ABSTRACT
The reporting in the Western media of disasters that occur in faraway countries (and especially in Africa) frequently follows a template that fails to take account of political circumstances, but focuses instead upon a narrative of humanitarian crises. The origins of humanitarian media coverage as a distinctive genre extends back into the nineteenth century, originating as a particular way of engaging audiences and communicating suffering. The narrative of humanitarian suffering very often relies on familiar stereotypes and fails to convey the complex underlying politics. The reporting uses instead frames such as “primitive tribal hatreds” or resorts to explanations based upon “natural disaster” when there are in fact complex underlying social and political causes to many crises and complex emergencies. There is a marked difference from the way that crises are reported when they occur in Western countries, where there is a far greater attempt to give underlying explanations and nuanced interpretations that take account of political factors and present the suffering victims with far greater context. In the words of the Kenyan journalist Binyavanga Wainaina, “brown and black places are flat issues.” Using key case studies, this chapter seeks to understand how the narrative of suffering developed and articulate the many layered and interrelated factors that contribute to the absence of political analysis. The resulting current narrative is a consciously apolitical position taken by international aid agenciesthat is particularly significant, given their increasing direct use of media to report crisis events in the field.
