"There is widespread dissatisfaction within the aid industry with the quantity and quality of mainstream news coverage of humanitarian issues and crises. 73% of respondents agreed that mainstream news media does not produce enough coverage of humanitarian issues. Mainstream news coverage was also regularly criticised for being selective, sporadic, simplistic and partial [...] There is a significant discrepancy between the perceived importance of investigative journalism and consistent coverage of ongoing crises, and the news media’s performance in delivering such content. Both are highly valued, but neither are understood to be well provided. Solutions-oriented coverage and ‘early warning’ reporting were perceived to be the worst performing aspect of the news that respondents consume. However, both were also judged to be amongst the least valued aspects of news coverage. Breaking news is the best performing aspect of the news that respondents consume, but also the least valued. Expert analysis is the most highly valued aspect of humanitarian news coverage and respondents felt their current sources of news performed relatively well in this area." (Page 3)

"In total, 1626 respondents completed the survey, including individuals working for International NGOs (28%), the United Nations (9%), academia (9%), national or local NGOs (8%), government organisations (8%) and in the corporate sector (5%). A majority of respondents were either mid-career (32%) or senior professionals (41%) and had either ‘some’ (34%) or a ‘significant’ amount (30%) of decision-making authority within their organisation.
It is important to note that regular readers of IRIN News were over-represented in this sample. 59% claimed to use IRIN either ‘regularly’ or ‘heavily’, whilst 41% used IRIN ‘occasionally’ or ‘never’. Given this will have an effect on some of the results, the following discussion should be read with this in mind." (Methodology, page 2)