How are humanitarian “emergencies” constructed in and through the mainstream
media?

February 2019

“Gripping still and video images; manageable access; breaking new chronic events; innocents, preferably children, who need to be rescued; substantial property destroyed; key security interests at stake; violence, scandal or corruption; even gee-whiz stories: These are the elements that command media coverage of disasters and crises, but there is no spreadsheet that can calculate the degree of the media to a story, even when these elements are present” (Moeller, 2016, p 184).

Michael Beurk’s 1984 report on the Ethiopian famine is considered one of the most famous reports on humanitarian crisis’ as “for a while it was the “biggest” story ever broadcast in terms of global audience and impact…” (Sambrook, 2015, p 53). This report eventually led to the rock concert, Live Aid, and so began the birth of humanitarian branding. However, this report is also the starting point of how mainstream media reporting of humanitarian emergencies has evolved, or was it? Questions were asked following Buerk’s report such as why wasn’t there more media attention of the famine much earlier? It seems however, almost 30 years later, that this issue of mainstream media is still prevalent. “But, worryingly, after the famine in east Africa in 2011, similar criticism of media interest coming too late was still being made” (Franks, 2014). So, humanitarian emergency reporting is recycling old habits, “not only has the problem of the media ignoring famine until it is a catastrophe and then simplifying the explanation recurred many times, but also some of the same abuses associated with resettlement are still taking place in Ethiopia” (Franks, 2014).

First, it is imperative that humanitarian emergency be defined before discussing how it is reported on. “A humanitarian emergency is an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area” (Humanitariancoalition.ca, n.d.). However,

“the nature and forms of humanitarian disasters in a globalising world are also fast changing – and becoming increasingly more complex. The crisis of ecology, economy, energy shortages and ideological enmity, for example, often converge in compound conflicts that extend across space, encompassing diverse people and places, and can unfold over extended periods of time or even become institutionalised and routinised into ‘permanent crisis’” (Cottle, 2015, p XI).

Mainstream media is the widely popularized media corporations with which the influence is a key factor as well as reflection of public interest and society. This essay will discuss how humanitarian emergencies are constructed in mainstream media by analysing past media reports of humanitarian emergencies, natural disaster/refugee reporting and reporting of war conflicts.

“In the thirty years since (Buerk’s report), much has changed in the way media approaches reporting humanitarian crisis – but much also remains the same” (Sambrook, 2015, p 54). Since “TV is the most-used platform for news nowadays by UK adults (79%), followed by the internet (64%), radio (44%) and newspapers (40%)” (Ofcom, 2018), mainstream internet news as well as TV news will be considered throughout this analysation. However, with the rise of online news consumption through avenues such as social media, the power of TV news has decreased, or in other words, “the power of the evening newscast is denuded” (Sambrook, 2015, p 54). “From the 1980s onwards there has been a relentless paring back of international resources by Western news organisations in the face of budget cuts forced by declining revenues, the need for investment in digital technology and the demands of corporate shareholders” (Sambrook, 2010). Further, with the rise of social media and internet usage as a key competitor for news consumption, perhaps mainstream media now does not cater for the interests of the general public. News corporations have also employed new tactics to aim content at their target audiences, “In the struggle to engage global audiences we have moved from objectivity, to empathy, to national voice, to ‘attitude’” (Sambrook, 2015, p 55). I would argue against this point however, as to suggest that this story of changing humanitarian journalism began with objectivity in Buerk’s original report can be disputed as, “accounts of television coverage of the famine suggest that the BBC film was originally selected on the basis of its visual appeal and shock value, that is, on the basis of aesthetic criteria” (Sorenson, 1991, p 224). I would argue that since the BBC waited until the disaster hit crisis point to report on this issue, “in reality, it was the culmination of a slow-onset disaster which had built up over a period of years and had been predicted long before mass starvation” (Sorenson, 1991, p 224). This, it could be argued is the opposite of objective journalism as Buerk’s report fails to report on the political context surrounding the famine or the events that led up to mass starvation. TV news is “a powerful communicator of events-but less effective at reporting process” (Sambrook, 2015, p 55). However, Richard Sambrook’s statement about moving towards “attitude” journalism is still relevant as news media companies now cater to specific audiences, “New York-based Vice Media, the global digital youth brand with an audience of 130 million a month” (Sweney, 2014) is an example.

Another change is more local reporting, “The BBC now has bilingual African reporters in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and elsewhere. This brings advantages-in local knowledge and contacts-and some disadvantages. Local journalists can be vulnerable to social and political pressures and can sometimes fail to bridge the cultural gap between international audiences” (Sambrook, 2015, p 54). Furthermorer, technology progression plays a vital role in how the news media present stories and images, “the use of smartphone, pictures, instant live coverage, and the way social media has allowed more voices into crisis coverage” (Sambrook, 2015, p 56).

Natural disasters

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes can have devasting effects on communities and cities, and therefore when these events take place, the news media and citizen journalists take to the streets of these disaster ridden communities. In different years, the tragedy that had the most impact and was remembered the most was due to the news reporting of these disasters;

“In October 2005, the images of covered corpses, stunned faces, keening mothers, tumbled homes and nature gone awry resulted from the South Asia earthquake. In August, the global tragedy was Hurricane Katrina, where the bodies the world saw weren’t under rubble but floating in New Orleans’ toxic flood. In December 2004, the sprawled bodies in awkward, disconcerting color were the child and adult victims of the Indian ocean Tsunami” (Moeller, 2006, p 173).

The reporting of natural disasters being compared here will be the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, in an attempt to discuss the differences of reporting on Eastern disasters in comparison to Western.

Firstly, what should be considered when outlining how Hurricane Katrina was reported by the news media, is that “some disasters have had the bad luck to occur at a moment when a more telegenic disaster was already capturing global attention. The worst tragedy in Iraq 2005 occurred on 31 August. At the same time that flood waters were sweeping over New Orleans…” (Moeller, 2006, p 173). So, some disasters, perhaps based on location, are a more significant priority when it comes to reporting disasters. “At first the U.S. media covered Hurricane Katrina as if they were covering a hurricane: Get your reporter live with the whipping winds and flooded street backdrop to do a standup on just how bad” (Moeller, 2006, p 183). This suggests, the first instinct of the mainstream media was to first, portray the extent of the weather’s effect and its negative impact with no, it seems, contemplation for the victims of this disaster. “The story was not how many people were left in New Orleans, but who was left in New Orleans” (Moeller, 2006, p 183). Other issues that faced the media was the influence of politics, “the Bush administration used the media to spread disinformation about what caused the flooding, whether it could have been foreseen or prevented, and problems in federal disaster relief” (Voorhees, Vick and Perkins, 2007, p 416). The movement of focus with regards to this disaster kept the story fresh and new. Also, the access that was available to journalists to the scenes of the disaster, although obviously challenging was a significant factor of the reporting. The impact of the media’s reporting was also significant when the focus shifted, “according to Eric Block, spokesman for Mercy Corps, donations for Hurricane Katrina survivors quickly tapered off when media coverage shifted "from tales of disaster to various finger pointing among government agencies” (Block cited in Moeller, 2006, p 184). The main difference however, between this Western led story regarding a Western disaster was that it took place in a Western country and feels more at home to a Western audience, as in “they were us” as opposed to a disaster in an Eastern country being “that’s them”.

The tsunami in 2004 attracted widespread news coverage for a long time and it’s still disputed as to the reasons for this. “During those first two weeks after the tsunami, $406 million was raised, compared with $550 million raised during the two weeks after the terrorist attack of September 11th” (Moeller, 2006, p 177). Perhaps what made the 2004 tsunami so telegenic was the availability for video footage as in most disasters of this scale, the media are more likely able to acquire still photographs or at best, citizen mobile footage. Reporter Chris Bury of ABC News' Nightline said that "the pictures themselves, of course, proved unusually powerful and compelling, giving the disaster an epic, almost Biblical quality” (Moeller, 2006, p 178). This may remind media theorists of Buerk’s 1984 report in which he used several biblical-connotated words to describe the Ethiopian famine such as “hell on Earth.” A further reason for the widespread news coverage was due to the tourist heavy angle of the story as “reporters observed that the pictures that were run on American and European television focused on the tsunami in large measure because many of the videos featured their own citizens” (Moeller, 2016, p 178). This portrays that for widespread, mainstream media coverage to take place, Westerners are likely to be involved in the disaster, if it’s somewhere close to home such as Hurricane Katrina or somewhere Eastern, with tourists involved like the Tsunami.

There are several reasons as to why Westerners create such widespread media coverage. One could be, simply, that the language they speak makes it easier to narrate a story for the mainstream media, as well as give it a Western, localized impression. The stories that exposed this disaster were, predictably not of locals of the Indonesian town of Bana Aceh, but of Western tourists and celebrities, otherwise, this story would not have been as widespread. “The still and video images of destruction, rescues, grief and survival had simple, clearly understood narratives that were often packaged as human mini-dramas: the survival of Sports Illustrated swim suit cover model Petra Nemcova who watched her boyfriend get swept away…”and “the worldwide call to identify a blond two-year-old boy who turned out to be a Swedish child, Hannes Bergstroem” (Moeller, 2016, p 179). It can be argued that the contrast between how the mainstream media captured Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami is minimal as both stories attracted a Western led angle. The Tsunami was mainly covered from a Western perspective, and when the mainstream media focused on locals, “Western reporters of the tsunami were accused of engaging in a ‘corpse show’, abandoning restraints which might have been deployed when the victims were mostly white” (Leach, 2005 cited in Knight, 2006, p 48).

Conflicts and Refugees

“The media expose pictures of distant victims of civil wars, genocide, massacres and other violence against civil populations, and play a basic role in giving publicity to human suffering” (Höijer, 2004, p 513). A significant topic to discuss when examining mainstream media coverage of humanitarian emergencies is conflicts and refugees. “As subsequent journalists sought to match Buerk’s original report, there was a sharp rise in ‘empathy’ reporting…The crises in Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) all attracted coverage designed to shock the public and engage them with a sympathetic response. In doing so famine too often was seen as a natural disaster rather than one with possible political origins” (Sambrook, 2015, p 54). The civil war conflicts in Syria is a prime example of how the mainstream media represent refugees fleeing war-torn homelands, in which the news media present said refugees with empathy as well as suspicion, “this combination of empathy with suspicion is an established pattern in the representation of human mobility, long criticised for dehumanising refugees” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1163).

“According to BBC war reporter, Martin Bell the reporting has changed fundamentally from mainly reporting military aspects, such as strategies and weapon systems, to reporting with a greater focus on people” (Bell, 1998 cited in Höijer, 2004, p 515). The focus on human suffering has had to adapt to more shocking images to evoke a sympathetic response from the audience as in Buerk’s 1984 report, the audience is likely to become immune to the sympathetic response of human suffering on television. “The camera explores faces twisted in pain, or lingers on wounds and bloody images, and the injured are not soldiers but ordinary people (Höijer, 2004, p 516). Since the news media focus, mostly, on the suffering and failures of conflicts and emergencies, the successes and preventative measures are often ignored, “Dramatic pictures of massive human suffering sell better than pictures of UN troops going quietly about their business day in and day out” (Jakobsen, 2000, p 133).

The 2015 Syrian refugee ‘crisis’ is a significant example in which news media’s coverage of refugees can be analysed. Chouliaraki and Stolic produced “five regimes of visibility that emerged through our taxonomic analysis” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2015, p 1172). These regimes of visibility capture how the news media represent refugees, the first to note is the “visibility of biological life” in which the news media reduce the individuals fleeing their country as mere bodies, “insofar as refugees are portrayed as ‘life’ to be governed, this regime of visibility can be thought of as ‘biopolitical’: a field of symbolic power that produces human bodies as ‘living matter’, subject to humanitarian benevolence of the West” (Vaughan-Williams, 2015 cited in Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1167). The second regime is “visibility as empathy” in which a more humanized approach is taken, “unlike biological life, the regime of empathy privileges intimate snapshots of individuals or couples, such as a crying child, a mother with her baby or a rescue worker in action” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1168). These images produce a caring and emotional response, due to a parental connotated image, images of children in need indicate the “adult failure” to offer protection to a child. “Visualities of threat…consist of masses of refugees walking through motorways on the Balkan route or squeezed in rescue boats; and of aggressive young men wearing balaclavas and participating in riot scenes” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1169). These images, instead of producing empathetic responses, galvanise a fear response from the audience at the idea of the ‘others’ and ‘them’ not ‘us.’ The fourth response outlined in this article is the ‘visibility of hospitality’ which “involves imagery of pro-refugee protests across Europe, notably the ‘Refugees Welcome’ marches in September 2015” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1169). These protests usually involve banners depicting the welcoming nature of the community towards refugees. This visual regime, instead of setting “’us’ up against evil ‘others’” this visuality “places ‘us’ in the position of the evil-doer; it is now ‘our’ politicians who harm refugees rather than the other way around” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1170). The last regime of visibility is ‘visibility of self-reflexivity’ which utilizes two types of imagery; “celebrity benevolence, which is characterised by a ‘show business’ aesthetic, and social media graphics, characterised by a playful reflexivity” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1170). The first features celebrities showing support of refugees by travelling to refugee camps, for example. These images make use of a depiction of a celebrity to capitalise and raise awareness of the impoverished and deprived. The latter part of this regime is the “visualities of social media graphics (which) refer to the remediation of tweets about the death of toddler Alan Kurdi, disseminated by Western as well as Middle Eastern actors” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1171). Some news companies reproduced the original death scene of the boy’s body on the beach and instead re-visualised the scene with “Alan in heaven or in a Western child’s bedroom” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1171). These two types of visualities are similar in that they attempt to humanise refugees by the use of expressing compassion. However, “both imageries ultimately displace the presence of refugees, as the latter are either overshadowed by the glamorous presence of celebrity or fictionalised by the digital drawings of twitter” (Chouliaraki and Stolic, 2017, p 1171).

To conclude, there has been a wide array of changes since Buerk’s iconic news report in 1984 such as the rise of social media and citizen journalism. The aesthetics of television news plays a vital role when it comes to which natural disasters gain more coverage like a Western natural disaster and an Eastern one. Even though the 2004 Tsunami was an Eastern disaster, the news media still followed a Western led perspective focusing more on tourists instead of locals as well as mini dramas that are more digestible for the audience. Lastly, the news media play a significant role when reporting conflicts and refugees as the five regimes of visibility show how the news media report a story has a considerable effect regarding how the public view refugees and those across the other side of the world.

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