The last few weeks have been dominated by extensive debates over the future of aid and humanitarianism as Western governments have sharply scaled back their funding.
Humanitarians have once again been engaged in many of the same issues that have troubled the sector for at least three decades, with deep introspection over the ethics of aid and whether the system is capable of delivering assistance in a manner that safeguards the agency and dignity of those it claims to help.
Two years ago, the Humanitarian Policy Group published a working paper on how narratives were instrumentalised to prop up or derail reform. The humanitarian system has relied on “evidence-based” policymaking to guide reform efforts since 1995, but that has created a hamster’s wheel of reform proposals.
“Findings and recommendations on localisation and accountability from evaluations dating 25 years ago look almost exactly like those of today’s evaluations,” the paper says, arguing that while facts and evidence can highlight problems, they are “simply not enough to overcome inertia and bring about structural change”.
Policymakers, it concluded, respond more to narratives and stories, and these narratives are propagated by a system that includes politicians and news organisations as well as people and organisations working within the humanitarian sector.
The question this raises, therefore, is whether it is possible to successfully reform the humanitarian system without corresponding changes to how the crises it is supposed to alleviate are covered by the media?
Journalists and media organisations interested in ethical coverage of crises must contend with the fact that they are – wittingly or not – part of this system.
In fact, international news reporting of crises tends to mirror many of the problems associated with the aid system – from the preponderance of white saviourism to the marginalisation of local workers to the dehumanisation of impacted communities.
However, in the current flurry of online discussions and roundtables, relatively little attention has been paid to how people around the world come to know about and understand humanitarian crises, and what reforms are needed.
Journalists themselves have adopted the traditional posture of the disinterested observer, largely reporting on the chaos and the scramble by aid organisations to rethink the workings of the system as if these have no bearing on their own work and ethics.
This is not to say that there have not been any efforts to improve how crises are covered and talked about. Within both media and humanitarian circles, there have been concerted attempts to address some of the more egregious aspects of coverage.
Within the emerging field of humanitarian journalism, various news organisations that specialise in covering crises and the aid sector are experimenting with infusing humanitarian values into their reporting; practising what The New Humanitarian calls “mission-oriented journalism”. Similarly, there have also been efforts within the humanitarian sector to articulate norms of ethical storytelling to guide their own communications efforts.
However, these efforts are largely siloed off from each other. Most NGO communications folks and journalists do not consider themselves as part of the same system, even though each is crucial to the other’s work.
Suggestions of a convergence of values and interests will sometimes prompt a horrified scepticism, and not just among journalists.
“We cannot make the press natural allies of humanitarian action,” wrote Kim Gordon-Bates way back in 1997 when he was the International Committee of the Red Cross’s news editor. “I fear that any attempt to tie the press to a somewhat wispy convergence of interests may subordinate and ultimately discredit those who must always be free to call upon any one of us, individuals or institutions, to account for our actions, expenditure and policy statements.”
Media as part of the solution
It is true that journalists should keep a healthy distance from those they report on. And there is potential for problematic compromises when humanitarians try to co-opt media to serve their purposes, for example when they establish media programmes that are clearly PR exercises posing as building local media capacity.
But there is evolving room for cooperation, especially as media organisations embrace an expanded role outside the rigid constructs of traditional journalism.
If we accept that the prevailing narratives we have been party to creating and amplifying are hindering much-needed reform, do we have an ethical obligation to help undo them?
While in the 1990s, the BBC reportedly “would not even broadcast information telling people to boil water during a cholera epidemic”, it has for over two decades now run an international charity that uses media and communication to promote development and human rights. “No longer satisfied to remain independent outside observers, many media professionals are now developing programmes which strive to be part of the solution,” wrote Loretta Hieber Girardet in 2001, then a co-founder of Media Action International.
Being part of the solution has extended, at least in the case of The New Humanitarian, to engaging with humanitarians and thought leaders on the future of international solidarity. Five years ago, to mark our 25th anniversary, we launched the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, and this year, as we mark our 30th, we are focused on moving from rethinking to remaking: Disinterested observers, we are not.
But beyond that, what is the scope for engaging with the humanitarian system to foster more accurate public and policy understanding of humanitarian crises and the functions of the humanitarian system?
There are a number of journalists and academics, including myself, who are helping humanitarians develop ethical ways of communicating about crises, from thinking about who owns the stories and who gets to tell them, to how those stories are told.
My experience has been that they have many of the same approaches, face many of the same challenges, and suffer from many of the same blindspots that media organisations do.
If we accept that the prevailing narratives we have been party to creating and amplifying are hindering much-needed reform, do we have an ethical obligation to help undo them? And can journalists work with humanitarian agencies to develop ethical standards to guide the production of different narratives while still maintaining the ability to hold those same agencies to account?
I think we can. Do you?
Please send thoughts and critiques to [email protected].
