 1988
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The ‘New World Information Order’
 UNESCO sponsored debate in 1970-80s
 MacBride Report



Aim: to make flow of news more equitable
Criticized by USA and UK as attacking press
freedom and passing control to dictatorial
governments - Dead by mid-1980s
Probably rightly because of lack of free press in most
countries served by humanitarian agencies
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Media trends in early 1990s
 Growing dominance of TV and reduction of time-lags
 Media studies
 McLuhan, Raymond Williams, John Fiske
 ‘Infotainment’
 Narrative structure of disaster news – the ‘folk tale’
 ‘Crisis of representation’
 Edward Said, John Berger …
 Third World as paradoxically both exoticized and
disvalued (‘feminized’)
 Launching of IBT
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NGO trends in early 1990s
High pressure marketing
 Intensified
by Oxfam, Christian Aid, World
Vision, MSF …
Less reverent approach
 Self-criticism
 Serious
research begins in late 1980s but still
sparse
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Changes since early 1990s…
Explosion of research on NGOs
Rhetoric of humanitarianism explicitly
borrowed by governments
 ‘Humanitarian
war’
Changes in the Islamic world
 Al-Jazeera
 Islamic
NGOs
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…changes since the early 90s
 Steps taken to counteract the standard
narrative (e.g. Channel Four ‘Unreported
World’) but decline of serious documentary
at peak viewing times
 New technologies
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Have things really changed?
 Large scale disasters still fall off the media map
 Somalia,
Congo today
 Publicity does not necessarily generate remedial
action
 Rwanda,
Cyclone Nargis
 Permanent tension between fund-raising and
operations
 Humanitarian aid as basically conservative?
 Fundamentals little different?
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Towards a political economy of the
disaster/media/relief nexus
 Need for a dispassionate approach but sensitive
to the ethics of speaking about the suffering of
others

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
Necessary analysis of medical and hospital services should
not be taken as disparaging the motives of doctors and
nurses
Aid workers, journalists, academics live on disasters – but
so do medics on disease
Danger of over-sacralization of NGOs (cf. Catholic Church?)
 Who controls the channels of aid?
 Disaster as an export commodity
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The exports of poor countries
‘Goods’
 Primary
materials
 Cheap manufacture
‘Services’ – ‘Invisible’ but visual-media-led:
 Tourism
- the seductive, exotic body and scenes of
pleasure
 The disaster-struck body and scenes of devastation
(Giorgio Agamben: ‘bare life’)
Autarkies
 Would-be
self-sufficient States
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The banana industry…
 20% of world production exported
 Coexistence of small and large producers
 Risks

Storms, pests, funguses – environmental impact
 Dominance of multinational companies and
supermarkets
 Most of profits come from transport,
ripening, retail
 Commercial conflict between EU and USA
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…the banana industry
Marketing
classification of shapes and sizes
specialized markets: organic, fair trade,
‘ethnic’ (red, baby, plantains etc.)
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Likewise disasters as exports
 Control of the channels of:
 information TO the North - and aid FROM the North
 Media in symbiosis with NGOs
 Marketing and competition between intermediaries
 International regulation and political manipulation
 Unpredictable shifts in modes of consumption (the
caprice of donors)
 BUT bananas and coffee have very limited security
and military implications…
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Big changes to come?
 Rise of China, India…….
 As
media powers?
 As new humanitarian donors? But not yet
 Military humanitarian programmes
 Neglected?
Hardly appear in the extensive
evaluations of Indian Ocean tsunami relief
 Private sector
 Venture
philanthropy
 Corporate Social Responsibility programmes
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Solutions?
Back to the UNESCO debates of the 1970-80s?
A New World Information Order favouring the
South?
But incorporating democratic principles? As articulated
in the Internet?
But politics of the Internet invisible to general public
US research* suggests all new communications
technologies are greeted as liberating – then follows a
period of disillusion.
*Dean, J., Jon W. Anderson & G. Lovink, eds. ‘Reformatting politics:
information technology and global civil society’, Routledge 2006.
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In conclusion
 Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine:
 Overblown
argument but makes valid point that
disasters (man-made or natural) are opportunities for
 either peace-building (e.g. Aceh)
 or imposition of draconian regimes, extended state of
emergency.
 Duties of media and NGOs when interacting
with traumatized populations.
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