The BBC World Service’s coverage of humanitarian crises
By Max Slaughter (@maxslaughter). Mainstream news organisations are regularly criticised for either under-reporting or completely omitting humanitarian crises from their coverage. Research recently published by Care International showed that 1/3 of people in need of aid in 2017 received only 2.5% of media coverage. In order to investigate these criticisms further, we have been analysing […]
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Book Review: Caring in Crisis? Humanitarianism, the Public and NGOs
By Martin Scott (@martinscott2010). According to United Nations, the world is currently experiencing the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War, with more than 20 million people facing starvation and famine. Given this, how do non-affected publics respond to images and information about such suffering and what shapes these responses? Whilst […]
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Why Humanosphere’s hibernation matters – and what we can do about it
By Martin Scott (@martinscott2010). Originally published on: www.humanosphere.org. On 1st July, Humanosphere is taking a break – possibly never to return. Since 2010, they have been reporting daily on global health, aid and development issues for both mainstream and ‘insider’ audiences. In recent years, Humanosphere had expanded its staff and scope, in part, to demonstrate […]
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How does donor funding influence humanitarian journalism?
This study strongly suggests that it is not just a simple case of the donor playing the tune that news organisations follow.
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What makes news humanitarian?
By Martin Scott (@martinscott2010). Originally published on: elpais.com. The dilemmas of reporting on suffering On April 4, horrible pictures of the suffering of victims of a chemical gas attack in Syria’s Idlib province seemingly moved US President Donald Trump to dramatically change his policy on Syria. Donald Trump himself claimed that, ‘the attack on children […]
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How do we decide which humanitarian crises are under-reported?
By Martin Scott (@martinscott2010). According to the World Food Program, more than 20 million people risk dying from starvation within six months, in four separate famines. But as long as news attention is focussed elsewhere, these crises are unlikely to receive the support they need. Just yesterday, the UNHCR reported that, two months into the […]
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Is humanitarian journalism in crisis?
By Martin Scott (@martinscott2010). In many ways, 2016 was a bad year for humanitarian journalism. It saw the closure of several key news organisations and significant redundancies at others. The most widely reported was the closure of Al Jazeera America in April. According to their board, their business model was, ‘simply not sustainable in light […]
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Max Slaughter
January 25, 2018
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