[Media-watch] Coverage of aid issues slumps - Guardian - 5 July 2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,1254051,00.html



Coverage of aid issues slumps

Factual shows on developing world 'have halved since 1989'

Matt Wells, media correspondent
Monday July 5, 2004
The Guardian

Twenty years after Michael Buerk's seminal reports that woke up the world to
the famine in Ethiopia, television coverage of the developing world has
slumped to its lowest level.

Research commissioned by Britain's leading aid charities shows that the
amount of factual programming about the subject has halved since the
organisations started monitoring it, in 1989. The post-September 11 world
means that coverage of international affairs has remained high in news
bulletins, but most of this is attributed to the so-called war on terror.
The charities say other regions and subjects are being squeezed out.

ITV1 and Channel Five are said to be failing their public service
commitments, while the coverage on the BBC is "alarmingly poor", the
charities say. Don Redding, coordinator of 3WE, a coalition that includes
Oxfam, Save the Children, Voluntary Services Overseas and Christian Aid,
said the media regulator Ofcom was failing in its statutory duty to ensure
adequate coverage of "matters of international significance or interest".

The research, carried out for 3WE (the Third World and Environment
Broadcasting Project) by the University of Westminster, found that the
decline in non-news factual programming about the developing world began in
the early 90s.

While there is a proliferation of travel programmes and "sunshine" property
shows, there were only 24 factual programmes about politics, development,
the environment and human rights in developing countries, a fall of 25%
since 2000-01.

In the past year, ITV1 did not show any programmes about development, the
environment or human rights. BBC1 broadcast only one. The BBC's record was
boosted by the digital channel BBC4, which aired 42 hours of programmes
defined by the survey as "harder", such as Holidays in the Danger Zone and
Chavez: Inside the Coup.

History programmes accounted for a quarter of the total factual
international programming on BBC2 and Channel 4 in 2003. While Five did not
show any programmes about development and environmental issues, the amount
of broadcasting about international history increased significantly from
fewer than three hours in 1998-99 to nearly 30 hours last year.

The increased focus on global affairs after September 11 has led to a
significant increase in international stories on the main evening news
bulletins. Half of the Ten O'Clock News's output on BBC1 last year was
devoted to foreign affairs, the highest ever level. In 1975 this figure was
24%. Channel 4 News devoted 39% of its coverage to foreign affairs, a level
that has remained about the same since it began.

Paul Mylrea, head of media at Oxfam, said British viewers were ill informed
about the developing world beyond the "war on terror". "While news planners
have changed their policy to track the post-9/11 world, factual programme
commissioners appear to be burying their heads in the sand. The statistics
make for grim reading."

Penny Lawrence, director of international programmes at VSO, said: "It's
evident that there isn't enough factual programming to help inform public
interest in the developing world. What is needed is imaginative coverage,
telling stories that show how other peoples' and lives are relevant to our
own."

ITV did not want to comment specifically on the report, but it generally
believes that the BBC has a greater responsibility in this area.

A BBC spokesman said: "The BBC is making a strong commitment to the
reporting of the developing world. In the last year BBC2's foreign
programming was relaunched with a more prominent scheduling for its new
series This World.

"Recent programmes in the series have covered a range of developing
countries - including One Day of War, a unique portrait of war on one day in
16 locations around the globe."

He said Panorama pursued a "strongly international agenda", covering such
subjects as Zimbabwe and Rwanda.