Director’s Blog

I asked the Polis Summer School students to finish their 12 day course by giving me a code for the road. Tell me, I said, what should be the guiding principles for journalism about people who are suffering or are from other countries. Here are the ideas from different groups of students  for some ethical guidelines. For what it’s worth, my suggestion was that ‘there must always be a local narrator of any story’. (more…)

The new CEO of Save The Children UK , Justin Forsyth has tweeted this appeal:

400,000 children face starvation in #Niger over the summer. Any ideas v welcome on how to get this hidden emergency some attention?

This was the subject for today’s session of the Polis Summer School,  looking at Representations of Suffering.

First, a lecture on how journalism portrays poverty, injustice and deprivation as well as emergencies such as the haiti Earthquake.

Then we had a very good guest speaker, Elizabeth Ford, from the Guardian Katine project who explained how they tried to bring complex African development issues to life through their multi-media platform.

Then I got the students to try to answer Justin’s question. They role-played as tabloid hacks, serious online journalists and NGO communications officers. (more…)

One of the functions of international reporting is supposed to be that journalists can warn the world of impending disasters. The idea is that intrepid hacks can spot looming conflicts or humanitarian catastrophes and help persuade governments or other agencies to intervene. In practice, this ain’t necessarily so. By it’s nature, news journalism tends to focus on what has happened, not what is coming up. And there is no doubt that pressures on resources make it harder for mainstream media to find time for that kind of analytical, predictive journalism.

So do we need a new special media body to do this? (more…)

An AP photographer snaps other photographers (AP)

It now appears that the Haiti Earthquake was a disaster on the scale of the 2004 Asian Tsunami in terms of loss of life. This is less important, of course, but it was/is also a media event on the same scale. But what questions does it raise about how journalism deals with humanitarian crises?  What’s changed in six years?

We are just starting to digest the lessons from Haiti, so I can only raise some questions. At Polis and elsewhere, researchers are sifting through the data and discussing the siginificance, but here are some tentative thoughts. I’d welcome any information on others who are looking at these issues and your thoughts on how we should be researching them.

1. Attention Surplus? (more…)

A view of the world

Travelling around New York City at the weekend with my two teenage boys was a reminder of just how globalised our culture has become with shops, music and even art looking distinctly familiar to my young Londoners.

An all-day seminar today on world media seemed to suggest that global journalism has some trans-national trends, too. But as ever, look closer and the cracks appear. (more…)

Haiti pic from @firesideint

Across the world editors in TV studios and newspaper offices are looking for something else to lead on apart from Haiti. I know, I’ve been there. It’s the biggest story in the world, but it’s been around for a few days and it is starting to fit into the pattern of all disaster stories. If we want the viewers/reader/listener to pay attention we’re going to have to headline something without the words ‘Haiti’ ‘Aid’ or ‘Death’.

So the big US TV networks will be the first to leave, while everyone else will scale down their presence and perhaps rely on the agencies. The story will slip down the running order or the page. This is how news works and it’s not wrong. (more…)

We have all got to stop believing in the Monkey Myth of the Internet and Democracy, according to Evgeny Morozov, speaking at  Polis. By this he means that the current wishful thinking is that the Internet works like the monkey and the typewriter. Leave it alone to bash away and probability theory says that eventually it will write out the complete works of Shakespeare.

Evgeny was talking primarily about how digital optimists think that somehow, naturally, inevitably, the Internet will bring democracy to authoritarian regimes like China, Iran and Russia. But his argument can also apply to hopes for E-Democracy in liberal states, too. (more…)

Here are my notes from a session of a symposium hosted by the Red Cross on how humanitarian crises are mediated by journalism. This session is called Communicating With Disaster Affected Communities. [Previous session is reported here]

Jon Bugge Save The Children

We talk about giving people a voice but it can be a bit scary for an NGO to do that. New Media is a wonderful tool but we should also think about the simple steps to giving people more control over their communications. (more…)

Here are my notes from a symposium hosted by the Red Cross on how humanitarian crises are mediated by journalism. This session asked Can Media Stop Disasters Happening?

Bruna Seu (Birkbeck) is working on a research project next year with Polis and other colleagues here at LSE. She is social psychologist who looks at how people respond to media coverage of disasters and conflict. (more…)