Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media

Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media

by Suzanne Franks
Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media

Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media

by Suzanne Franks

Paperback

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Overview

The media reporting of the Ethiopian Famine in 1984-5 was an iconic news event. It is widely believed to have had an unprecedented impact, challenging perceptions of Africa and mobilising public opinion and philanthropic action in a dramatic new way. The contemporary international configuration of aid, media pressure, and official policy is still directly affected and sometimes distorted by what was—as this narrative shows—also an inaccurate and misleading story. In popular memory, the reporting of Ethiopia and the resulting humanitarian intervention were a great success. Yet alternative interpretations give a radically different picture of misleading journalism and an aid effort which did more harm than good.

Using privileged access to BBC and Government archives, Reporting Disasters examines and reveals the internal factors which drove BBC news and offers a rare case study of how the media can affect public opinion and policymaking. It constructs the process that accounts for the immensity of the news event, following the response at the heart of government to the pressure of public opinion. And it shows that while the reporting and the altruistic festival that it produced triggered remarkable and identifiable changes, the on-going impact was not what the conventional account claims it to have been.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781849042888
Publisher: Hurst
Publication date: 03/01/2014
Pages: 256
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Suzanne Franks was for many years a news and current affairs journalist with BBC TV. She left to found an independent production company and also completed a PhD. She is now Professor of Journalism at City University in London and has published widely on the coverage of international news and the history of broadcasting.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Arguing About Famine
1. How Famine Captured the Headlines
2. Global Story: National Response
3. A Revolution in Giving
4. Misunderstanding the Famine: Telling the Story Wrong
5. The Humanitarian Dilemma
6. Too Tight an Embrace? The Agencies and the Media
7. Interpreting Africa
8. Real Media Effects
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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