The role of the International Journalist in Human rights reporting

Peter Stothard asks the question as to whether International Journalism still serves human rights?

Writing in the Times he is about to speak

at a 'round table' on whether 'with forgotten wars and murdered reporters, international journalism still serves the cause of democracy and human rights'.

and concludes that

Sometimes international reporters have assuredly helped the cause of human rights. Sometimes they have not. My sense is that this pattern remains still true today.

Who should control international news?

Is there too much international news to consume?

Well,Charlie Beckett reports from the BBC festival of international news,where he says

it took veteran BBC hack Frank Gardner to suggest that perhaps there is a limit to the number of people who want to devour detailed reports and analysis from far flung corners of the globe.

The truth he adds

is that we have more international news than ever before. Thanks to new media we can also make it and access it by ourselves.

But surrounded by old media executives he felt that there was a reluctance to accept that foriegn news could be entrusted to the new media arguing that

the evidence from Iran at the moment is that freedom of expression is, indeed, a fragile bloom. But the greatest protection for global connectivity and trans-national communication is to enpower the people to participate.

Oxfam and Polis warn of the death of International news

I have just been reading Oxfam's report on Public sector braodcasting and international news.

Jointly published with IBT and POLIS , it warns

that international coverage is in danger of disappearing from the British TV screen in the next four years unless radical new measures are introduced by public service broadcasters and OFCOM

.

Written by former BBC executive Phil Harding it says

“The lack of creative commitment and the failure to translate promises about international coverage into meaningful actions means that British television is sleepwalking towards a global switch off. From the credit crunch to migration to climate change, understanding the world around us and the forces that shape it has never been more important. The tragedy is that no one denies the importance of international coverage but at the same time seems prepared to do something about it. This report is a wake up call to senior decision makers to act before it is too late.” and introduces a 10 point plan to rectify the situation

Just how long will Congo stay in the headlines?

Over at Untold stories(via FrontLine blog),Janeen Heath argues for keeping the news about Congo in the headlines.

It is an interesting point.The media coverage of the crisis has been particually good in the quality press in the UK and apart from the three days when we were saturated by the US elections coverage has been fairly comprehensive.

However she argues that

But space for international news coverage is really hard to come by these days. Just 5% of cable television's news hole is dedicated to international coverage; 9% for network television and 12% for newspapers (2007 Project for Excellence in Journalism). Soon, like most underreported international news stories, we will see Congo coverage beat out for other breaking news.

After all its only the end of 61 years of one party rule.

With the world focusing on the Olympics and Georgia

Another example of the Western Press' unwillingness to engage with issues outside of their comfort zone according to the New Statesman

Most of the Western media don’t do symbolism – or rather, can’t do symbolism. This was demonstrated by their reporting of the hugely symbolic assumption of the presidency of Paraguay last Friday by Fernando Lugo, former bishop of the poor diocese of San Pedro. Coverage was generally limp, grudging and dismissive of a ceremony of hemispheric significance, which should have presented any editor up to his job with a thrilling challenge. There were few or no such editors on duty on Friday. They are seldom on duty at all.

says Hugh O'Shaughnessy ,and adds,

Few of the subtleties of Lugo’s first day came over in the western media. The editors will doubtless point out that that the Olympic Games were in progress and that one of the presidential candidates was scratching his nose. Symbolic or not those, they say, were the sort of thrilling items we want to know about.

How the West should improve on Humanitarian reporting

Charlie Beckett is at Harvaad attending a discussion about the reporting of natural disasters.

He draws our attention to a paper by Susan Moeller who says

Surveys of US, UK and European journalists who cover natural and other crises have found that few use or even know about existing humanitarian crisis aggregating outlets such as Reuters’ AlertNet, OCHA’s ReliefWeb and ECHO’s site. These same surveys also identify that NGOs and governments are missing opportunities to reach media:

I must admit that I find it strange that journalists don'tmake better use of some of the rsources such as AlertNet from Reuters

It is an up to the minute portal which keeps one up to date with himanitarian problems throughout the world.

As I said in commenting on Charlie's link,maybe this is systematic of the media as a whole.Not wishing to get into a deep discussion on Western news values,there is a distinct lack of coverage outside of the "main events".Some areas of the world,notably Africa get scant attention from the Western media.

Local media should take the place of the International set

Local media should take advantage of the opportunities presented by the decline in the standing of the International media.

That's according to Peter Arnett former CNN correspondent.Delivering a lecture on 'Journalism in a globalised world - prospects and challenges' he delivered the speech in Accra last Wednesday.

Challenging the local media he said it should

endeavour to tell the people what they need to know but not what the international media say.
'You must not look up to the international media such as the CNN and BBC, because you can create your own emerging international media,'

Israel to counter inbuilt bias

(Via Roy Greenslade)

The Israeli media machine is on the march again

The Jeruselum Post is reporting that

A UK-based pro-Israel lobby will bring a delegation of senior journalists from major media outlets to Israel on Sunday.Fourteen editors and senior journalists will visit for six days - including senior editorial staff from the Times, Independent and Sun newspapers and broadcasters from the BBC and Sky News, in a trip organized by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) to show them events from Israel's point of view.

This no doubt is to counter what the Israeli's see as an inbuilt bias towards the Palestinian side.Lets hope that the Israel's alos allow the journalist to visit the occupied territories to provide the required balance.

Gilligan on Iraq reporting

I am hoping to go to the The first casualty? War, Truth and the Media Today, in London on Saturday.



One of the speakers is former BBC man Andrew Gilligan and the Press Gazette are currently cattying a piece by him on the reporting from Iraq.it is well worth a read.



I think his speach could be interesting based on this sample

We didn’t get it. We now know that almost everything the media reported about Iraq, before and during the war, was wrong. Not just the fabled WMD threat, not just the supposed links between Saddam and terror, but the claim that force had not been decided on; that it was about disarmament, not regime change; that the troops were properly equipped; that planning for the post-war was being undertaken.

Are papers fed up with the Iraq war?

Nice little piece that I have just read in the New Statesman this week by Brian Cathcart.

The news values that newspapers now have to adhere to, seem to have move the continuing story from Iraq from our papers. Brian describes the likely scenario at the editors conference.

Visualise the morning news conference at a daily paper, where, once again, the foreign editor informs his colleagues that there has been a heavy death toll inside Iraq. Somebody will pipe up: "Any Brits?" The answer will be no. Someone else will ask: "Is this a new peak?" The answer will again be no, since deaths are actually down from last year. And the discussion will swiftly move on to Hillary Clinton or the EU treaty or whatever is next on the foreign list.

For those who want to make sense of the World

The world tonight's Robin Lustig has starting blogging on world affairs

Check out his blog here to give a perspective on world events

According to his editor Alistair Burnett

The blog will focus on global affairs because we felt there was room for a forum to discuss the main trends and events in international affairs which is what The World Tonight does. However, my entries on this blog relate to stories covered in the programme and editorial issues arising from our coverage and your responses to them.
Robin's blog will discuss the issues themselves. Robin says this is where he will share his thoughts on world events and point readers in the direction of interesting comments he's heard or read.

The relevance of Galtung and Ruge

We are studying International Journalism currently in Semester One.

One of the topics is what governs the news values that drive the International Agenda.

Most criteria refer back to Galtung and Ruge's 1965 study which lists 12 values including

1.Frequency
2.Threshold
3.Unambiguity
4.Meaningfulness
5.Consonance
6.Unexpectedness
7.Continuity
8.Reference to unique nations
9.Reference to elite people
10.Composition
11.Personalisation
12.Negativity

How relevant a 40 year old study in an age when the multiplicity of media is so much greater is hard to ascertain

In 2003,Ethan Zuckerman looked at the coverage across the internet when Ethnic violence flared up in Congo and over 1000 people were killed in a single incident in a conflict that was estimated to have cost the lives of over 3 million people.

The events went almost unreported.Getting a brief mention in the New York Times.On the same day its front page was reporting Iraq and across the Web this topic had 550,000 mentions as opposed to the Congo which had 1200 in the month.

Gultang and Rouge could have predicted the results Zucherman argues saying that the event fit a number of criteria,that DRC is a non elite nation,its people are non elite,its culture is different from the West,and had little meaning for American readers and it was ongoing so more casualties could be expected.

The internet gives so much more opportunity to gather news data but other factors can come into play.In this situation,communication difficulties in an area of the world decimated by years of war have to come into play.

And perhaps another major factor was that the Iraq war was about to start and was using many available journalistic sources.

Zuchermann comes up with economic factors as being a major driver of news values.

When studying not only news sites but also weblogs where you may expect the proliferation of sources to involve wider topics,this was simply not the case.

In a telling part of the report,the author asks the question "does it matter".In the case of the Congolese it does because greater publicity means that Western governments become more aware and public outcry can force governments to intervene

Machin and Niblock last year questioned the values in today's media world

Machin and Niblock ask working journalists to reflect on their choices and find that the selection and presentation of news stories is increasingly influenced not by values inherent to the story but by the fast-paced nature of the newsroom and target audience

Others have suggested other criteria that drive those values.Gans suggests that as far as domestic stories are concerned,they can be valued by their

1.rank in government or other hierarchies
2.their impact on the nation and national interests.
3.Their impact on people
4.their significance for the past and the future

Other criteria have been identified as having a bearing have been,significance,drama surprise,sex,scandal and crime.

It was five years previously that Tony Harcup and Deirdre O'Neill tested the news values of the British press.The paper points out the shortcomings of the study,that it ignored day to day coverage of lesser events,and that their list of factors excluded those of the visual variety.More importantly certain stories get a lot of coverage without fitting any of their categories.

Harcup and O'Neill looked at 1276 articles that appeared in the British national press in March 1999 using the Telegraph,the Sun and the Mail.They claimed that unlike Galtung and Ruge thy tackled the assignment from the opposite perspective,that it had already been published so how was it chosen.They then attempted to fit the stories into the twelve categories.

It was interesting that since 1965,other criteria had appeared,being entertainment(,reference to picture opportunities,sex,animals,showbiz and TV and humour)and more tellingly campaigns promotions and agendas.

They concluded that the Galtung and Ruge factors no longer covered the majority of stories and came up with their 10 criteria

1.The power elite
2.Celebrity
3.Entertainment
4.Surprise
5.Bad news
6.Good news
7.Magnitude
8.Relevance
9.Follow up
10.The agenda of the newspaper

Burma off the agenda?

We are two weeks into our international journalism module at Uclan and an interesting question came up at this afternoon's seminar.

What has happened to the coverage of Burma in the last few days.Towards the end of last week,the coverage shifted from the country itslef to the report of the UN envoy to the security council.

However there have been reports filtering out of the country of monks being detained,bodies being found,concentration camps etc etc.

Yet this has received a small proportion of coverage compared to events earlier.

Why?

Well there could be a number of reasons.

1.The media has lost interest as live footage has dried up.
2.There are few reporters that can tell the story.
3.There have been better stories to cover,Iraq troops,Diana enquiry,non election.

I had a quick look around the national newspapers on the web today.The news focuses on the talks between the junta and Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Independent reported this last Thursday

The Burmese regime has stepped up its search for democracy activists in the aftermath of last week's demonstrations - rounding up suspected participants and dividing them into "passers-by", "those who watched", "those who clapped" and "those who joined in".
Patrolling the streets of Rangoon before dawn in trucks equipped with loudspeakers, troops broadcast a series of messages that warned: "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"

The Sunday Times ran this story

THE Burmese army has burnt an undetermined number of bodies at a crematorium sealed off by armed guards northeast of Rangoon over the past seven days, ensuring that the exact death toll in the recent pro-democracy protests will never be known.
The secret cremations have been reported by local people who have seen olive green trucks covered with tarpaulins rumbling through the area at night and watched smoke rising continuously from the furnace chimneys.

And this from the Telegraph

Thousands of monks, who played a leading role in pro-democracy demonstrations last week, have been disrobed and shackled by Burma's military junta and will be moved to prisons hundreds of miles from Rangoon, it was reported last night

BBC news last night ran a report on this story last night but the news networks have not given it the prominence it deserves.