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Is Anyone Listening? by Anne Winter
Table of Contents
PRINCIPAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR THE PUBLIC
As public opinion surveys have themselves confirmed, the sources of negative images of the developing world held by the public in industrialized countries are mainly the mass media--in particular television--and, ironically, the mass communications of the development and humanitarian agencies.
The Mass media
Reporting on Developing countries: the traditional constraints The attention paid in particular to emergency situations over the years has led to periodic reviews of the images of the developing world perpetuated through the international media. Many of these studies were prompted by the 1984-85 emergency in Ethiopia. At that time, an analysis undertaken in Belgium of 450 articles written about Africa showed that only one gave the slightest hint that there were intellectuals on the continent capable of reflecting upon their own situation.24 In Germany, of some 200 illustrated articles on Africa scanned over six months, 140 featured photos of efforts by Germans to help Africans: the Western 'angels of mercy' saving Africa from disaster.25 More recent studies have continued to corroborate these biases in media coverage. An in-depth research project undertaken in 1992 in France26 showed that the most common attributes used by the French media to describe the developing world were, in descending order of importance: incompetence, misery, aid/assistance, dependence, and corruption. To some extent the treatment of developing countries in the media simply reflects some of the broader limitations and organizational constraints under which the media operate. The international media are, of course, primarily a business. whether publicly or privately owned, the name of the game is attracting audiences, and it is the size of audiences rather than the qualitative impact of messages on them that are of primary interest. The dominant international media culture is one of consumer satisfaction as an end in itself, rather than any expectations of attitudinal or behavioural change; hence the importance of form and presentation over content, an apparent conformity and conservatism, and emphasis on celebrities and fame, independently of knowledge or achievement. The trend towards decentralization of the media may have further exacerbated this situation. In a country such as the United Kingdom, with a population of some 60 million people, a quiz show or soap opera will attract audiences of 18-20 million, whereas a documentary will only reach some 800,000. As a result, a two-tier system of television is developing, with 'serious' issues falling off the mainstream broadcast agenda and relegated to less popular channels, watched by a well-educated elite. A recent report by the Third World & Environment Broadcasting Project in the UK, a consortium of some 50 non-governmental organizations,27 found that documentary output on international topics had fallen by 40% on the four main national television channels in five years. In 1993-94, the BBC's prime time coverage of documentaries on the developing world amounted to only 9.5 hours annually. Development, environment and human rights issues accounted for only 2% of all television current affairs coverage of these countries, while 46% of this coverage focused on conflict-related issues. Over the past 25 years there have of course also been tremendous changes in the relative influence of different media channels. In 1967, when the Biafra story broke, most of the publics in industrialized countries still received their news from newspapers and radio. By the time Amin and Buerk reported from Ethiopia in 1984, most people had come to rely on television for news. And today, television news programmes are the single major source of information about the developing world. Like other media, television conforms to certain predetermined and standardized formats, both in terms of the content of each type of programme, and in terms of set ideas among media professionals concerning audience expectation and interest. In the case of television news and documentaries, there is characteristically a bias towards unusual, sudden and dramatic events--indeed, in general, the more events depart from normal reality, the more newsworthy they are. In addition, news reporting tends to feature issues that are culturally close or politically relevant to home audiences. This means there is an inherent tendency for news not to deal with many of the issues development agencies would want to promote, such as news about countries perceived by the mainstream media as geographically or politically remote or unimportant, long-term processes of social and economic change, and positive achievements and 'good news.' The reluctance of media professionals to cover issues in the developing world has been influenced by a number of other factors: the restrictions imposed on journalists by many governments; the relative difficulty and cost of access; and a common perception of lack of popular demand for the material, which has led to the demise of the foreign correspondent. As a result, serious regular international news coverage has been replaced by a fire brigade approach as journalists are sent out just to cover the big stories. This is compounded by a growing reliance on pooled materials and a broad tendency to use the same images and dispatches in news reporting worldwide. The increasing trivialization of the media because of the influence of television has been a subject of concern to communication experts for some time. The world of television news has been called a 'peek-a-boo' world where an event pops into view for a moment and then vanishes.28 "Give us 22 minutes and we'll give you the world." Modern communication systems have tended to take information from its context. We know of things without knowing about them, without understanding their implications and background. As the relation between information and action becomes more and more abstract people feel increasingly impotent to respond in any meaningful way. When it comes to coverage of developing countries, this failure to place information in any meaningful context is all the more serious to the extent that most people in the industrialized world, as noted above, have very little knowledge, and even less first-hand knowledge, of the realities of developing societies. The media therefore has a correspondingly greater impact in shaping their overall attitudes, and the highly selective perspectives of the media are more likely to be construed as the whole truth than is the case on issues where a variety of sources of reference are readily available. In our own societies people know from their everyday experience that what appears on the news--rapes, crimes, child abuse--is not the norm but the exception. When it comes to the developing world, most of the public in the industrialized countries has no equivalent sense of the norm to set against the constant reporting of the sensational.
Implications of the changing media environment The advent of recent technological innovations such as real-time coverage may have exacerbated this state of affairs. As Ted Koppel of ABC News was recently quoted as saying, "Putting someone on air while an event is unfolding is clearly a technological tour-de-force, but it is an impediment, not an aid, to good journalism."29 No time to think, no time to analyze, and an even greater tendency to concentrate only on what is happening on camera, omitting the context and the explanations. The increasing dominance of satellite technology in international news reporting is creating further concerns about the influence of the medium itself on news content. A good CNN story is one that unfolds in front of the viewer's eyes: it must be happening live, it must provide good and vivid images, it must preferably be relatively easy to access and to film, and be on a subject to which American audiences can relate.30 Measured against these criteria, coverage of emergencies in the developing world will clearly take precedence over the less spectacular long-term development concerns. This reinforces the common perception in the public mind that the emergency situation in developing countries is the normal state of affairs. The sheer power and influence of this medium means editorial decisions about coverage, based on the above criteria, will to a certain extent influence the political agendas of governments. George Bush was once quoted as saying that he learned "more from CNN than from the CIA."31 The Rwanda crisis only became an international priority once the satellite dishes were installed. If CNN and others like it decide not to cover the conflict in, say, Angola, this country may fall off the world map. So, while these companies cannot be blamed for choosing the material that is best suited to their medium, the consequences of these decisions on political priorities and public opinion can be far-reaching. Paradoxically, then, at a time when media outlets are proliferating and television production is becoming decentralized--which should result in an explosion of sources of information--both the quality and the quantity of media reporting on development and international issues is going down in many countries. Paradoxically again, while it could be said that consumer access to information has dramatically improved worldwide, there is increasing concern about the domination of coverage by a few, to the exclusion of poorer media outlets and poorer countries. This concentration has been encouraged by the high cost of technological innovation and the potential size of the current mass communication market.
Aid Agencies and the media: a disconcerting complicity? Aid agencies, then, complain of the decline in media, and especially television, coverage of international issues, particularly during prime time, and of media preoccupation with emergency and extreme situations. For their part, journalists often deplore the lack of understanding on the part of aid agencies of the role of the mass media and how they function. Increasingly controversial, however, in both aid agencies and the media are questions related to how the two parties interact. Criticisms voiced on both sides reach their zenith at times of major emergencies, when the differing roles and requirements of the two are most in evidence, but their interdependence is also at its peak. As Tim Weaver recently said: "The aid agency should be concerned with delivering aid, and the news agency should be reporting on what is happening. Yet nowadays the two tend to be blurred. The aid agencies are the news and the news becomes a charity appeal."32 Aid agencies need the media to obtain public visibility for their causes, their operations, and to raise funds. On the other hand, inexperienced relief workers and 'spotty young doctors' are treated as experts by even more ignorant reporters parachuted in for the event,33 who themselves depend on the agencies for their knowledge of local conditions, their contacts, transport, and even, in some cases, for accommodation, security and assistance in filing their stories. An unhealthy tit-for-tat develops when reporters cater to aid agency expectations of coverage for their own operations, while aid workers assist reporters in identifying the dramatic stories they need for their publics back home, reinforcing the latter's existing prejudices and the most negative aspects of the situation. Local interpretations of local situations remain largely unreported, as does any analysis of the causes of the crisis and of the politics involved. These are aspects from which both the agencies and the media tend to shy away: the agencies for fear of rubbing the governments the wrong way and ultimately being forced to leave the country, the journalists under pressure from editors back home. As one top international television news reporter in Rwanda was ordered down the satellite phone: "Stop the bloody cackle about the analysis, get up in the f- - - ing helicopter. We want the aerial shots."34 Seeing is believing. Or is it?
Agency Communications An article published in Forbes magazine in April 1986 criticized the American branch of the Save the Children Fund for allegedly publishing misleading advertisements: "Is a little deception okay for a worthy cause?" ran the headline.35 In theory, at least, aid agencies should be able to give a much more sophisticated and complex picture of developing countries than that given by much of the media, if only because aid workers enter into the daily lives of people and develop contacts over relatively longer periods of time. However, some major constraints under which agencies operate can serve to distort this information. The primary issues of contention revolve around the use of imagery and messages that are seen to be incoherent with relationships forged in the field or with the ethics and overall goals of development: messages that tend to reinforce dominant public perceptions in the industrialized world that developing countries are more or less exclusively areas of extreme deprivation and poverty; messages that imply that disasters and famines can be eliminated if people in the industrialized world give enough money; messages that exaggerate the role of aid in social and economic development; messages that reinforce paternalistic and even racist attitudes towards nationals of developing countries--by, for example, portraying them systematically as passive victims; messages that tend to promote a charity-oriented approach and bring pressure to respond to short-term humanitarian objectives rather than to underlying problems. In recent years, aid agencies have become increasingly sensitive to these issues and to the contradictions they themselves may be perpetuating through their own communications--an ambiguity that is most apparent in the conflicts between the educational role that many agencies have adopted and the pressures dictated by the need to promote agency activities and to raise funds.
Aid agencies in the industrialized countries: fundraisers or educators? Within the context of their activities as public educators and providers of information, aid agencies have sought to rectify the distorted perceptions of the developing world prevalent in many of their publics, as well as to challenge the complacency fostered through years of dominance of Western culture and its pretensions to universality. As fundraisers, on the other hand, agencies have largely resorted to portraying developing societies as nations in need, in order to gain the necessary support for their assistance work. Put very simply, those concerned with agency promotion and fundraising will tend to emphasize, even exaggerate, the importance of aid in solving the problems of developing countries, and to cast their particular organization as the leading character on the development stage. Educators for their part will tend to insist on the fact that ultimately aid is not the solution and that more radical changes are required if the real issues are to be resolved. Fundraisers tend to portray Africans and Asians as people in need, in order to justify the donor's contribution to help them; educators are trying to challenge prevalent images of people in developing countries as dependent and in some way inferior. Fundraisers will tend to emphasize that people in the donor countries should give more, while educators say that they should take less. Fundraisers will tend to portray underdevelopment as a financial issue that everyone can help resolve through the relatively 'easy' means of monetary contributions, whereas in development education it is informed opinion and committed action that is sought. More recently, in times of economic constraint, the problem has been exacerbated by the adoption of more aggressive public relations and fundraising strategies. Agency promotion has received even greater attention and priority in an increasingly competitive environment, and increased interest in commercial marketing techniques has resulted in mass audiences being solicited to make donations. This more calculated approach has been, broadly speaking, very successful in terms of monetary gain. So, why the objections? In the first instance, the part that should be played by individual generosity in the struggle for development is itself controversial. Just as, for example, the labour movement brought about improvement in the economic and social status of workers in industrialized countries earlier this century, so it is argued that the problems of developing countries require the active pursuit of political solutions in both industrialized and developing countries rather than individual acts of charity. While there are merits in involving the public through voluntary donations, this should not, the argument goes, divert agencies from their more fundamental mission: forming world opinion and promoting other forms of active participation in the processes of social change. Secondly, some would say that the very success of the more commercial methods poses a dilemma, and that the most dangerous images are often ironically those that have the greatest impact. As the reality evolves, there is a reluctance to abandon successful images in favour of others which, although more accurate, run the risk of being unfamiliar or controversial. Publicity is dominated by the search for instant appeal to an audience. This often translates as catering to prevailing attitudes, and, more problematically, to prejudices, rather than changing them. Thirdly, these methods tend to require very succinct forms of communication. The pressures to simplify leave little room for elaborating on any of the intricacies of the subject of development. When this is coupled with an overriding concern for immediate impact--to which the portrayal of reality is necessarily subordinated--it is easy to see how the use of hard-hitting sales techniques has served to crystallize, and indeed polarize, positions in the education vs fundraising dispute. A few examples of the kinds of publicity messages regularly produced by aid agencies will illustrate briefly some of these points.
Although inspired by good intentions, we are reminded by these few examples that many of the mass communications of aid agencies-- those that reach the greatest number of people: the publicity, the direct mail appeals, the television spots, but also many of the messages that are conveyed through the media--unwittingly reinforce the very prejudices and stereotypes that must be challenged if a sustained public interest in global development concerns is to be created. Traditionally, the choice of images used by agencies in promotional materials was largely guided by assumptions about the 'response' or 'emotional pull' different messages or pictures might have. But images of unmitigated want or suffering were often seen to perpetuate negative notions about the chronic dependence and helplessness of certain groups of people. They also foster attitudes that are inconsistent with egalitarian and educationalist views--and, of course, in contradiction with the long-term aims and philosophy of development organizations.
Ethics and effectiveness To better assess the interests and motivations of the general public as well as the obstacles to their support of development concerns, UNICEF recently worked on a pilot project with the University of Loughborough in the United Kingdom.37 The project aimed to examine how fundraising among private individuals would be affected by different types of images, and to consider the potential impact on support for the organization of greater emphasis on long-term development issues and on a more pedagogical approach in mass communications, as opposed to highlighting needs and suffering. People from across the social spectrum--from the manual worker to business and professional social categories--were asked to react to a number of typical UNICEF photographs. This would help explain how people think about need and development in the developing world, and establish whether the use of specific photos in appeals would make them want to give money to the organization. The research project highlighted the complexity of public attitudes to international aid. It also came up with some interesting and encouraging findings. Most importantly, perhaps, it showed that images that evoke feelings of pity, while likely to appeal to people in the manual worker social category, provoked very mixed reactions among the professional and business groups. Here, pity was frequently seen as an unacceptable reason to support people in other countries. Still, this did not preclude a spontaneous response to images of suffering on an emotional level. When shown a photograph of two emaciated children, comments from professional and business group respondents were wide-ranging. Some rejected the use of these photos in agency appeals because they were thought to represent a deliberate attempt to play on people's emotions--an "emotional blackmail." There were remarks that the repeated use of such photos diminished their power to shock. Others mentioned an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. These respondents would tend to avoid looking at such images because they created feelings of frustration that they could do little about. In some cases there was also an awareness that these kinds of photos were degrading for the people concerned. Some respondents, when shown another photo of children queuing for food, said it might help raise money, since it showed people receiving help. But this comment was outweighed by others that the children in the picture had "lost their dignity" and that the image was "patronizing." To the better-educated sections of the population sample, raw images of need and suffering were seen to be frequently counterproductive; they even actively hindered the establishment of a long-term commitment by them to support international aid. In UNICEF, as in many other agencies, the issues of ethics and effectiveness have been debated at length. A number of agencies have gone still further, drawing up codes of conduct for agency communications or lists of do's and don'ts when choosing photos for agency materials. These efforts have met with varying degress of success. But there is clearly a need for innovative and creative ways of presenting global issues to different publics, if aid agencies are to create a new public ethos around their concerns, and if they are to retain the respect of those they are endeavouring to assist.
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