Supporting Syria, A Media Perspective

The ongoing conflict in Syria is often referred to as the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War 2, and so for a large number of reasons. The scale of such an unprecendented event is likely to lead to major re-think in terms of humanitarian journalism. Whether we are talking about the role of the media in this crisis or the evolving relationship between journalists and humanitarian workers, there is no doubt this conflict can teach us a lot about the current situation of humanitarian journalism.

So, what exactly is the role of the media? How a particular event becomes newsworthy? And how is it reflected in terms of coverage? These are the questions I recently came to reflect upon. Lets take an example with the Supporting Syria and The Region Conference that took place in London on February 4.

The event, hosted by the UK in partnership with several other countries, aimed to fundraise and appeal to international donors in order to pledge support for the humanitarian response to aid those affected by the civil war in Syria. The attention was particularly placed on schooling refugees children in neighboring countries and camps as well as providing economic support to Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon who host the biggest numbers.

A Domestic Perspective

There are various reasons to explain why the event was judged newsworthy, and how it has been covered by the news outlets here in UK.

First, it was in London and very high profile as many world leaders attended. These factors, among others, probably prompted The Guardian to decide to offer a live coverage, with regular updates and a broad range of subjects, speeches and commentaries. The paper decided to cover the event from a pro-aid, or pro-development perspective, focusing greatly on Cameron’s speeches, the pledges and the state of children in refugee camps.

Secondly, the BBC also covered the event, less extensively but focused on the humanitarian angle. Again, the article reported really well the pledges, the importance of the conference and gave some context through several infographics.

From a media agenda perspective, the Syrian refugees question is a hot topic in UK as it is among the contentious issues related to Brexit. Immigration has long been a topic of exploitation by the UK media as it is so politically volatile. Also both the Guardian and the BBC covered it, I cannot sincerely say what was the value of these articles for the readers in terms of reflection. No critic of the Aid system was mentioned or approached whatsoever, neither the idea of aid dependency. Yet billions were raised in a bid to support refugee camps, with the ultimate goal to curb immigration in Europe.

Thirdly, I wanted to mention the Daily Mail’s coverage as it gives a good idea how news outlets can squeeze the maximum out of a story. Even if the paper is not particularly famous for its critical stance against the aid system and humanitarian questions, the website has one of the biggest news web audience in the world, and naturally, it gave an extensive coverage of the conference, SEO optimised.

The event represented indeed a huge “clicks” opportunity for the outlet who made sure to cover many angles simultaneously. The celebrity show, with many pictures of leaders and speakers, almost like an Awards event. The like of Ban Ki Moon, Malala Yousafzai or John Kerry must have attracted scores of international readers. Photos, videos, infographics, the Daily Mail literally offered what we could call a “Content Feast”, in a bid to maximise the opportunity to attract clicks and readers.

In the end, the result was a bit disappointing I must say, in terms of giving me food for though. I think the way our media are covering such important topics and events is simply biased, the poor 9-to-5 electorate will not be given any alternative to think about and decide for itself, critical frameworks seemed to be banned from most newspapers templates. Thankfully, I also happen to check regularly the humanosphere for my daily critical development analysis fix, and they had it covered, thanks to Tom Murphy, who rightly emphasised the aid catch up game world leaders are playing along with the major humanitarian failure of our aid system.

Al Jazeera also gave an interesting perspective of the conference, like a Middle Eastern opinion, by inviting @JamesDenselow to give the readers some grounds regarding a badly needed aid revolution.

This is a subject which has room for much development and researches. In fact this is about exactly the topic I intend to work on in the coming months and I will likely be writing about it here on Medium. But I think, what would be most interesting is your comments and reflections as this is the only way to take the debate further.

Here was my favorite speech of the event, it is very powerful in terms of fundraising and public opinion shaping while totally taking away any of the critical angles of the aid question.