And now for some good news out of Africa. Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping, with “clear evidence of accelerating rates of decline,” according to The Lancet. Perhaps most encouragingly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly.
Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors. Last June, for example, Time magazine published graphic pictures of a naked woman from Sierra Leone dying in childbirth. Not long after, CNN did a story about two young Kenyan boys whose family is so poor they are forced to work delivering goats to a slaughterhouse for less than a penny per goat. Reinforcing the sense of economic misery, between May and September 2010 the ten most-read US newspapers and magazines carried 245 articles mentioning poverty in Africa, but only five mentioning gross domestic product growth.
Reporters’ attraction to certain kinds of Africa stories has a lot to do with the frames of reference they arrive with. Nineteenth century New York Herald correspondent Henry M. Stanley wrote that he was prepared to find Zanzibar “populated by ignorant blacks, with great thick lips, whose general appearance might be compared to Du Chaillu’s gorillas.” Since the Biafran War, a cause célèbre in the West, helped give rise in the late 1960s to the new field of human rights, Western reporters have closely tracked issues like traditional female circumcision. In the 1980s, a famine in Ethiopia that, in fact, had as much to do with politics as with drought, set a pattern of stories about “starving Africans” that not only hasn’t been abandoned, but continues to grow: according to a 2004 study done by Steven S. Ross, then a Columbia journalism professor, between 1998 and 2002 the number of stories about famine in Africa tripled. In Kenya, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s and where I returned to live four years ago, The New York Times description of post-election violence in 2007 as a manifestation of “atavistic” tribalism carried echoes of Stanley and other early Western visitors.
But the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies. These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done. As a practical matter, they also need to attract funding. Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.
Africans themselves readily concede that there continues to be terrible conflict and human suffering on the continent. But what’s lacking, say media observers like Sunny Bindra, a Kenyan management consultant, is context and breadth of coverage so that outsiders can see the continent whole—its potential and successes along with its very real challenges. “There are famines; they’re not made up,” Bindra says. “There are arrogant leaders. But most of the journalism that’s done doesn’t challenge anyone’s thinking.”
Over the past thirty years, NGOs have come to play an increasingly important role in aid to Africa. A major reason is that Western donors, worried about government corruption, have channelled more funds through them. In the mid-1970s, less than half a dozen NGOs (like the Red Cross or CARE) might operate in a typical African country, according to Nicolas van de Walle, a professor of government at Cornell, but now the same country will likely have 250.
This explosive NGO growth means increasing competition for funds. And according to the head of a large US-based NGO in Nairobi, “When you’re fundraising you have to prove there is a need. Children starving, mothers dying. If you’re not negative enough, you won’t get funding.” So fierce is the competition that many NGOs don’t want to hear good news. An official of an organization that provides data on Somalia’s food situation says that after reporting a bumper harvest last year, “I was told by several NGOs and UN agencies that the report was too positive.”
Rasna Warah, a Kenyan who worked for UN-Habitat before leaving to pursue a writing career, says that exaggerations of need were not uncommon among aid officials she encountered. “They wanted journalists to say ‘Wow.’ They want them to quote your report,” she says. “That means more money for the next report. It’s really as cynical as that.”
Western journalists, for their part, tend to be far too trusting of aid officials, according to veteran Dutch correspondent Linda Polman. In her book The Crisis Caravan, she cites as one example the willingness of journalists to be guided around NGO-run refugee camps without asking tough questions about possible corruption or the need for such facilities. She writes, “Aid organizations are businesses dressed up like Mother Teresa, but that’s not how reporters see them.”
Pushed and pulled by slashed budgets and increased demands, journalists are growing increasingly reliant on aid groups. Sometimes that involves not just information or a seat on a supply plane, but deep involvement in the entire journalistic process.
In an online essay written in 2009, Kimberly Abbott of the International Crisis Group discussed a 2005 Nightline program on Uganda that her NGO helped to produce and fund. It was hosted by actor Don Cheadle, the star of Hotel Rwanda. Nightline’s Ted Koppel explained in his introduction, as retold by Abbott: “Cheadle wanted his wife and daughters to get a sense of the kind of suffering that is so widespread in Africa. The International Crisis Group wanted publicity for what is happening in Uganda. And we, to put it bluntly, get to bring you a riveting story at a greatly reduced expense.” According to Abbott, “versions of such partnerships are happening now in print and broadcast newsrooms across the country, though many are reluctant to discuss them too openly.”
Daniel Dickinson, a former BBC reporter who is now a communications officer for the European Union in Nairobi, has seen the impact of technology and economics on reporting on Africa first-hand. “The big difference in the past five to ten years is the expansion of the Internet,” he says. “Journalists have got to feed these animals. Add to that the financial crash, and more and more internationals are taking the content we offer them.”
Ben Parker, co-founder and head of IRIN, a news agency that is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, admires Dickinson’s success. “He does stories and they’re picked up whole,” Parker says. IRIN itself can point to many similar successes in finding takers for its stories on aid projects. “The Western media won’t reprint us verbatim,” he says. “But some plagiarize.”
Lauren Gelfand, a correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly who is based in Nairobi, says most reporters she knows string for three or four news organizations to make ends meet, and can’t afford to do time-consuming stories. She saw the effect when she took a year off from journalism to work for Oxfam. “If reporters were going to cover a development story it had to be easy,” remembers Gelfand, noting that the simplest sell was a celebrity visit to an aid project.
Gelfand says that her Oxfam experience helped her to understand just how much attention ngos put on getting their story told. “All the talking points are carefully worked out…. It’s a huge bureaucracy and there are as many levels of control as in any government,” she says of Oxfam, adding that many NGOs are reluctant to cooperate with media unless they know they’ll be shown in a positive light.
To be fair to the NGOs, Gelfand says, “It’s easier to sell a famine than to effect real, common-sense policy change.” And, she says, she continues to believe that most aid workers do what they do because they want to make a difference. Nonetheless, “A lot of what Oxfam does is to sustain Oxfam.”
Stories featuring aid projects often rely on dubious numbers provided by the organizations. Take Kibera, a poor neighborhood in Nairobi. A Nexis search of major world publications found Kibera described as the “biggest” or “largest” slum in Africa at least thirty-four times in 2004; in the first ten months of 2010 the claim appeared eighty-three times. Many of those stories focused on the work of one of the estimated 6,000 or more local and international NGOs working there, and cited population figures that ranged as high as one million residents. Recently, however, the results of Kenya’s 2009 census were released: according to the official tally, Kibera has just 194,269 residents.
In 2010, Rasna Warah wrote in the Daily Nation, a Kenyan paper, that while working for the Worldwatch Institute, an NGO, she had published inflated population estimates using UN-Habitat data, despite knowing there was no consensus on the numbers among her former colleagues at the organization. Sometime after 2004, she wrote, population estimates for Kibera started to rise, and “Before we knew it, the figure spread like a virus.” She added, “The inflated figures were not challenged, perhaps because they were useful to various actors…. They were particularly useful to NGOs, which used them to ‘shock’ charities and other do-gooders into donating more money to their projects in Kibera.”
Questionable figures of another sort are to be found in reports on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets on poverty reduction and other measures of well-being. UN and NGO officials routinely describe Africa as failing to meet the goals, and the press routinely writes up this failure.
But some experts, among them Jan Vandemoortele, one of the architects of the MDGS, have expressed concern that the goals are being misused. He wrote in 2009 that the MDGS were intended as global targets, but have been improperly applied to individual countries and regions. “It is a real tragedy when respectable progress in Africa is reported as a failure by international organizations and external observers,” Vandemoortele wrote, voicing the suspicion that particular measurements have been selected “so as to present Africa as a failure, solely to gain support for a particular agenda, strategy, or argument.”
Nonetheless, when the UN met in September, The Associated Press quoted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as saying, “Many countries are falling short, especially in Africa,” while the Los Angeles Times quoted an Oxfam report as saying, “Unless an urgent rescue package is developed to accelerate fulfillment of all the MDGS, we are likely to witness the greatest collective failure in history.”
The consequences of skewed or incomplete reporting on Africa are not just a disservice to readers but also have the potential to influence policy. “The welfare model [of Africa] is still dominant on the Hill and in Hillary Clinton’s world,” according to van de Walle. Among corporate officials, says Catherine Duggan, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, the perception is still that “Africa is where you put your money once you’ve made it somewhere else.”
Moreover, such reporting is demoralizing to Africans working for change. Martin Dawes, a unicef regional chief of communication for West and Central Africa, says that when there is a disaster, journalists “come to us as aid workers but often don’t talk to the government, which is often what we’re working through. It means that the chances for Africans to show an engaged response is limited. They are written out of their own story.”
Even with shrinking resources, journalists can do better than this. For a start, they can stop depending so heavily, and uncritically, on aid organizations for statistics, subjects, stories, and sources. They can also educate themselves on how to find and interpret data available from independent sources. And they can actively seek out stories that deviate from existing story lines.
But in the end, it will probably take sustained economic progress to break the current mold. Sunny Bindra, the Kenyan management consultant, recalls that in the 1980s, “Japan got attention because it was whacking the US. It’s the same with India and China now.” Until that happens, a sick African woman in labor will continue to be treated as poverty porn, and most Africans will have to starve in order to make it onto the evening news.
This article was adapted from a paper (pdf) written for Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
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Comments Post a Comment
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This is a terrific, necessary piece. But one quibble with the headline: There is no "real Africa," just as there is no "real America." To suggest such an ideal nearly trafficks in the same odd Victorian purities we all agree should no longer frame our stories of the continent.
I don't know why journalists don't interview local government sources; I generally do (though wouldn't we all say that?) -- but very few of those quotes end up in my final copy. African government officials have perfected a development vocabulary, aimed at Western donors, but that doesn't usually work well in a story.
Posted by jina moore on Thu 17 Mar 2011 at 12:50 PM
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I agree that this is a "terrific, necessary piece". At the same time, I might add some context from the perspective of having lived and worked back in the U.S. since working for an NGO in Kenya in 2007-08, and as a consumer of U.S. journalism from Africa.
First, the basic issues of depth and nuance are in no way unique to coverage of Africa in U.S. journalism, so we shouldn't take your solid point too far.
Especially in regard to international coverage, I suspect that research might also find certain "paradigms" into which coverage of some other parts of the world tend to fall. For instance, stories from some other regions might tend to focus on, say, terrorism or finance. And perhaps for the related reason that resources are readily available from people who want journalists to tell those stories for them.
On a positive note I will say that I think investors are following the extensive business coverage from Africa from Bloomberg and reading the new Wall Street Journal Africa business section, as well as proprietary reporting, so the story in the McKinsey report is being told in a different forum.
The other side of the coin, of course, is that, as with most stereotypes, there is an underlying truth. As a continent, or a conveniently aggregated geographic region, Africa is conspicuous for the degree of economic disfunction relative to other regions, at least during the lifetime of myself or the Peace Corp (or President Obama). As Kenyan politicians like to say "we could have been a Malaysia".
And, of course, the suffering is in fact very real, even if widely overgeneralized or statistically overstated in certain instances.
At the end of the day, though, journalists can only do so much, based on the "demand side" of the market. My sense is that most Americans lack the basic geographic and historical background or interest to engage with much nuance or detail about specific places and events in Africa, but can be "grabbed" by the human interest in suffering.
Posted by Ken Flottman on Fri 18 Mar 2011 at 07:08 PM
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http://www.mamahope.org/Unlock-the-potential-.html
Posted by John Maro on Sun 20 Mar 2011 at 07:35 AM
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Very good article. Clearly there are a number of agencies promoting the bad picture and "use" journalists to that effect. It is also clear that there are media houses that thrive on such reports. Tell me which journalist who wouldn't love that scoop. I have also seen them come with a pre-empted angle.. Meanwhile everyone in the Humanitarian world is blatantly aware that unless you scream emergency there is no money to get. Try to do some real development and the money dries up in a second yet that is what in most places is needed. I work in such an area. Within the "agency" we are scaling down rapidly as we mainly work in emergencies. Unfortunately there becomes a vaccum of moving into development. Focus on the bad always win over focus on the good.... somehow. Unless there is a royal wedding...
Posted by Mats on Sun 20 Mar 2011 at 09:50 AM
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This is a very interesting debate that has been brought up. The dreaded "CNN effect", or the theory that the media affects U.S. foreign policy because of what they show the public, and then what the public becomes both aware and enraged by, is evident here in this debate. If NGOs are in need of fundraising, they have to have a cause to show for it. From a realist stance, it is natural for NGOs to want to exploit only the negative occurring, specifically in Africa, in order to increase awareness. It said it right when alluding to the fact that Africans who are doing their part to take ownership and to help themselves out of poverty aren’t getting either the recognition or the right support to continue in their efforts. So what can we do to change this way of reporting? Surely the general public should be aware that reporting has always been from the standpoint that “blood sells” meaning the more negative and dramatic a news story is the more attention it will obtain, but I hope that those people who are interested in investing their time or money to help NGOs do their own independent research for the real story (as ironic as that has to by these days). Personally, the more and more I hear of devastation and lack of a positive difference in a nation, the more likely in my mind I am to give up on whatever the cause is until a new one is presented with hopes of bringing about change. If I hear the positive effects of the specific initiatives performed by NGOs and other aid agencies in a developing nation, and the differences they are making, I may be willing to give my attention to that cause since I see that it is making an actual impact.
Posted by Tracy on Sun 20 Mar 2011 at 04:54 PM
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A couple of points are important to be wary about, perhaps a major paradigm of writers and readers would be helpful. Basically, of course, Africa is today comprised around 52 - 53 independent nations. much too often, stories may be properly crafted to reflect he true reality of this oft overlooked geographical and political fact, yet it seems many writers are so "western" minded,. that their word implications and association seems to suggest Africa is a country - one location, one minded, one overall popular dream and aspiration for all groups, tribes, actual nationalities. Now, the actual "article" thrust we discuss here is, again, rather misleading and unclear in it's attempt to clarify an issue of journalistic thrust. An example may prove enlightening. Let us assume I, a working journalist, am given the task of writing a piece about rape. Now, I go to a village, wherein there are a bout 500 females, of which there has been reported (by others) that there is a high percentage of rape of women. Then, THOSE women, those witnessed in this loss (to the women, their families, the entire community) becomes one of the MAIN points of my story, as I establish the "reported" amount of victims. My "filter" becomes a comparative place, usually in the (reader familiar) western world, as I make a comparative nalysis.
Now, that may be criticized as being "negative reporting".\, or even written in a condescending nature about these African women - but, is it really? This entire issue, the thrust of the storyline we are all asked to comment about, is actually deceptive in it's first hand appearing to be a simplistic issue, you see.
In the end, all seems to be rather "Catch-22", if you see where I'm going with this? Do some regions NEED aid, are suffering, might even benefit from stories of the citizenry's anguish? Yes. Does that make them (the stories) to be exaggerations, or dramatizations? Perhaps. In my hypothetical story example above, only about 50 of 500 females had been raped (my proposed way of telling that story). But, compared to, say Kansas, USA a 10% incidence of rape is quite outrageous. Those people in Kansas, USA (and similar readers), are those who I wish to most affect, to call to action on this issue. To them, a 10% incidence of rape is totally untenable, wherein (while unacceptable by the residents of the village I write about, it may indeed be a "tolerable" amount.
WHO, then, is my INTENDED audience? WHO, again, am I wishing to mobilize for assistance? WHO, might be possibly able to bring about a reduction in the rapes?
So it is with stories about hunger, housing, overcrowding, infant death, HIV/AIDS, poor health facilities, etc.
Finally, an appropriate comparison of reporting vis-a-vis (the) actual public response, and positive CHANGE in a disaster situation might be made between the Haitian earthquake a little over 1 year ago compared to the recent 9.0 (it's been upgraded .1 Richter point) Sendai, Japan earthquake. Neither nations' governments have not been fully candid with the outside world, although Haiti appears to be the more corrupt of the two. A recent update to the on-going Haitian situation reveals increased ravaging of the still wounded population by armed gangs - that prospect seems unlikely in Japan's earthquake devastated areas. Current world opinions of the future of each society, suggests Japan seems more likely to make a complete, timely rebuilding and recovery.
What could/should be the role and "center-point" of the media coverage of each nation? Does (the) media assume a pose of selectively telling the stories? Should the NGO operations in each torn area be graphic, descriptive, bordering on poor taste? Should the Japanese people be sympathized with evn more, as they are former atomic bombing victims of the US in WWII in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What of the Haitians, the poorly educated descendants of former African slaves who successfully fought their way to independence from France in the 1800's?
The issues, I see here, are those of ACCURATE, unbiased reporting - not of the particular journalistic styles/slants of the stories written. "Let the chips fall where they may" might be the best overall philosophical stand to take in either case.
That is all journalistic coverage should be in the final analysis - Fair and accurate reporting of stories.
Posted by Amir Chela - Photographer, former WPFW (Pacifica) host-Producer, retired TV cameraman. on Sun 20 Mar 2011 at 07:17 PM
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A couple of points are important to be wary about, perhaps a major paradigm of writers and readers would be helpful. Basically, of course, Africa is today comprised around 52 - 53 independent nations. much too often, stories may be properly crafted to reflect he true reality of this oft overlooked geographical and political fact, yet it seems many writers are so "western" minded,. that their word implications and association seems to suggest Africa is a country - one location, one minded, one overall popular dream and aspiration for all groups, tribes, actual nationalities. Now, the actual "article" thrust we discuss here is, again, rather misleading and unclear in it's attempt to clarify an issue of journalistic thrust. An example may prove enlightening. Let us assume I, a working journalist, am given the task of writing a piece about rape. Now, I go to a village, wherein there are a bout 500 females, of which there has been reported (by others) that there is a high percentage of rape of women. Then, THOSE women, those witnessed in this loss (to the women, their families, the entire community) becomes one of the MAIN points of my story, as I establish the "reported" amount of victims. My "filter" becomes a comparative place, usually in the (reader familiar) western world, as I make a comparative nalysis.
Now, that may be criticized as being "negative reporting".\, or even written in a condescending nature about these African women - but, is it really? This entire issue, the thrust of the storyline we are all asked to comment about, is actually deceptive in it's first hand appearing to be a simplistic issue, you see.
In the end, all seems to be rather "Catch-22", if you see where I'm going with this? Do some regions NEED aid, are suffering, might even benefit from stories of the citizenry's anguish? Yes. Does that make them (the stories) to be exaggerations, or dramatizations? Perhaps. In my hypothetical story example above, only about 50 of 500 females had been raped (my proposed way of telling that story). But, compared to, say Kansas, USA a 10% incidence of rape is quite outrageous. Those people in Kansas, USA (and similar readers), are those who I wish to most affect, to call to action on this issue. To them, a 10% incidence of rape is totally untenable, wherein (while unacceptable by the residents of the village I write about, it may indeed be a "tolerable" amount.
WHO, then, is my INTENDED audience? WHO, again, am I wishing to mobilize for assistance? WHO, might be possibly able to bring about a reduction in the rapes?
So it is with stories about hunger, housing, overcrowding, infant death, HIV/AIDS, poor health facilities, etc.
Finally, an appropriate comparison of reporting vis-a-vis (the) actual public response, and positive CHANGE in a disaster situation might be made between the Haitian earthquake a little over 1 year ago compared to the recent 9.0 (it's been upgraded .1 Richter point) Sendai, Japan earthquake. Neither nations' governments have not been fully candid with the outside world, although Haiti appears to be the more corrupt of the two. A recent update to the on-going Haitian situation reveals increased ravaging of the still wounded population by armed gangs - that prospect seems unlikely in Japan's earthquake devastated areas. Current world opinions of the future of each society, suggests Japan seems more likely to make a complete, timely rebuilding and recovery.
What could/should be the role and "center-point" of the media coverage of each nation? Does (the) media assume a pose of selectively telling the stories? Should the NGO operations in each torn area be graphic, descriptive, bordering on poor taste? Should the Japanese people be sympathized with evn more, as they are former atomic bombing victims of the US in WWII in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What of the Haitians, the poorly educated descendants of former African slaves who successfully fought their way to independence from France in the 1800's?
The issues, I see here, are those of ACCURATE, unbiased reporting - not of the particular journalistic styles/slants of the stories written. "Let the chips fall where they may" might be the best overall philosophical stand to take in either case.
That is all journalistic coverage should be in the final analysis - Fair and accurate reporting of stories.
Posted by Amir Chela - Photographer, former WPFW (Pacifica) host-Producer, retired TV cameraman. on Sun 20 Mar 2011 at 07:20 PM
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This articles says many things right and long overdue. in our profession there are different views about Africa and how to help tackling development or protection problems.
It is important to notice that people with many years in Africa and experience with NGOs, tend to agree with the views of the author. That usually media and information campaigns are left in the hands of young and relatively inexperienced people, recently graduated and that have not yet grasp the reality of the place and that do not understand Africa, in fact they believe they know it better than Africans and this is shameful.
I hope the media was more responsible, that will be the beginning of the end of this deformation of a continent that has a lot to offer, and to aim for. Through our work, though limited, we have been trying to denounce this negative and simplistic vision of so many realities, countries and cultures. So Many thanks to the author and the journal to pointing it out and please be aware that not all NGOs practice this, it will be unfair for those who try not to.
Victor Africa Siglo 21 (http://www.21africa.org/)
Posted by victorts on Mon 21 Mar 2011 at 05:48 AM
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I recommend the following book for insider facts about what is currently considered development aid to Africa and the role of NGOs and the United Nations in particular. It is important to grasp that aid is a well contended business which is not necessarily primarly aimed at helping the poor. "U.N. a Cosa Nostra" on sales at Amazon.com should help understanding what are the issues at stake and how Africa's issues can best be adressed
Posted by Keija on Mon 21 Mar 2011 at 06:25 PM
6 Comments
In terms of the more recent photographs from Cote D’Iv, the other day I was scanning another blog and came across a photograph of a chaotic skirmish, with fallen bodies and bullet casings in the street. I at first assumed that it was a eight year-old photograph from Monrovia, when it was an eight-hour-old photograph from Abidjan. I am not saying I am equating the two countries or conflicts– they are of course quite different, no matter what happens with Gbagbo. But for me personally, the visual/atmospheric similarities, and what they might imply and reveal for the severity of the situation, illuminated the situation in a way that I will admit reading the lucid reporting has not. I experienced the photo much differently than digesting an account of raids of certain neighborhoods– it made me realize not how awful the situation could be, but how dire it already is, even if it is contained in certain sections of one city.
That photo from Kashmir is awesome.
Safe Travels, Glenna!
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I think it’s bad that you pull photos off the NYT’s website and don’t even credit the photographers under the photos (especially being a photographer yourself). I disagree with you, I don’t think Ivory Coast is being widely covered by photographers at all and I really think you need to take into account the safety on the ground at the moment (or lack there of). Chris Blattman or Jina Moore’s blogs “delve into the details and nuances of just what is going on in Ivory Coast” they can do that comfortably and safely from anywhere. You are not giving these photographers enough credit…
“The question is what each photograph tells us about the politics of the situation, and the answer, I fear, is very little.” How can you make that kind of judgment by looking at one photo from each photographer? And in my opinion, this was the poor choice of a nyt’s photo editor. I think you are being incredibly too harsh on your peers. Instead of sitting behind your computer putting everyone else down (publicly!), why don’t you go shoot in Sudan or Ivory Coast?
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Hi Sam,
In my post, I make it very clear that I do not at all think this situation is related to shortcomings on the parts of any of these photographers and is instead related to a media system and the editorial demands of the news cycle. And since my own work isn’t usually news photography, and the system that requires visual cliches is not one that I want to feed, I’m looking elsewhere for stories and images at the moment.
Also, I think it’s important to debate these things – whether on the ground, at a computer, or anywhere in between.
Thanks for sharing your opinion.
Glenna
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Also, note, NYT had a slideshow of the Ic situation, by the same photographer, that did more documenting and less illustrating. Again, I would argue this is about the demands of the news environment and not about any shortcomings on the parts of photographers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/world/africa/18ivory.html?ref=ivorycoast
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Although I would actually prefer to do it from Ivory Coast, where I could talk to people, I get what Sam’s saying. Respect risk. But I also think, Glenna, you make a really important point about the systematic nature of the media’s visual cliches. (I think there’s also a set of writing cliches that your analysis describes exactly, for what it’s worth.) I’m often struck by how powerful they are when the kind of images you describe appear next to stories I’ve tried to write in a way that avoids, or overcomes, or just ignores, media cliches. It’s always jarring, and I often wonder what goes through people’s minds as the choose the photos that illustrate a story — alas, it’s so rare that anyone’s given a chance to tell a story visually, with minimal text, especially in breaking news situations. Sometimes it feels like it’s the photograph’s job to ramp up the reader’s adrenaline and get them to bother with the words…
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A photographer, whether news or fashion or cookery, composes a picture for publication. As photographer you rapidly learn what the pictures editor and page designer are going to use or lose. If you stop feeding them, they stop feeding you – it is the system and it works.
And a war is a war is a war. The war pictures will tell the same old stories from the same old near-neutral pov. Boer War, Spanish Civil War, Shetlands War, whatever… Yeah, the colour gets better, the depth of focus improves. Same pictures. Cliche.
Sometimes, not often, there is a hint of something else, an understanding or revalation of the horror which is what I think you are looking for.
Those pictures rise above news and become Art, But those Art pics are terribly rare, and seldom composed. I ‘m thinking of the naked girl running from napalm, of the summary execution of a suspected enemy, of the 1976 Soweto man screaming while carrying a dying child. The photographers were all just lucky to hit the shutter at exactly the right time. Does random chance do it for you?
The new media coming out of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya at the moment is not a war cliche (yet). Its naive Art. Very inept, very real. Hosepiped video from a crappy cellphone lens tells much more of the story than does a crafted 20 megapixel still pic from a Nikon. Does amateur reality do it for you?
If you want to take it further please do illustrate your words and curate here a few of the composed war pics that you consider are not a cliche, that go beyond the call of duty and tell the whole story of the war in one pic. I look forward to it.
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