The Media and International Disasters, or Don't Hold Your Famine During the Olympics

When it comes to the media, 45 times more Africans have to die than Europeans to get the same kind of coverage.

Children line up for food in South Sudan.

Some black humour from the world of relief and development: “If you are planning a famine, don’t hold it in summer—we’re on vacation then. Also, avoid U.S. election years.”

That old and sad “joke” we used to tell ourselves years ago to explain why some disasters got covered, and others didn't, came back to me as I thought about the lack of attention being paid to the terrible hunger crisis today in parts of Africa and Yemen.

An estimated 20 million people face starvation in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and parts of Kenya and Nigeria—the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945 according to the UN.

And yet, although the world has known about the situation for months, there has been hardly any news about it in the media.

Sure, there’s been a bit of coverage here and there—the CBC did a fine job in early May. But in general, there has been mostly silence in newspapers, radio or TV.

Why is this the case? I can think of a number of reasons.

First, it’s hard for journalists to get into the most-devastated areas—even NGOs have trouble getting food to those who need it most.

Second, media outlets also have fewer resources and staff to cover stories. Even if they wanted to cover it, it would be hard to find the funds.

Third, it’s hard to tell the story of a famine, which takes months to develop. Unlike a hurricane or earthquake, there are no great pictures to show as the tragedy slowly unfolds.

Fourth there’s the Trump effect; the new President, and his unpredictable ways, has sucked up much of the media oxygen. Throw in all the other news competing for attention, and time for the famine can be hard to find.

Finally, there’s the general fatigue everyone feels over the extended Syria crisis. We hardly have space in our hearts for another disaster. And the media isn’t stupid; they can count the clicks on their websites. They know what people are reading—or not.

What disasters get covered by the media and which don’t was the subject of a 2007 study of major U.S. TV network news by Thomas Eisensee and David Stromberg.

Titled “News, Droughts, Floods, and U.S. Disaster Relief,” and published in the May, 2007 issue Quarterly Journal of Economics, the study looked at 5,000 natural disasters between 1968 and 2002 that affected 125 million people—and how they were covered by ABC, CBC, NBC and CNN.

The study found that coverage was affected by whether the disaster occurs at the same time as other newsworthy events, such as the Olympic Games, along with where it happened and how many people died.

(This certainly was true during the 2012 Sahel food crisis, which took place at the same time as the London Olympics; the media dedicated most of its reporters to the games, and the events took up most of the space and time.)

The authors found that while the media cover around 30 percent of the earthquakes and volcanic disasters, less than five percent of droughts and food shortages are covered—despite many more people dying due to droughts and food shortages.

They even came up with a numerical comparison: For every one or two people who dies in an earthquake or volcano, 32,920 people must die of food shortage to receive the same media coverage.

The study also revealed geographical bias, showing that it 45 times more Africans have to die in a disaster than Europeans to get the same kind of media coverage.

(These findings echo the old 1960s “Racial Equivalence Scale” created by American reporters to show the minimum number of people who had to die in plane crashes in different countries, compared to the U.S., before there was coverage. According to the scale, “one hundred Czechs were equal to 43 Frenchmen, and the Paraguayans were at the bottom.”)

While media coverage of disasters in the developing world is sporadic, one thing it can do is spur government action: “We conclude that media coverage induces extra U.S. relief to victims in Europe and on the American continent, at the expense of victims elsewhere,” the authors state.

This makes the role of the media doubly important; depending on what they choose to focus on, people may live or die as governments respond by providing aid.

But what does this mean for today, when the media is greatly diminished by falling circulation and fewer viewers and listeners?

Unlike during the period of the study, the media has less impact. It may reach fewer of the public, but the government still pays attention.

If elected officials see something in the news often enough, they will conclude that their constituents also care about it—otherwise, why so much coverage? 

Media reports can then spur the government to action, by doing things like offering to match donations by Canadians who want to respond to the disaster.

At a time when the media is trying to convince people about its importance, helping to save the lives of millions of people dying of hunger is a pretty good case to make.

For more on this topic, and the role media consumers play in the amount of media coverage we get, see When it Comes to Media Coverage of Drowned Refugees or Dead Gorillas, We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us.

For the Media the Future is Digital, Internal Memos Show

Internal memos from two major North American media outlets have put a spotlight on how journalists are viewing the future.

The first, from the Boston Globe, shows how newspapers are trying to leave the world of print behind.

In the memo, editor Brian McGrory tells staff that it is time for the Globe to “once and for all break the stubborn rhythms of a print operation, allowing us to unabashedly pursue digital subscriptions.”

As reported by Joseph Lichterman for Nieman Lab, McGrory goes on to say that the Globe needs to publish stories earlier in the day, restructure beats, create new audience engagement no longer see print as the dominant driver of workflows.

“None of the changes detailed here will come as any surprise, though in total, they represent significant change,” McGrory wrote.

The Globe is not alone; over the past two years, newspapers such as The Dallas Morning News, the Miami Herald, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune have all enacted similar initiatives.

The other major media outlet to share its vision of the future in a memo to staff was the CBC in Canada.

Although the CBC is not beholden to print timelines, it has been bound to the idea of supper hour and 10 p.m. newscasts in the past.

No more. In a memo to staff, General Manager and Editor in Chief Jennifer McGuire wrote that, in the future, the CBC will be driven by digital.

Digital news, she said, “needs to be a part of everything we do, not a stand-alone pillar of our news service.”

To make this possible, the CBC needs to make sure that all its journalists have more opportunities to be connected to its digital news operations.

The CBC also needs to “redirect resources to create more original and investigative journalism and to better serve audiences on emerging platforms” and The National, its flagship news program, needs to “inextricably linked to the reinvention of our news service. “

One of the key figures in the changes is Brodie Fenlon, senior director of digital at the CBC. I posted about his vision for the future earlier on my blog.

For both media outlets, the story is still the most important thing, regardless of what platform it is on. And they want to honour those who still value print and traditional TV viewing.

But increasingly, the most important platform is digital. 

At one time, the way we interacted with the media was through “appointment journalism.” That is, we got the news when the media was ready to deliver it.

Those days are gone. They have been completely disrupted and disintermediated by the Internet and the Smartphone.

The media has also been impacted by unbundling. For newspapers and magazines, the only economical way to share news in the past was to package it into daily, weekly or monthly issues.

But people don’t want to wait until the media have enough articles so it makes financial sense to release it; they want it now.

Or, as someone put it, don’t wait until tomorrow to tell me what happened yesterday.

Today we want the news when we want it; we won’t wait until the media says it is ready.

For the media, breaking away from these rhythms is hard. If you spent your career working towards deadlines like the afternoon paper or the supper hour news, these changes are tough.

But media consumers won’t have it any other way. For the media, it is adapt or die.

As McGory of the Globe put it, the goal is to be “more nimble, more innovative, and more inclined to take worthwhile risk” in order to be a leader in sharing news.

Or just to stay alive.

Doing good is hard work. So is paying for it.

Siloam Mission, a Winnipeg charity that serves homeless people, has come in for criticism recently by a Winnipeg Free Press columnist who says it is spending too much to raise funds. He followed with another column charging they send out too many appeal letters. Tired of seeing this important non-profit take it on the chin, I decided to respond with an op-ed in the Free Press about the realities facing charities today when it comes to fundraising.

Siloam Mission—and other charities—have come in for some criticism lately over fundraising practices.

In particular, questions have been raised about the number of direct mail letters being sent by various groups, and about the amount of money spent to raise funds.

While no organization wants to spend money it does not need to spend, what’s true for business is also true for charities—you have to spend money to make money.

That has been true for decades. What’s different today is that charities need to spend more than they used to in order to keep providing their services.

When I started in the non-profit sector in the 1980s, things were different, and simpler.

Back then, it was much easier to reach potential donors. If you could get news about your appeal into newspapers, radio and TV, you pretty much covered almost everyone you wanted to reach.

Things are very different today. Newspaper circulation is declining, as are the number of people tuning into radio or TV news.

Today, we live in a noisy and fractured world of communications. Not only are people bombarded with messages from many different sources, they also have many more options for getting information—primarily through social media.

Breaking through this clutter is difficult, and expensive. It requires focus and repetition. And even then you may only be reaching a fraction of the audience, compared to ten or 20 years ago.

Then there’s the matter of donor loyalty. In the not-to-distant past, charities could count on donors selecting a charity for life, then making regular donations.

Today, for many people donor loyalty is mostly a thing of the past—especially for younger people. Often, the only way to get a donation is to send one, two or more direct mail letters, in the hopes of getting a cheque in return.

Speaking of cheques, if you are under the age of 30, you probably don’t write many of those. Most transactions today are now by credit or debit cards, and much of that is online. 

One of the fastest-growing expenses for charities is the service charges from credit card companies and businesses that provide encryption services.

And what about all those direct mail letters? Studies show that direct mail continues to be one of the best ways to raise funds. It is certainly better than e-mail or social media, which has not yet shown itself to be a good way to appeal to donors.  

Finally, about those charity rankings; is that the best way to rate a charity? Many in the non-profit sector are uncomfortable with them. This includes people like Bruce MacDonald, President and CEO of Imagine Canada, an umbrella group for Canadian charities.

The rankings, he told me, measure the wrong thing. They are “skewed to having a heavy emphasis on the cost side of business,” he said, adding they “perpetuate the belief that ensuring adequate resources to deliver quality programs is a bad thing.”

What MacDonald objects to is how the highest rankings are given to groups that spend the least on things like staff salaries, administration, communications and fundraising. The ones that need to spend more to deliver their programs end up with lower scores.

What MacDonald would rather see measured is impact—what effect the charity has on the lives of people it is trying to help. If it costs more to help someone beat an addiction, escape homelessness or overcome poverty, that should be seen as money well spent.

“If you want real impact, you need to have real investment,” he stated.

This was a point forcefully made by Dan Pallotta in his much-viewed 2013 Ted Talk titled “The way we talk about charities is dead wrong.” In it, he called out “the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities.”

Too many nonprofits, he said, “are rewarded for how little they spend, not for what they get done.” Instead of equating frugality with morality, he suggests donors “start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments, even if that comes with big expenses.”

The non-profit sector today is experiencing dramatic challenges. Needs in Canada and around the world are rising.  At the same time, the pool of the most faithful and generous givers—older people—is literally dying. 

Coupled with a decline in attendance at worship services (religious people are another major source of funds for charities), non-profits are struggling to raise the funds they need for their important services.

Doing good is hard work. So is paying for it. And it’s getting tougher every day.

From the April 21, 2017 Winnipeg Free Press.

Manitoba Opera Uses Performance Featuring Suicide to Connect with Community

Arts groups can’t just keep operating “in the traditional way.” 

It used to be that if you were going to put on a show, you just put on a show.

No need to worry about community concerns, critiques or trigger warnings.

No more, as Manitoba Opera has discovered.

This spring, the Opera is performing Werther, an opera that romanticizes suicide.

In a province like Manitoba, where someone kills themselves every other day on average, and where some northern Indigneous communities have experienced suicide epidemics, putting on a show that inspired copycat suicides can be a real challenge.

So, what’s an opera company to do?

In the case of Manitoba Opera, you use it as an educational opportunity.

Werther, the opera they are performing, is the 18^th century story of a young poet who falls in love with a beautiful woman who is engaged to another man.

Unable to have a relationship with her, and to give her up, he finds peace by taking his own life.

The story, first published as a novel by Goethe in 1774, was turned into an opera by Jules Massenet in 1887. The publication of the story reportedly led to the so-called “Werther effect”—copy-cat suicides.

With this in mind, Manitoba Opera decided to team up with Mood Disorders of Manitoba to promote discussion about the issue of suicide at a panel discussion in April.

“We want to use opera as an art form to have a conversation about issues of concern in the community,” says director of marketing Darlene Ronald.

In addition to the panel discussion, students attending dress rehearsals will hear a presentation from Mood Disorders about healthy perspectives on love and relationships, and there will be two pages in program about suicide prepared by the organization.

For Ronald, providing educational events like the panel discussion is a way for Manitoba Opera to engage the community.

“We want to be part of the lives of people in the community, and find ways to connect more strongly with people,” she says.

Of course, she also hopes that some who attend the panel discussion—who may never been to the opera before—might also come to hear a performance.

But even if they don’t, “we hope they will still be touched by it, and what we are trying to do,” she says.

Offering events like this is also a recognition that arts groups can’t just keep operating “in the traditional way,” Ronald says.

“The arts are changing, and also how people view them,” she adds, noting that arts groups need to find new ways to connect with audiences.

This isn’t the first time Manitoba Opera has reached out in this way. Last year, for the production Of Mice and Men, which features an intellectually disabled character, the Opera teamed up with groups that work with people with intellectual disabilities.

In 2014, when the Opera performed Fidelio—the story of a woman seeking to free her husband, a political prisoner, from jail—they used the production to celebrate the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and also to highlight the plight of political prisoners around the world.

Refugees from other countries living in Manitoba were invited to be involved as extras in the performance.

The two productions were “a great experience for us, and for our patrons, a great way to talk about these issues and the things we have in common,” Ronald says.

Their efforts have been noticed by others, such as Opera America, the association for almost 150 opera companies in North America, and by OperaAnchorage, which used Manitoba Opera’s model to honour veterans.

“It was great to see something we did recognized in this way, and rippling through to others,” says Ronald.

While glad to offer these extras, she says that it isn’t easy—Manitoba Opera’s staff is small, and resources are tight.

“But it’s important to do,” she shares. “We hope we can add to the conversation in the community. That’s our aim.”

I think Manitoba Opera is on to something. At a time when money is tight, audience numbers are declining, and many are questioning the value of the arts, arts organizations need to find new ways to connect to their communities.

This includes linking what they do to the issues and concerns of the communities they live in—and that they ask for support, both in terms of attendance and taxpayer dollars.

Will it work? Will gestures like this turn around the fortunes of groups like opera companies? It’s hard to know.

One thing is for sure, though. At a time when it is hard to get any attention, putting on programs like Manitoba Opera did on suicide can generate additional publicity, including outside of the arts section (as happened for Manitoba Opera in the Winnipeg Free Press city section).

And if it makes someone feel more warmly towards Manitoba Opera—even if they never attend a performance—that’s not such a bad thing, either.

Getting Outside the Bubble: How the Vegan Movement Started Disrupting U.S. Culture

A big challenge for those committed to a cause is getting caught in a self-reinforcing bubble, or echo chamber.

Within that bubble, everything makes sense. And why not? Everyone you encounter believes in and accepts the basic suppositions: Foreign aid is important, peace is better than militarism, action needs to be taken on climate change, etc.

The main problem, of course, is that the arguments that everyone accepts inside the bubble often make no sense to those on the outside—the very people who need to be won over if the cause is to succeed.

That’s where the American vegan movement found itself in the early 2000s.

According to Chase Purdy in an article on Quartz, titled How the Vegan Movement Broke Out of Its Echo Chamber and Finally Started Disrupting Things, “the movement was always its worst enemy.”

Members of the movement “made their first impressions bellowing into bullhorns, desperate to make a difference by willing it with a loud enough voice,” he wrote.

But actual engagement with non-vegans “was a weakness as people tended to ignore the passionate subculture with a rigid gospel prohibiting use of any and all animal products.”

For the most part, he wrote. “the only marks left by their efforts throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s were those scuffed into their shoes as police officers dragged them off the streets.”

And then, he says, something changed.

A small group of vegans decided to take a different, a controversial—within the movement—tack.

The 2001 schism splintered the vegan community into two camps: absolutists who tout veganism as an all-or-nothing moral imperative, and pragmatists who quietly advocate for incremental change.

Over the past 20 years the pragmatic side has won out, with the result, according to Purdy, that “the movement has morphed into one of the biggest disruptors of the American food system.”

The key message behind the effort was that getting people to eat less meat was easier than getting people to eat no meat—and that you might be able to spare more animals by doing that.

To propel this message forward, the small group decided on an inside strategy or trying to change farm animal welfare policy, pressuring companies to improve housing conditions for pigs and hens, and drafting legislation and ballot measures to get the issues in front of voters.

They also enlisted the support of groups like the Humane Society of the United States, which has enough money, smarts and political power to influence policy in that country, along with sympathetic CEOs of various companies.

Today the work of that small group of radical pragmatists has led to the creation of The Good Food Institute, a lobbying shop in Washington that represents the interests of meat-alternative food products.

According to Purdy, all of this has resulted in a force that is “a legitimate threat to meat industry practices.”

How did it do this? Instead of throwing red paint at places like McDonald’s, they picked on farm animal production techniques that appealed to consumer emotions, got issues on to ballots, and forced companies to “defend practices that can seem draconian. Should piglets have their tails cut off without anesthesia? Should egg-laying hens and farrowing sows be crammed into cages in which they can barely move?”

Despite the success, not everyone in the movement is happy or onside.

Says Purdy: “The 2001 split in the vegan movement was painful, leaving behind feelings of resentment that never healed. From the absolutist point-of-view, the pragmatists diminished the importance of fighting for animal lives by concentrating their energies on farm animal welfare.”

Those absolutist tactics might make true believers feel good, but they estrange the movement from the mainstream culture, and fails to change behavior, Purdy says.

Or, as he put it, quoting one of the pragmatists, “when you ask people for all or nothing, typically you get nothing.”

The story of the vegan movement in the U.S. has parallels to other many causes that people dearly believe in. As long as true believers stay in their bubbles, and demand all-or-nothing in terms of commitment, they will forever be sidelined and ineffective.

Playing the insider game has its dangers, of course, but not working with the culture and the political structure is also a dangerous proposition. And isn’t getting something better than getting nothing?

That’s the big question facing social change groups. What’s your answer?

For more on this topic, see my post What NGOs Can Learn from the Success of the Gay Marriage Movement.

More Solutions Journalism: DCReport Wants to Empower Readers

"Action Boxes" enable people to do something about issues that concern them.

Earlier I wrote about solutions journalism, a new way for journalists not just to report about problems, but do suggest ways media consumers can do something about them.

Later, I noted that the Christian Science Monitor decided to adopt this new way of reporting the news.

Now another news outlet, DCReport, is doing something similar through what it calls “Action Boxes.”

DCReport is the brainchild of veteran and Pulitzer Prize-winning American reporter David Cay Johnston.

While many know about DCReport for its scoop about Trump’s 2005 tax return, its

bread-and-butter coverage is focused on the minutiae of politics and policy—not presidential scoops.

“Our goal here is to cover what the administration and Congress do, not what they tweet or say they’re going to do,” said Johnston in an interview.

But it’s more than just letting readers know what is happening; DCReport also wants to empower them to do something about it, if they are so inclined.

One of the site’s core features is the “Action Box,” which offers links to official proceedings, contact information for relevant politicians, and other information.

Here’s an example:

In an article on Nieman Lab about DCReport’s new approach, Johnston notes that the idea that news organizations can do more to empower readers to affect political change is an uncomfortable idea for many reporters consider it in conflict with journalistic norms of neutrality.

“The approach for most is to stand back and be apart from all of this stuff. And I just don’t agree with that,” he says, arguing that this approach often makes the information “useless” to readers.

“That’s one of the reasons people have turned away from newspapers,” he says, adding “they’re full of richly reported, detailed, and useless information. We want people to reacquire a sense that this is their government.”

For Johnston, the goal is to help strengthen the connection between people and their government.

“One of the biggest and most important, but unreported stories, in this country is the extent to which our democracy is in trouble because people feel that the federal government is alien to them, that they don’t have any power or influence over it,” he told Nieman Lab.

 “From the moment I started thinking about this, I knew we wanted to show people how to make the government more responsive to their needs. We’re going to empower people.”

What do you think? Would this improve journalism? Or is it crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed?

New Study on Youth & News: “If I don’t see it on social media, I’m not going to hear it”

Young people don’t follow the news as much as it follows them

A new study by the Knight Foundation has found that younger people have a definition of news that goes beyond traditional news outlets; they tend to find news by accident and online; and they don’t tend to trust the news media very much.

The report was based on focus groups with 52 people in their teens and 20s in the U.S., so it can hardly be called comprehensive. But its findings are not out of line with other research about younger people and news. (Like this Pew report about the state of the news in 2016.)

As an older person, I have witnessed this change in news-gathering habits. The only thing I’d add is that while studies like these focus on youth, in fact many of us who are older have also changed the way we look for and interact with news—and we are growing wary of it, too.

This also includes the way we get it (44% of American adults now get their news via Facebook).

In other words, it’s not just young people who are experiencing these changes; it’s happening across all demographics—and its shaking up the news industry.

As for the study, it found that:

The way young people encounter and understand news in their daily lives is rapidly evolving. They don’t consume news in the same way as older generations—wait for the supper hour news or the morning paper. Instead, it is all-on all the time on social media and mobile devices.

Said one participant: “If I don’t see it on social media, I’m not going to hear it.”

Or, as the researchers put it, “young people don’t follow the news as much as it follows them.”

(And as a college student famously said back in 2008 about why she didn’t follow the news: “If the news is important, it will find me.”)

News is frequently encountered by accident. Those of us who are older are accustomed to looking for news, usually in traditional places like newspapers or broadcasts.

That is not the case for younger people. For them, news comes and goes through their social media feeds. They aren’t looking for it; it pops up when a friend posts a news item and says “check this out.”

As one participant put it: “[I was] not purposefully looking for it. Like Facebook, you get a notification for Facebook or something and you click on it and you start scrolling.”

Said another: “You’re going to find a bunch of news articles that you didn’t necessarily go there to see, but you’re going to see them and you’re going to click on them…I wouldn’t know a lot of the news if I didn’t go on Facebook.”

Most teens and young adults express low levels of trust in the news media. Those of who are older have a vestigial trust in the news—we grew up seeing the media as authoritative and trustworthy. (Whether we should have done that is another question.)

Teens and young adults in the study expressed widespread skepticism about the news and assume that much of the information they encounter may be inaccurate or biased. For them, a news source is considered more credible when its biases are known.

The definition of news is changing. For older people, news is pretty easy to tell—it’s in a newspaper or newscast and shared by reporters and vetted by editors. But what is news in a world where those things don’t exist in the same way?

Says the study: “In much the same way that the news industry has been disrupted in the digital era, teens’ and young adults’ understanding of what “the news” is and should be has largely been unhinged from the traditional understanding of journalism and institutional authority.”

News for younger people, the study says, “is amorphous and often extends well beyond the content produced by traditional journalistic institutions.”

News isn’t any fun. Well, the study put it a different way: “News is ‘depressing,’ but it is something you need to know.” In that, younger and older people may be alike—I don’t find much of what passes for news today to be very uplifting. (See post on positivity).

Sharing news can be dangerous. Maybe this is more an American thing right now, but in that polarized atmosphere people see sharing news and opinions on social media as “having the potential to negatively affect one’s online reputation.”

Or, to put it another way, if you share a news item about President Trump, someone might take it the wrong way, or judge you to be a conservative or a liberal or a racist or . . .  whatever. It’s much easier to just not share anything online.

News from friends is more trustworthy. The study found that many participants consider user-generated content—especially live video—to be more trustworthy than mainstream media sources.

This is consistent with other research that shows people are more trusting of information shared by friends than far-away sources like newsrooms, and with a decision by Facebook to tweak its algorithm to favour information from friends.

Again, the study can be found here.