"Using exclusive access to the BBC archive, the article examines how and why media coverage of Africa has been misleading and misinformed in the postcolonial period. It examines the extent to which the close relationship between media coverage and aid agencies has damaged the cause of informing the
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public. Aid agencies have seen a huge growth since the mid-1980s – partly precipitated by the power of media imagery. As media organizations have reduced their commitment to investing in reporting on Africa so journalists have in turn become more dependent upon aid agencies, which have filled a vacuum. This symbiotic relationship requires a degree of transparency otherwise there is a danger that it can compromise journalistic accountability." (Abstract)
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"Global Crisis Reporting: Journalism in the Global Age sets out to better understand the media’s role in the circulation and communication of these global challenges to humanity as well as the conflicts and contentions that surround them. Concerned as we are with crises that transcend national bor
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ders, whether in terms of impact or intervention, this book seeks to move beyond narrow national frameworks and nationally focused methodologies. In today’s globalizing world, where crises can be transnational in scope and impact, involve supranational levels of governance and become communicated in real time via global media, so national frames of reference and earlier research preoccupations are being superseded. The study of global crisis reporting, necessarily, needs to be situated and theorized in the context of journalism practised in the global age. As we shall explore, contemporary news media occupy a key position in the public definition and elaboration of global crises and are often far more than just conduits for their wider public recognition. In exercising their symbolic and communicative power, the media today can variously exert pressure and influence on processes of public understanding and political response or, equally, serve to dissimulate and distance the nature of the threats that confront us and dampen down pressures for change. In such ways, global crises become variously constituted within the news media as much as communicated by them." (Page 2)
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"This book takes a unique and comprehensive look at how the international community, led by the US, responded to ten humanitarian crises of the last decade and how major media outlets played a role in influencing (or failing to influence) action. Crises examined include Liberia, East Timor, Somalia,
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Sudan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Angola, Haiti, and the Congo. Soderlund and Briggs apply the same analytic method to each case to discover why the international community was unwilling, time and time again, to address this new brand of conflict that appeared at the time." (Publisher description)
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"This in-depth investigation of the role that local news media play in Central African conflicts combines theoretical analysis with case studies from nine African countries: Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republi
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c of Congo, and Rwanda. Each case study presents a comprehensive discussion of media influences during the various conflicts that have spread in the region and their impact on the peace process. Enriching the exploration, a chapter by Jean- Paul Marthoz (former director of information at Human Rights Watch) focuses on the ways in which the media in the global North cover crises on the African continent." (About the book, page 287)
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"Die Berichte über die Konflikte in Nah- und Mittelost färben auf die Wahrnehmung des Islam ab - häufig wird er mit Gewalt assoziiert. So fasst Rezensent Volker S. Stahr die keineswegs überraschende These des Islam- und Kommunikationswissenschafters Kai Hafez zusammen, der in einer Langzeitstudi
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e das Nahost- und Islambild der überregionalen Presse in den fünfziger bis neunziger Jahren untersucht hat. Wie Stahr in seiner primär referierenden Besprechung ausführt, macht Hafez vor allem die Wochenpresse um "Spiegel" und "Stern" als Meinungsführer mit "starker Tendenz zu Negativismus und polarisierender Berichterstattung" aus. Die in Umfragen festgestellten Ängste und Aversionen gegenüber dem Islam haben für Hafez auch mit dieser Berichterstattung und ihren Defiziten zu tun, berichtet Stahr. Die journalistische Wahrnehmung beschränkt sich laut Hafez weitgehend auf politische Redaktionen, in den Kultur-, vor allem aber in den Wirtschaftsredaktionen fehle die eigene Betrachtung, hält Stahr fest. "Inhaltliche Untiefen" sowie undifferenzierte und einseitige Berichterstattung in Bezug auf den Islam sind für Hafez ein weiteres Problem. Nach dem 11. September kann Hefez allerdings eine kurzfristige Besserung dieser Tendenzen feststellen, lässt Stahr wissen. So habe es zahlreiche Versuche zur Differenzierung gegeben und viele Medien hätten sich auffällig um eine Trennung zwischen "dem Islam" und den zur Gewalt bereiten Fundamentalisten bemüht." (Rezensionsnotiz in "perlentaucher.de" zu Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 06.09.2002)
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