The Aftermath

I attended a very interesting debate this week at the House of Commons, entitled “Giving a Voice to the Silent Tsunami”.

We discussed some very important issues regarding the current global food crisis and whether the media coverage of such problems is sufficient. One of the most memorable things from the talk was a Guardian journalist reciting her editor’s words, “We’ve already had food shortage this week, I don’t want another one.’

I often find myself thinking about the aftermath of global disasters like the tsunami, the earthquake in China and the hurricane in New Orleans and wonder why there is such a low number of them in the newspapers. I am always interested to know what’s happening there now and whether our charitable donations actually helped anyone.

Shocking pictures after the Tsunami

Unfortunately it is not as simple as this. As the ‘mean’ editor’s quote suggested, news has to be recent, relevant and ethnocentric. This isn’t the editor’s fault, he just knows what news sells.

You do see some follow up stories in the news. After talking to the guardian correspondant, it seems you have to have a very good angle to a story in order to do a follow up.
Most of the angles used by the nationals for follow ups are really unusual stories focussing on particular families or individuals who have an astounding story to tell. They are real human interest stories as opposed to the facts and figures of survivors.. or more depressingly, death tolls. This is the best way to do it but it is also the harder way. Here are some examples from The Times Online, where they focussed on a 3 year old boy. Also in G2, which a collegue pointed out last week, where they focussed on what has been done with money raised by the Guardian.

Even then, your editor will only let you pitch these ideas if you have a good relationship with them, and a good track record with stories of this kind. It is a shame reporting on these subjects is such a struggle, but we discussed ideas to make it easier.

The panel were eager to find out what kind of media young people would use to access this kind of information and the answer seemed obvious; blogs.  I have found one from an American living in Congo. Unfortunately (and worryingly..) it hasn’t been updated for a week or so. The Baghdad Blogger is another example my collegue Lara mentioned. However, how do we publicise this type of media? And are young people really going to read it?