Posts Tagged ‘media’

Tomorrow Bill and Melinda Gates will present their Living Proof Project in Washington D.C.  This is a new, multimedia initiative which shows the ‘living proof’ that US-funded global health funding is making a positive difference through the first hand success stories of people who have been helped and, in turn, empowered to help themselves.

The project is based on research showing that the lion’s share of media coverage around global health is negative, and further research showing that Americans want to hear the flipside of this - as described on the Living Proof website, “stories about progress, optimism and opportunity”.

Within the global health community, it has been commonplace to promote success, advocate for proven solutions, and ensure that positive images of the beneficiaries of their work are used.  Case studies like those in the Living Proof Project are very common to see on websites and in annual reports.  This makes me wonder about the apparent disconnect between what NGOs therefore put out, and the research that provided a rationale for this project.  Why was media coverage found to be generally negative when proactive communications from the global health community is generally positive?

One reason that comes to mind is a challenge of newsworthiness that faces many NGOs.  Good news is often less appealing to the media than bad news, and therefore for us PRs, a harder sell.  Another is the importance of setting up the problem or the unmet need in order to provide a context and an urgency for a solution.  This is a delicate balance that continues to challenge communicators.  How the Living Proof Project might succeed where others have failed, or only experienced moderate success, is through its ever newsworthy philanthropist backers.

The media reaction to the recent swine flu outbreak has been fascinating. It has consumed our TV screens 24/7, and we’re undoubtedly going to see a lot more coverage in the weeks to come as this possible pandemic unfolds.

What I find extraordinary is that as never before, the world is able to witness how the web is mapping its spread on an up to the minute basis. Technology has reached such levels that people around the world are able to communicate the spread of the disease on a case by case basis to the rest of the world.  As one Guardian blogger observes, maps already exist on the web visually representing cases around the world as they are reported, providing a powerful visual representation of the risk.

Whilst undoubtedly this reporting is useful to monitor the disease, many would argue that only the factors that elevate our perception of risk are being documented creating media hype that is ultimately unhelpful and unrepresentative of the real situation.

The things that temper this elevated risk are being reported rather less. For instance the fact that there have been no fatalities outside Mexico, and the fact that almost all the fatalities have occurred at high altitude where there is an elevated risk of respiratory disease, are both factors that would reassure but are not reported in the same way. The spread of this information of this kind is slower to spread, there is no wiki protest map representing this.

What lies at the bottom of the debate surrounding reporting of swine flu is that this continuous and urgent flow of information that we are witnessing is one way and unbalanced. If we can figure out a way of balancing the information then the internet could become a useful tool for us in figuring out our own personal risk.