Colombian boys walk in the Nelson Mandela neighbourhood of Cartagena. Photo by ELIANA APONTE
LONDON (AlertNet)- All emergencies are not created equal.
A tsunami of mythical proportions roars out of the Indian Ocean, kills up to 300,000 and prompts the public to empty their pockets like never before as media coverage goes into overdrive.
In contrast, war in Democratic Republic of Congo kills nearly 4 million and leaves thousands traumatised by rape and machete massacres, yet hardly registers in the global media.
Why do some humanitarian crises make the front pages while others wait in vain for their turn in the spotlight?
"(A tsunami is) simpler, visual and more dramatic, in ways that both drought and conflict aren&${esc.hash}39;t," said Paul Harvey, a research fellow at Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG), a British think tank.
An AlertNet survey launched in March highlighted 10 crises aid experts said had been neglected by global media.
The experts chose Congo, northern Uganda, western and southern Sudan, West Africa, Colombia, Chechnya, Nepal and Haiti as the most neglected humanitarian hotspots.
They also drew attention to the global AIDS pandemic and other infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.
Those polled cited a raft of reasons why some emergencies are "forgotten", not least the challenge of distilling complex crises such as Congo&${esc.hash}39;s down to simple soundbites or finding a thread of hope to help audiences empathise.
"The story is always the same," said Lindsey Hilsum, international editor of Britain&${esc.hash}39;s Channel 4 TV news. "It induces despair. It&${esc.hash}39;s expensive and dangerous, and one feels that there are no solutions and no end to it all."
&${esc.hash}39;ONE DISASTER A YEAR&${esc.hash}39;Victims of natural disasters are viewed as innocent bystanders caught out by nature, whereas analysts said long-running humanitarian crises such as complex civil conflicts were often difficult to package as fresh-sounding stories.
Logistical problems and tight budgets also put off news editors, analysts say.
In countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan, governments routinely refuse to give journalists visas, while reporting in Congo can mean hitching a ride on an aid plane, trekking through the jungle or guessing when the next ferry will arrive.
And all for a story unlikely to make the front page.
"If you had a similar natural disaster (to the tsunami) in Africa three months from now, I don&${esc.hash}39;t think you&${esc.hash}39;d have the same media coverage (or) the same consequences, because it&${esc.hash}39;s only maybe once a year that the Western public is willing to be moved by disasters on that level," said Gorm Rye Olsen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.
Every now and then, an astounding statistic can make a crisis newsworthy.
International Rescue Committee (IRC) has calculated the toll of Congo&${esc.hash}39;s war, and estimates that 3.8 million people have died since 1998.
"Our mortality survey got??a surprising second wind because of the tsunami," said Anne C. Richard, IRC&${esc.hash}39;s vice president for government relations and advocacy. "Journalists wanting to contrast the response with deaths elsewhere were able to draw from the dismal figures in our survey."
Without a topical tsunami to use as a news peg to put humanitarian issues on the media agenda, stories of geopolitical importance such as Middle East turmoil and "the war on terror" hog the international limelight, analysts say.
"The world&${esc.hash}39;s obsession with Iraq has pushed to the margins many other scenes of mass violence," said Gareth Evans, head of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank.
Without TV time, aid experts say the general public is unlikely to donate in large quantities, as they did after the tsunami when individual donations to charities outpaced initial offers from governments, leaving them rushing to catch up.
"The media is a huge factor in getting people to be generous," Oxfam Great Britain&${esc.hash}39;s humanitarian funding manager, Orla Quinlan, said. "If they&${esc.hash}39;re visually engaged, that brings it home and makes it real to them.
"There&${esc.hash}39;s no doubt the media play a role in putting crises on the political agenda, which the international community and donors respond then respond to," she said.
MEDIA MAKES A DIFFERENCEBut some researchers say the link between airtime or column inches and donations is not clear-cut.
They called the tsunami an anomaly because money from private individuals is usually a drop in the ocean compared with aid spending by governments and international institutions.
HPG&${esc.hash}39;s Harvey estimated that under normal circumstances, donations from the general public made up about 30 to 40 percent of relief expenditure for agencies like Concern Worldwide and Oxfam.
According to Harvey and Olsen, these large-scale donors are usually less susceptible to the whims of the media, so the tsunami was unusual in forcing them to play catch-up with donations from the public.
"Governments give aid in places with political and strategic interest to them," Harvey said.
"That&${esc.hash}39;s why funding skyrocketed in Afghanistan after 9/11 and jumped in Tajikistan when donor governments thought they could offset terrorism in that region."
Danish researcher Olsen said: "Security concern is the most important argument.
"It&${esc.hash}39;s also a question of concerned individuals and committed organisations being on the ground where things are taking place, and being in a position to lobby and have good connections in the different headquarters of the big donor organisations.
"Thirdly comes media coverage. But never trust it!"
Olsen co-wrote a 2002 paper, "Humanitarian crises: what determines the level of emergency assistance? - media coverage, donor interests and the aid business".
Some donors - especially the European Community Humanitarian Office - pride themselves on funding so-called "forgotten emergencies".
However weak the link between media coverage and funding, aid workers say better media coverage of low-profile humanitarian crises can still make a difference.
George Graham, East Africa programme officer for International Rescue Committee UK, said more coverage of northern Uganda&${esc.hash}39;s war -- where more than 25,000 children have been abducted to serve as soldiers and sex slaves - could highlight it as a test case for an international criminal court.
"Greater media engagement could have a really positive effect," he said. At the very least, the presence of journalists provides some comfort to people caught up in a crisis.
"It may be a blessing to die in front of a camera - then at least the world will get to know about it," Olsen quoted a letter by a Sudanese man, which was smuggled out of his country during heavy fighting.
"But it is painful to die or be killed, without anyone knowing it."
Read more about the AlertNet top 10 "forgotten" emergencies:
- Congo war tops AlertNet poll of &${esc.hash}39;forgotten&${esc.hash}39; crises
- FACTSHEET: AlertNet top 10 &${esc.hash}39;forgotten&${esc.hash}39; emergencies
- ANALYSIS: World&${esc.hash}39;s &${esc.hash}39;forgotten&${esc.hash}39; crises scream for attention
- GRAPHIC: AlertNet top 10 &${esc.hash}39;forgotten&${esc.hash}39; emergencies
- AlertNet &${esc.hash}39;forgotten&${esc.hash}39; crisis poll: who said what
- Tsunami coverage dwarfs forgotten crises, says research
- QUIZ: What do you know about forgotten emergencies?
- VIEWPOINT: Media short-sightedness is truly staggering
- FACTSHEET: Poll spotlights grim litany of crises
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