For eight years now Care International has commissioned media analysis into the least reported humanitarian crises of the year. The 2023 report is called Breaking the Silence, and for the second year in a row all of the top ten are in Africa. As the Kenyan journalist Zelipha Kirobi says, “Africa is barely visible in the international media.”
To qualify as a humanitarian crisis, over a million people have to be affected by conflict or natural disaster. Many such stories receive plenty of coverage, which is why Ukraine and Gaza aren’t on the list. Others get relatively little attention, with Angola receiving the least of all. 7.3 million people were in need of food aid last year, and 1,049 articles were written about this across global news.
For comparison, 215,084 articles were written about Prince Harry’s no doubt riveting and very important biography Spare.
Commercial news outlets are competing for eyeballs, and stories about things that are already popular get more traction than articles about disaster in faraway places. The more buzz a topic generates, the more pieces are commissioned, creating a media storm around often trivial topics. There is no money in the kinds of stories Care International highlight here, and little incentive to dispatch reporters into what are often difficult and risky situations.
There are no easy fixes for any of this, but Care recommend that aid agencies invest in local reporting and citizen journalism, and support local partners with media training. This would be quicker and cheaper than waiting for overseas news outlets to fly in their people and get them up to speed, and it would ensure that the people most affected are heard.
The Earthbound Report 