Measuring Commitment to Best Practice
HRI
NEWS
Interview with Michel Ogrizek
“Public perceptions and humanitarian realities as two faces of the same coin.”
Michel Ogrizek, senior adviser of DARA, analyses in this interview the role of the media within the humanitarian action. Ogrizek explains how the communicative processes influence on the importance that the different crises deserve.
In recent years, the role of the media in humanitarian crises has become immensely important. Has the media become a new actor of humanitarian aid?
Modern communications have played an important role in the growth of humanitarian aid. The 20th century information revolution paved the way for contemporary humanitarian aid by exposing to the whole world the misfortunes of people living in areas never seen and sharing their suffering in real time with an affluent, protected public. Thus, the humanitarian movement has become a vector of globalisation. Today´s interconnected media networks are the vehicle through which human suffering has become universalised and interventions borderless. In short, the media spurs governments and public opinion into humanitarian action to such an extent that Boutros Boutros Gali one called CNN the 16th member of the United Nations Security Council.
Is the media really able to determine the agendas of humanitarian actors or is their capacity to influence limited?
Media and NGOs are “co-producers” of humanitarian events. It is not by chance than some catastrophes create more news than others. Stéphanie Dupont, communication specialist, argues that they simply match TV rating criteria; “Media turn humanitarian causes into audience figures”. By selecting which catastrophic events are worthy of being seen and remembered, the media is one of the cornerstones of our collective memory and therefore contributes to building a new global culture of risk.
How does the relationship between humanitarian actors and the media develop? Is there mutual cooperation among them, or is there a lack of knowledge about their work procedures?
The intervention of external actors who are capable of identifying risks, applying immediate concrete solutions and communicating hope for the future is essential. This is the role of international organisations and NGOs. Journalists cannot play such a part, as their professional objective is not crisis management, but the narration of the stories of peoples misfortunes. Nevertheless, the media has become more proactive and engaged, particularly in documenting and exposing leadership responsibilities as well as failures in the face of catastrophic events. Journalists not only identify delays and drawbacks in rescue operations, but are quick to criticise official declarations which deny the severity of a crisis, or the refusal of foreign assistance of political reasons. The question remains whether the media can act as a watchdog for the accountability and effective governance of states and NGOs regarding risk management, transparency in the funding of operations, the reconstruction of livelihoods, the evaluation of local populations´ real needs, ethnic discrimination and other humanitarian issues.
What is the determining factor for certain crises being more widely known than others and, therefore, receiving more international assistance?
Rony Braumand, Former President of Médeciens San Fronteires, has demonstrated that broad press coverage results if events meet four basic conditions. First, continuous flow of images; representations of the drama are allowed to accumulate in the collective unconsciousness and reach a polarising critical mass. Second, no competition; only one disaster at a time is the rule of the game when communicating about a catastrophe. Third, innocence of the victims; this explains the media’s preference for natural disasters, as opposed to armed conflicts, in which victims –other than children- are often presumed guilty. And fourth, presence of a mediator; these are usually represented by doctors, international or nongovernmental organisations, and peacekeepers, who accompany the suffering with a remedy at hand.
Let’s talk about the people affected by crises. From your point of view, how are they presented by the media, what is their role?
The commercial pressure to show stereotypes of misfortune to viewers worldwide is so demanding that journalists even seek elsewhere what they cannot find on the spot. Thus, many photos for Rwanda victims were, in fact, shot in Zaire. Some reporters even manipulated images to give them a more dramatic character by means of such techniques as cleaning, changing colours, correcting the level of saturation, modifying the landscape, and even re-setting the entire scene. On the other hand, corpses are central to media stories. The ethical problem stems not so much from the statistics but, rather, the reality show of dead bodies. But not all deaths carry the same weight. There are those which elicit more compassion than others as showed during the Indian Ocean tsunami. The representation by the media of an imaginary risk that corpses represent for the living creates public anxiety; but the real risk is the precarious living conditions of survivors. Unfortunately, the media all too often prefer to present macabre scenes of mass graves rather than the continued suffering of the survivors. In fact, when journalists describe survivors, they tend to dismiss them as virtual living because they are socially dead. They are portrayed as those who should have died in the catastrophe, but who are still alive.
In your opinion, what should the role of the media be in humanitarian crises?
Access to information is decisive in life-threatening situations. In this context, new information technology is seen as a vital component of natural hazard Early Warning Systems (EVS), although many have yet to be implemented in the zones most at risk. In the space of a few years, the Internet has not only become a privileged media channel to access and share life-saving information, but it has also created a virtual global space where isolated people and those under state control and censorship can have a voice. Journalists and NGOs must acknowledge that information alone is a form of humanitarian response. Therefore, as part of their ethical code of conduct, they must accept to be fully transparent in coordinating their coverage of disasters.