"Journalists face unusual challenges when covering violent or mass tragedies. They face the possibility of being a first responder to a violent event. They interact with victims dealing with extraordinary grief. Journalists who cover any “blood-and-guts” beat often build a needed and appropriate
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professional wall between themselves and the survivors and other witnesses they interview. But after reporters talk with people who have suffered great loss, the same wall may impede the need of journalists to react to their own exposure to tragedy. Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies wrote the following for Poynter.org on Sept. 15, 2001: “Reporters, photojournalists, engineers, soundmen and field producers often work elbow to elbow with emergency workers. Journalists’ symptoms of traumatic stress are remarkably similar to those of police officers and firefighters who work in the immediate aftermath of tragedy, yet journalists typically receive little support after they file their stories. While public-safety workers are offered debriefings and counseling after a trauma, journalists are merely assigned another story.” In the future, we know that we’ll face more tragedies — more dates that will leave lasting memories for victims, communities and ourselves. The practical tips in this booklet can help you become more effective in handling these vital areas." (Page 3)
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"Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills" points to a crisis facing international institutions and the media who seek to alleviate and report human suffering throughout the world. The goals of the editor are to tell the story of thousands of individuals dedicated to helping others; and to integrat
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e issues of protection and care into all levels of planning, implementing and evaluating international intervention and action. The book identifies approaches that have proven useful and explores and suggests future directions." (Publisher description)
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"The main purpose of this guide is to highlight some of the benefits, challenges and options when considering funding of media and communication interventions. This publication is not designed to be a ‘how to’ guide for designing and implementing such programmes. Rather, it aims to guide DFID st
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aff, responding to conflicts and other emergencies, on: when to support media initiatives; what types of assistance to provide to media organisations; how to appraise and monitor media based interventions. Thematically, most attention is given to the role of media in conflict situations as this is where most experience has been gained to date. However, sections on natural and man-made disasters are also included. Furthermore, the main focus is on electronic media, such as local, national and international radio and TV broadcasting. This focus has been adopted because the bulk of media initiatives undertaken in areas of conflict fall within these categories." (Introduction, page 6-7)
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"From outbreaks of the flesh eating viruses Ebola and Strep A, to death camps in Bosnia and massacres in Rwanda, the media seem to careen from one trauma to another, in a breathless tour of poverty, disease and death. First we're horrified, but each time they turn up the pitch, show us one image mor
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e hideous than the next, it gets harder and harder to feel. Meet compassion fatigue--a modern syndrome, Susan Moeller argues, that results from formulaic media coverage, sensationalized language and overly Americanized metaphors. In her impassioned new book, Compassion Fatigue, Moeller warns that the American media threatens our ability to understand the world around us. Why do the media cover the world in the way that they do? Are they simply following the marketplace demand for tabloid-style international news? Or are they creating an audience that as seen too much--or too little--to care? Through a series of case studies of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--disease, famine, death and war--Moeller investigates how newspapers, newsmagazines and television have covered international crises over the last two decades, identifying the ruts into which the media have fallen and revealing why. Throughout, we hear from industry insiders who tell of the chilling effect of the mega- media mergers, the tyranny of the bottom-line hunt for profits, and the decline of the American attention span as they struggle to both tell and sell a story. But Moeller is insistent that the media need not, and should not, be run like any other business. The media have a special responsibility to the public, and when they abdicate this responsibility and the public lapses into a compassion fatigue stupor, we become a public at great danger to ourselves." (Publisher description)
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"Frederick Forsyth reveals how he resigned from the BBC to report from Biafra - and attack the British government. Jonathan Dimbleby describes the risks he took in filming 'The Unknown Famine' - which toppled an emperor. Mohamed Amin and Michael Buerk tell how their last-minute partnership in Ethiop
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ia created the harrowing film which so moved Bob Geldorf. 'News out of Africa draws on these and other first-hand accounts of reporting famine to explore the random and often accidental way in which news is selected; the exploitation of the media by both individuals and governments, missionaries and revolutionaries; the distrubing implications of television's increasing dependence on satellites and electronic news gathering." (Back cover)
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