From the tsunami to hurricane Katrina, 2005 will be remembered as the year of humanitarian disasters. But will the media response to these events also go down in history as a disaster?
You wouldn't think so given the extensive press coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami, which helped the UN raise 80 percent of its emergency appeal in 10 days.
But the Kashmir earthquake in October, in which more people were left homeless than in the tsunami, did not attract sustained press coverage. The quake has almost fallen off the news agenda -- and the UN reported a poor response to its emergency appeal. Press coverage of conflict in northern Uganda, and famine in Africa, was even briefer.
So could news editors be suffering from "compassion fatigue"? Was the press coverage and charitable donation after the tsunami a one-off? These are the concerns of aid agencies anxious that media, public and government react disproportionally to certain disasters.
"Media coverage is one of the key things that leads to the imbalance of aid. The public are generous once they're made aware of a disaster. But they only have partial exposure to events," said Brendan Cox, emergency specialist at Oxfam.
"News editors have quite a crude idea that the public is not interested in black people dying [in a country] far away. So it's hard for us to get past these gatekeepers. The media shouldn't be the arbiter of humanitarian intervention," he said.
Though Cox would not describe the media coverage of the humanitarian disasters in 2005 as a failure, he says that Oxfam commits the vast majority of its media resources to pushing interest in "forgotten emergencies."
The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one example. Reports show that one month's death toll exceeded 31,000, and that 2.8 million are displaced. Yet in the UK for instance, there have been just 53 national newspaper stories on the conflict, compared with 4,543 on the tsunami.
Possible reasons for this are the difficulty of access and the dangers of reporting.
Other emergencies may go under-reported when stories are deemed too complex or when there's difficulty getting a human angle. Disasters in places with a "home connection" may get more attention.
So could next year see a change of approach? Mark Jones, editor of Reuters AlertNet (www.AlertNet.org), reckons it could. AlertNet, a news network geared primarily toward NGOs and humanitarian specialists, has just won nearly ?500,000 (US$867,000) in financial backing from the UK government to finance the first two years of a project called MediaBridge. This will be an online community for journalists reporting on humanitarian crises, providing tools and contextual content, as well as monitoring press coverage of such events.
"The media tend to go for `acts of God'", says Jones. "But if I tried to sell you the story of Congo, you might say it could wait until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next decade."
"I'd like to challenge journalists to think again about other ways to report humanitarian crises."
The project, which Jones insists will be completely independent, is the result of a study conducted by the Columbia School of Journalism which found that journalists reporting on crises need more background facts, tips on breaking stories, and information on relief agencies. MediaBridge plans to provide such information.
Another key function will be to help journalists find a new angle to a story. "You can't report that another 4,000 died in northern Uganda last month -- that's not news. What we're looking for is not a news scoop, but a contextual scoop," Jones says.
The parent website, AlertNet, receives 60,000 visitors a day. It was founded in 1997 as a response to poor reporting on the Rwandan genocide of 1994. "There was a delay in reporting this -- partly due to a lack of interest," Jones says.
Given the demise in overseas correspondents, a resource that encourages fairer reporting and the sharing of information could be an increasingly useful tool.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, people have been asking if Taiwan is the next Ukraine. At a G7 meeting of national leaders in January, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that Taiwan “could be the next Ukraine” if Chinese aggression is not checked. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that if Russia is not defeated, then “today, it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it can be Taiwan.” China does not like this rhetoric. Its diplomats ask people to stop saying “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.” However, the rhetoric and stated ambition of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Taiwan shows strong parallels with