News Aid?
countries’ citizens. Liam Kane in ‘Media Studies
and images of the “Th ird World”’, in the Spring
1994 edition of Media Education, comments that
‘“Th ird World” people tend to be portrayed very
negatively, as passive victims of an unexplained
poverty’. Th e consequence, he goes on to argue,
is that we can ‘easily blame poverty on a combi-
nation of “natural disasters” and the supposed
ignorance, laziness or backwardness of Asians,
Africans, and Latin Americans’.
What are often overlooked are the structural
causes of these problems; in both national and
international inequalities in the distribution of
resources and power. Also undervalued or not
reported at all are the resilience and achieve-
ment of ‘Th ird World’ citizens despite their often
formidably adverse circumstances. Another fear,
of course, is that concentration on the symptoms
rather than the causes of disasters, like war and
famine, may lead ultimately to a dulling of the
audience’s sensibility to them. See compassion
fatigue.
News: audience evaluation, six dimensions
of In ‘Research note: Th e eff ects of live television
reporting on recall and appreciation of political
news’ in the European Journal of Communica-
tion, March 2000, Roland Snoeijer, Claes H.
de Vreese and Holli A. Semetoko examine ‘the
evaluative judgment that viewers make of televi-
sion news’. Th ey pose six evaluative dimensions:
Credibility, Importance, Involvement, Attrac-
tiveness, Immediacy and Comprehensibility.
TV news scores highly in terms of audience
belief in its credibility, in part because viewers
not only see what is happening, but, as a result of
satellite transmission, can also see events
as they are actually happening. ‘The concept
of importance,’ write the authors, ‘refers to the
implications or impact that a story is believed to
have for society as a whole,’ viewers taking their
cue from ‘the importance of a story defi ned by
newsmakers’ (see agenda-setting). Involve-
ment relates to news values and centres
around personal likes and dislikes, interests and
geographical proximity.
‘Information,’ consider the authors, ‘is found
to be attractive if it is vivid, lively and attention
grabbing,’ though perceptions and responses
vary in impact, some groups of people ‘fi nding
it very attractive, others disturbing’; and this
dimension, as with credibility, applies to both
the content and the presentation of the news.
Th e speed at which TV news can report events- its immediacy – is highly appreciated by the
audience for news. Finally, viewers need to
believe that ‘they have received the information
Wolff – carved up the world into spheres of
activity in much the same way as imperialist
nations parcelled out ‘Th ird World’ territories
between them.
In 1869 the major agencies signed an Agency
Alliance Treaty. Reuter was ‘granted’ the British
Empire and the whole of the Far East; Havas, a
French agency, was granted Italy, Spain, France
and the Portuguese empire; and the Germany-
based Wolff received Austria, Scandinavia and
Russia. America was awarded jointly to Havas
and Reuter.
Today, the biggest agencies are Th e Associated
Press (AP), the Press Association (PA, created
as early as 1868), Reuters and the United Press
International.
Out of the traditional, print-centred news
agencies have developed international television
news agencies distributing TV news mate-
rial around the clock, both ‘raw’ footage and
complete news stories ready for transmission.
Concern has focused on the role of inter-
national news agencies in giving world news a
Western ‘slant’ through the operation of news
values reflecting the ideology of Western
nations’ news fl ow; that is, the degree to which
that fl ow is mediated and the dominant direction
of that fl ow. What has been termed raw news
fl ows from the periphery to the centre, but on
the way it becomes cooked news – constructed
according to Western production criteria; while
the fl ow of information from the centre is almost
invariably cooked, shaped, according to Western
news values. See event; media imperialism;
non-aligned news pool.
News Aid? Paul Harrison and Robin Palmer
use this term in their book News Out of Africa:
Biafra to Band Aid (Hilary Shipman, 1986), to
illustrate the ambivalent relationship between
the media’s coverage of the dramatic and
distressing eff ects of famine in the ‘Th ird World’,
particularly Africa. Th e authors note the media’s
long-term reticence, in news or current aff airs
programmes, to participate in a discourse
about the underlying causes of such famine
and ways in which famines might be prevented.
Such reticence begs the question of whether or
not coverage of the eff ects of famine, however
galvanizing of public opinion and action in the
short term, really aids fi nding a solution to the
problem.
Indeed some commentators argue that the
media’s tendency to concentrate reporting of
‘Th ird World’ countries around issues of natural
disasters or confl ict leads to the perpetuation
of negative and stereotypical images of those