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Date: Thu,  2 Dec 2004 22:52:10 -0500
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Subject: How to sell the poor
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How to sell the poor

Is the West really bored with stories about global poverty?

By Murray Armstrong
THE GUARDIAN , London
Friday, Dec 03, 2004,Page 9


Advertising  What do the television sitcom The Vicar of Dibley and
the headline "25,000 Africans died needlessly yesterday" have in
common? They are both, in their own way, challenges to the way we
report world poverty.
The headline challenge comes from Jeffrey Sachs, UN special adviser
to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the millennium development
goals. It could be used any day, he said, and it would be true. He
was speaking at a conference last week, organized by the BBC World
Service Trust and the Department for International Development, on
the media and the fight against global poverty.

BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessy had brought along a clip from a
special forthcoming edition of the sitcom about Dawn French's
vicar, based around a letter-writing campaign from the Dibleyites
to the prime minister, asking why he hadn't yet solved the first
millennium goal to halve by 2015 the number of people who live on
less than a dollar a day.

Both were held up as ways of changing our attitudes to reporting
world poverty and getting development into the popular
consciousness if we are to have an outside chance of keeping those
promises made by world leaders in 2000. As it stands, the outlook
is bleak. A straw poll on the BBC Web site found that 73 percent of
users hadn't a clue what the millennium development goals were.
Another indicator showed that, in a one-month period, the phrase
appeared in British papers only seven times. Perhaps not
surprisingly it was in the South China Morning Post 17 times and
across the major African press on 593 occasions.



YUSHA

Richard Curtis, who created the sitcom and is also vice chair of
Comic Relief, reckons it's time the gloves came off and the story
switched away from funding.

"Aid to Africa, which was US$33 per person 10 years ago, is just
US$19 per person now."

Gordon Brown, UK chancellor of the exchequer

"What's the story?" he asked. "People will say we've given enough to
charity, now it is time for the politicians to act."

Sachs, an American, said, "I am living in a country that doesn't
discuss these issues at all. The president of the United States has
not ever mentioned the words `millennium development goals' in
sequence. Not once."

The lack of knowledge about poverty in the third world is
highlighted by the belief, according to one poll, of the majority
of Americans that 20 percent of their taxes go to foreign aid. It
is less than 0.1 percent.

The British ability to get the story across is little better. A
study for the international development department four years ago
found that 80 percent of the British public was informed about
developing countries by television and that in a 10-year period
relevant factual programming, outside of news, had decreased. Human
rights, environmental, religious and cultural topics were being
replaced by travel and wildlife programs.

Now it is worse. The research organization 3WE reported in May this
year that factual international programming on Britain's four
largest terrestrial channels was 40 percent lower last year than in
1989 to 1990, and what we get now tends to be travel programs,
series following British adventurers, documentaries about Brits
abroad, and reality game shows in exotic locations.

Enter Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown with the storyline.
For Brown, next year is the crunch year. For the media, the
opportunities for reporting on global poverty and the north's
political initiatives, or lack of them, are laid on in a
month-by-month program.

Next month we have the UN millennium project report on poverty;
February sees the G7 finance ministers meet under UK chairmanship
to examine debt and finance for development; in March comes a
personal report by Annan on world poverty; April and June have
special meetings of G7 to prepare a final paper on debt and
development; in July Britain hosts the G8 summit in Edinburgh
preceded by the report of the Africa Commission; that's followed in
September with the UN millennium summit; then in December in Hong
Kong the world trade talks offer the opportunity to get to the
heart of one of the other great development issues of our time.

So the news list is there if we care to plug in to it.

"Live Aid," Brown said, "was that extraordinary moment when, through
the power of television, everyone in the world realized here was an
issue that wasn't just a matter of opinion. And Live Aid started
with the exposure by journalism -- Michael Buerk's reports from
Africa."

Since then, he went on, "despite the massive publicity, aid to
Africa, which was US$33 per person 10 years ago, is just US$19 per
person now."

These are "human disasters with human causes," he said, "and whole
governments should be held to account."

Most media executives see development stories as too dull. David
Yelland, former editor of the Sun and deputy editor of the New York
Post, bluntly said: "Stories like this don't sell."

But James Ruddy, deputy editor of England's Eastern Daily Press, has
a different story. With a circulation of 70,000, he believes good
international coverage is a "massive brand asset."

"It does not turn off the readership," he said.

The regional newspaper has broken several national stories based on
its long-term work with non-governmental organizations and in 2002
won the One World Media award for its campaign to provide vital
medical treatment for Sierra Leone war child Issa Kamara.

There are plans to redress the balance. Dorothy Byrne, head of news
and current affairs at Channel 4, explained how she had changed
programming to place Dispatches and other documentary slots more
centrally, and had begun to "go to places at a time when there is
not an immediate disaster." During the G8 summit, Channel 4 will be
broadcasting all week from Africa.

The conference also discussed the state of the media in developing
countries and gave Myles Wickstead, head of the secretariat of the
Commission for Africa, a few ideas to take away.

The commission was asked to address the media question in order to
strengthen its independence and make it a tool for accountability
and transparency. It might consider linking new aid to progress
towards independent media, organizing effective local training, and
providing seed capital to form an independent all-Africa news
agency.

One delegate from South Africa even suggested never sending another
northern reporter to do a southern story. But the suggestion that
attracted most discussion, especially from the large number of
African journalists there, was how to set up an "all-African
Al-Jazeera." Now there's a development goal.
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