Not a seat was free on Tuesday 10 February at the Frontline Club, as a panel of experts convened for a discussion entitled Embedding with Aid Agencies: Editorial Integrity and Security Risks. The ideas of intention and interpretation dominated the evening, with the panel’s arguments and audience comments exposing a relationship of disconnect and simultaneous dependency between aid agencies and journalists. What happens when the two work together? The pros, cons, irritations and limitations experienced by both sides made for a lively debate.

L-r: Lisa Reilly and Siobhan Sinnerton

The event was organised in partnership with the European Interagency Security Forum and chaired by the co-founder and CEO of IRIN, Ben Parker. Speakers included: Polly Markandya, head of communications at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF); Lisa Reilly, executive coordinator of the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF); Michelle Betz, who works on media development with the UN and other aid agencies; and Siobhan Sinnerton, commissioning editor for news and current affairs at Channel 4.

The discussion began by covering the common ground between NGO workers and journalists. Betz, a former journalist herself, outlined the competitive economic picture. “The aid business really is big business, just as journalism is a business” she said. To a certain extent, NGOs and media outlets often share the same risks and liability issues when working in conflict and hostile environments. Betz experienced this first-hand when she was sentenced to five years hard labour by the Egyptian government for work that she did for an NGO. “It is not just journalists, such as those from Al Jazeera, that governments go after, but NGO workers as well,” she said.

Behind the simplified NGO-journalist dynamic remains a multi-faceted backdrop. Reilly reflected on her experience working at the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF). “Within NGOs we don’t have a consistent view, we often see gaps between the communications department and the rest of operations and programs in the first place,” she said. Nevertheless, when logistics are well planned, NGOs and journalists can work harmoniously with mutually beneficial results.

Sinnerton illustrated this point with a film made for Channel 4’s Unreported World on handicapped Syrian refugees in Lebanon, entitled The Invisible People. Sinnerton explained how Handicap International, the NGO involved in the film, saw a significant rise in donations after it aired. Sinnerton strongly advised that “transparency is the key for things not becoming massively unstuck in the field.” Apart from honesty, which all the panellists agreed was essential between NGOs and journalists, Markandya pointed out that it ultimately comes down to trust. “We have done a number of documentary projects recently and we have had to give up the illusion of control and trust the journalist to do a fair job,” she said.

What happens when the journalists themselves are unable to cover important stories?  This was the case with the recent high-risk Ebola epidemic in parts of West Africa. In order that the story reached the general public, Markandya explained how MSF partnered with a production company in order to design customised camera equipment that could be attached to doctors’ protective goggles and could withstand chemical de-contamination. The result was a pressing and highly emotive documentary broadcast by BBC Panorama.

L-r: Polly Markandya and Michelle Betz

However, too often the means of getting a story can taint relationships between aid organisations and journalists. Even when journalists abide by protocol, their good intentions can have a negative impact on the aid organisations involved. Reilly questioned, “should the journalists be saying ‘transport was provided by ‘X’ NGO’? It demonstrates the journalists’ ethics but what does that do to us and our security?”

While journalists go in and out of the field, NGOs often remain there in the longterm. Reilly emphasised how heavily their work relies on the acceptance of local communities, and how that fragile reality can be undone by careless reporters. Injecting the journalistic perspective, Sinnerton spoke in turn of the promises made by aid organisations that often contrasted with hostile receptions towards journalists on the ground. This steered the discussion back towards Markandya’s key argument that NGOs and journalists must work on “managing expectations”.

The dichotomy of protecting the subject versus exposing the story remains a sensitive one, and a number of audience members agreed that these two sides were often in opposition. Audience comments revolved around questions of favouritism between NGOs and certain news outlets, the difficulty of exercising complete transparency in practice, and the need for NGOs to relinquish control over media content. While aid workers and journalists may settle for what Betz called “a mutual mistrust,” the panel agreed that the understanding between the two has advanced. For all the new NGOs that are emerging globally and their young journalistic counterparts, this symbiotic relationship will no doubt continue.

Watch and listen back below:

“Does the Pubic Still Care?” was the poignant title of the discussion on conflict and disaster reporting which was chaired by Ben Parker at the Frontline Club on Thursday 23 October. The event was organised by the Oversees Development Institute and Humanitarian Policy Group. Channel 4 News anchor, Jon Snow, and senior reporter for the People and Power programme on Al Jazeera English, Juliana Ruhfus, were joined by experts in aid and development, Marc DuBois, former head of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Eva Svoboda, research fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute.

The event was being followed online #crisisreporting

The relationship of dependency and power that exists between aid agencies, the public and the media was the core focus of the evening. Using examples from Gaza to Haiti and East Timor, the panel illustrated the crisis and development each of these elements has undergone and how it has affected the other.

To begin the audience was taken back to the 1984 Ethiopia famine with Michael Burke’s compelling documentary report. Parker, who has worked in media and humanitarian aid for 20 years, opened the discussion with the following question:

“Can a news moment like Michael Burke’s piece happen again? . . . Can it ignite the public? Can it change the course of history in a small way? . . . Does TV in that same way still exist?”

Snow’s initial response was an affirmative yes. He used examples from the last four years of public response to make his case. For example, the 2010 Haiti earthquake saw the emergency fund raise it’s second largest ever donation. Snow said, “The stream is certainly not dry and I would argue that our connected digital world is making it easier for us to draw attention.”

DuBois similarly dismissed public disaster fatigue and focused on the power of compassion, saying “disaster is inherently compelling . . . compassion is alive and well”.

Ruhfus instead argued that the quality of giving has changed. She referred to the lack of clarity and neutrality in today’s media reports and national aid donations.

“The ‘us’ and ‘them’ that was very simple when Michael Burke made his films has totally shifted. . . . I am the enemy. I am no longer the ‘saviour’ and that’s a similar fate that aid agencies are dealing with too.”

Ruhfus implied that in the past aid agencies were able to function in an apolitical sphere. Svoboda’s standpoint was somewhere in between, to her mind although 9/11 had a negative impact on aid agencies they were always politicised. She argued that despite being more complex, today there are more actors, more competition and, importantly, more accountability. All four of the speakers agreed that more people in the world are aware of what is going on around them than ever before.

The discussion turned to the ever-present Ebola crisis and its slow journey to UK headlines. This highlighted the question of responsibility between the aid agencies and the media to expose conflicts and disasters adequately. Snow asked his fellow speakers, “How far did the aid agencies go in persuading governments that there was a crisis?”

In return he was asked by Svoboda and DuBois how many reports were not picked up by the media. Svoboda said, “Very often you will be faced with people who just don’t care, with states that don’t care about their international obligations.”

Snow clarified the media’s stance, “We are not in the field to raise money or bring relief in any form, but to tell the story.”

Despite his positive outlook Snow admitted the failure of the media coverage on Ebola and thus the insufficient pressure on the UK government. He expressed his frustrations as a journalist with failed government policies. Of the current humanitarian crisis caused by ISIS he said:

“ISIS is a direct consequence of our people, by our people I mean us Westerners. Somehow we made this mess. Of course it was there ready to be made but at least we could have left it to them to make it.”

Ruhfus looked to the public as a key factor and blamed too much negative foreign reporting. She said, “We are in a massive trap as news broadcasters. What do we do? We are loosing our audience because we are telling the ugly truth. How do we respond to that? Do we start making the bad news sound good?”

The media’s metamorphosis has prompted aid agencies to create more of their own media bridging the gap between the two. DuBois expressed his belief that traditional forms of media were no longer adequate. “Being detached and neutral does not sell anymore, people want something authentic.”

When the audience joined in the debate, one member called for a separation between conflict relief and disaster aid stating that the public is far less engaged in the former.

Another pressing comparison was made between development versus emergency aid. Svoboda outlined the dilemma of aid agencies regarding this. “You pass from a crisis into this development and state building and you want to believe it and you ignore the facts that it’s not as stable as you want it to be,” she said. She also called for realism and modesty above all else in her field. “Their needs to be honesty about what can be done, and that’s not always easy because aid org need the money to do the work so how do you do that by selling a story.”

Another audience member observed that given the number of critical issues in today’s world the definition of what constitutes a ‘crisis’ is diminishing. Whether it continues to undermine itself is another question. In any case, the evening ended on a positive note with Snow heralding the current ‘golden age of journalism’. While there may not have been clear answers, the right questions had been asked.

You can watch and listen to the event again here:

L-R: Mukesh Kapila, James Copnall, Lindsey Hilsum, Heather Pagano and Thomas Mawan Muortat discuss South Sudan.

The audience packed out the Frontline Club for the first event of the year on 8 January, a testament to the subject that has been dominating international headlines for the last few weeks – the crisis in South Sudan. A panel of experts from different fields, chaired by Channel 4 international editor Lindsey Hilsum, discussed the current fighting in the world’s youngest country, each offering valuable opinions on where it came from and where it’s going.

The BBC’s South Sudan and Sudan correspondent, James Copnall, gave some context to the recent fighting and imparted what he has seen on the ground first hand. When Hilsum asked if it was an attempted coup that started the fighting, as President Salva Kiir has claimed, or a mutiny amongst the presidential guard, as alleged by former vice-president Riek Machar, Copnall said it is still too early to tell, but “the key objective is to get both sides to stop fighting and at least start talking.”

Heather Pagano from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) added a humanitarian perspective: “The situation is quite concerning… the speed with which everything changes on the ground, which makes it incredibly difficult to plan a proper aid response, especially in such a big country with very little logistical capacity.”

“I’ll share with you MSF’s main humanitarian concerns at the moment,” Pagano added. “In Juba, we are working in a UN camp where there is 30,000 displaced. It is so cramped that people are taking turns sleeping at night. A physic on the team worked out that the population density there is 10x the population density in Mumbai.”

MSF’s other concerns for those in refugee camps are ethnic based attacks, a lack of water (“wells are running dry by 10am”), and a high risk of disease outbreak.

Hilsum asked Thomas Mawan Mourtat, a South Sudanese political analyst, how South Sudan has come to this so quickly after the jubilation of independence in 2011. He explained that there were many underlying factors that led to this: “The population feels it has be let down and agitated by the ruling party. It was not surprising to many people that it blew up – the extent of the violence was a surprise, but people were feeling something was going to happen.”

Professor of Global Affairs Mukesh Kapila, who prior to teaching at the University of Manchester was the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, pointed out that history suggests new countries go through a level of instability.

“The international community needs to be tolerant. The idea that you could impose a western style democracy, a winner takes all approach, and the rituals of a mature state and expect everything to work is complete nonsense.”

“Peace and society is built from the bottom up, not top down. You need a much more grassroots approach, local democracy and local governance.”

Mourtat agreed with Kapila that a resolution could be best reached through the grassroots, specifically through the strengthening of local councils: “During the war, one of the most successful campaigns was organising grassroots district councils.” He explained, “the SPLA has lost its way since it came into power. This local administration has been lost and that needs to be re-established.”

When an audience member asked if more UN peacekeepers were needed, the former Sudan UN coordinator, Kapila, went as far to call the current peacekeeping response “abominable”.

“If you look at the case of Darfur, the biggest UN peacekeeping operation” said Kapila, “the situation is as bad as ever. Why are [global taxpayers] paying a billion dollars a year, yet there is ongoing violence. How is a UN peacekeeper force going to bring about peace between a sovereign government and an armed insurgency?”

He reasoned: “Spend it on trying to build grassroots to build community reconciliation and community peace building capacities.”

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-south-sudan

The incident is reportedly related to an internal staffing issue – AP quoted MSF worker Ahmed Ali, who claimed that a recently fired employee was responsible for the shooting. 

The news appears to have been broken by @HSMPress, a Twitter account run by Al Shabaab, the Islamist insurgent group:

A fierce battle is now raging inside #MSF office building in #Mogadishu. A gunman has stormed the building & opened fire on MSF staff inside

— HSM Press Office (@HSMPress) December 29, 2011

HSMPress continued to provide updates on the situation as it developed including information regarding the possible identities of the gunman and the victims.