 |
The Work of MediaGlobal
Overview
Information moves faster today than ever before. The average person is now more aware of what is happening on the other side of the world than at any other time in human history. Yet even as technology expands horizons and shortens the distances between cultures and marketplaces, social and economic barriers between rich and poor continue to be constructed at an alarming pace.
Not least among these barriers is the media. While information has never been so readily accessible, the rapidly commercializing mainstream media has arguably never faced such rigid funding constraints. Foreign correspondents are disappearing from nearly every major newspaper, and wire services are spreading time and resources more thinly, creating a media climate where little more than cursory coverage is available of most international events. There is little time or money for exhaustive research and informed analysis. With Western business interests largely dominating the industry, the issues facing the poorest countries of the developing world are falling through ever-widening cracks.
In this age of information, silence can be deadly. According to economist and United Nations advisor Jeffrey Sachs, 20,000 people die each day as a direct result of poverty. As wealth concentrates in certain parts of the world, UNICEF reports that 1.4 million children die each year of preventable diseases.
For example, poor sanitation, never a headline-grabbing subject, stifles the economic potential of impoverished countries. At any one time, half of the developing world is suffering from illnesses caused by inadequate water management and unsanitary conditions, massively diminishing economic productivity, not to mention quality and length of life. And while acute water shortages are at the root of some of the world’s most violent conflicts, war routinely trumps plumbing as a media priority.
Yet even as developing countries, in particular the Least Developed Countries, face an uphill climb out of poverty, considerable progress has been made in some areas of economic development, public health and climate change mitigation. Exciting private sector initiatives, entrepreneurial endeavours and community partnerships are happening in even the poorest parts of the world, yet they receive little or no media attention. Instead, conflict and humanitarian disasters dominate the overwhelmingly negative news coverage of the global South, distorting the complex realities of these regions.
MediaGlobal’s focus on development
By and large, MediaGlobal leaves the well-covered headline grabbing stories of humanitarian emergencies and political controversies to other members of the media, focusing instead on issues of poverty, disease, hunger and environmental stresses that often underpin such crises. While such stories may lack the sensationalism other news agencies strive for, MediaGlobal’s editors and correspondents share the belief that a more comprehensive understanding of world events drives sustainable growth and effective social change.
By the nature of its subjects – among them community health initiatives, alternative energy projects and entrepreneurial ventures -MediaGlobal’s stories tend to be solution-based, providing readers with stories of ingenuity and resourcefulness that are often overlooked by the mainstream media.
Reaching a critical audience
Over the years, MediaGlobal’s audience has grown to include ambassadors of member states to the United Nations, corporate sponsors of development programmes, private investors and media liaisons at a host of UN agencies and international aid organizations, as well as editors and journalists in the Least Developed Countries and their counterparts in donor nations. By providing readers with thorough coverage of world events through multiple channels, MediaGlobal maximizes its audience, supplying news in a range of formats to address the varied needs of its readers.
With an appealing and easily navigable website highlighting the most recent in-depth articles on food security, economic development, health and the impact of climate change on developing countries, as well as several newsletters and one-on-one interviews with key development figures, MediaGlobal seeks to give readers from every sector and background – from diplomats and policy makers to students and teachers, small-holder farmers in the South to businesspeople in the North – with easy-to-use relevant information.
By providing a combination of short weekly briefs on development issues, a longer monthly magazine on issues of South-South cooperation, a quarterly newsletter on the Least Developed Countries and rigorously researched in-depth articles on issues ranging from child soldier rehabilitation to biofuels production, MediaGlobal caters to the widest possible array of needs and interests.
Channels of communication
The MediaGlobal website (www.mediaglobal.org) highlights the most recent feature articles, while providing a comprehensive archive of previous stories. The website includes links to This Week In Development, the news agency’s weekly newsletter of short, independently researched news briefs, and to South-South Voices, a monthly magazine highlighting instances of collaboration among developing countries. The website also features Face-to-Face interviews with influential actors in the development field.
In addition to its news features, MediaGlobal provides readers with an array of background information on development issues. From its list of “fast facts” for readers interested in a quick glimpse at statistics on the world’s most vulnerable countries, to its online library of reports, documents and policy guidelines on each development category, available in PDF format on its website, MediaGlobal strives to give its readers an accurate, complete and up-to-date view of the most compelling issues confronting the developing world.
MediaGlobal’s reporting is interview-based. Its correspondents are in close contact with their sources and all stories, even news briefs, are based on original research and analysis.
As a development news service, MediaGlobal provides media outlets around the world with thought-provoking articles often, but not exclusively, on matters involving the United Nations and its partners. Its articles have been carried by United Press International (UPI), The Middle East Times, icanews.coop, Oromo Index News, and are regularly featured extensively on the Google News Index, as well as a variety of blogs.
THE GOALS OF MEDIAGLOBAL
The role of the media
The media is a vital agent of development. It provides information needed to make informed decisions at individual, community, societal and national levels. A vibrant culture of accurate and independent reporting fosters responsible leadership and effective, transparent governance. The media spreads ideas and fosters innovation. It can help unite a society around common goals even as it encourages individuals to celebrate their differences.
The goal of MediaGlobal is to stimulate and support long-term sustainable development in countries of the South. By spreading the word about successful projects and initiatives, MediaGlobal contributes to a more positive global image of the most vulnerable countries. This balanced perspective is critical to increasing investment and donor awareness.
While MediaGlobal strives to offset the overwhelmingly negative coverage of the developing world in the international press by highlighting progress against poverty, disease, hunger and environmental degradation, its reporting is by no means limited to the optimistic. MediaGlobal’s journalists address the most serious issues facing the poorest people in the world with an unflinching commitment to accuracy, preserving the dignity and humanity of their subjects.
A long-term view
MediaGlobal is different from other news agencies. It leaves the up-to-the-minute coverage of humanitarian crises and political tempests to other news agencies, focusing instead on the long-term issues that often underpin such incidents.
By rarely providing more than skeletal breaking news coverage of the most dramatic events to occur in the developing world, the bulk of the international media contributes to a distorted perception among readers in wealthy nations that little besides war, disease and natural disasters happens in the developing world. This view in turn frightens away potential investors and skews policy decisions.
It is the duty of the media to address the hard realities of poverty, conflict and corruption. But it is also the media’s responsibility to inspire creative thinking and spark constructive debate.
MediaGlobal believes that stories about new methods of vegetable farming in Kenya or an AIDS education project using community theatre in Tanzania can be as exciting to read as a dispatch from a war zone. Such stories require a reader to explore the social, economic or scientific background of a subject, introducing them to urgent problems or new solutions. To a reader in the North, such reporting can give a sense of what everyday life is like halfway around the world. To a reader in the South, it can provide important information about the work of a particular organization or the practicality of a new idea. Such news stories bring out voices that are rarely heard. In doing so, they tell a more complete story.
An unmet need
By concentrating on development issues and reporting on world events from a development viewpoint, MediaGlobal fills a crucial niche. At its core, responsible development is growth fueled by vision and guided by wisdom, a convergence of the past, present and future.
To this end, the media is a development imperative. By spreading information and providing readers with a range of viewpoints and ideas, as well as the background information they need to understand an event within its larger context, the immediacy of the everyday can be understood through the lens of past and future. An honest, rigorous and diverse media at local and international levels encourages responsible global citizenship, a prerequisite for sustainable development.
MediaGlobal is an active participant in the creation of such a media. Its New York-based correspondents pursue stories from all over the world. They conduct interviews with sources ranging from high-level government officials and ambassadors to aid workers and ordinary citizens. Headquartered at the United Nations Secretariat in New York, MediaGlobal has immediate access to the UN press and policy resources. In addition, MediaGlobal provides an often-lacking development angle to the United Nations press community.
Promoting effective development journalism
While the concept of development journalism is not new, its basic tenets are largely absent from mainstream reporting. Issues facing wealthy countries by and large trump those facing poor ones in terms of coverage and quality reporting. By limiting its focus to the world’s most vulnerable nations, MediaGlobal is able to concentrate on issues that require in-depth research and follow-up reporting.
MediaGlobal is one of the few voices in the international press with total commitment to covering development issues in the developing world. As a participant in the Global Media Compact, MediaGlobal has produced hundreds of stories spotlighting topics critical to sustainable growth in the developing world.
By focusing international attention on the key issues facing the countries of the South, MediaGlobal consistently brings the needs, successes and everyday events of the most neglected populations into public view. Its articles are aimed at readers in both economic hemispheres. With reporting that provides the background information a newcomer to the topic requires, as well as the detailed practical information useful to those in the field, MediaGlobal functions as part of the larger international development agenda.
SERVICES
MediaGlobal uses a variety of news formats designed to reach the broadest possible audience. Its primary method of dissemination is the Internet, enabling its content to immediately reach readers all over the world.
In-Depth and Feature Articles
MediaGlobal’s in-depth and feature articles are the lifeblood of its work in development reporting. At a length of 600 to 800 words for a feature and up to 1500 words for an in-depth analysis piece, these articles allow MediaGlobal correspondents to explore events, projects and ideas relating to economic development, global health, food security and environmental sustainability in the developing world.
As per the Global Media Compact, the majority of these articles centre around issues pertaining to the Least Developed Countries. They highlight trends and topics ignored or given only fleeting coverage by other media outlets. Using information gathered from exclusive interviews with key sources, MediaGlobal’s stories make an important and distinct contribution to the global media.
Feature articles spotlight current events in the international development arena and report on world issues from a development standpoint. They provide concise treatment of specific subjects, underscoring the development elements of a particular issue or event.
Subjects of feature articles have included the creation of a 100 dollar laptops for use by children in the developing world, community art projects in post-genocide Rwanda, the use of DDT to fight Malaria in Mozambique, mobile phones as a launching point for economic development in Africa, the challenges facing millions of widowed women around the world, the links between declining migratory bird populations and biodiversity loss, and edible insects as a possible food security solution.
In-Depth articles approach broader world issues through a development lens, with the goal of both informing and challenging readers. Extensive interviews with sources in the field, policy advisors, scholars and international officials are combined with comprehensive background research. The goal of MediaGlobal’s In-Depth articles is to provide readers with a synthesis of viewpoints and ideas, packaging the information needed to understand the varied development aspects of a larger subject in a straightforward and compelling way.
Past In-Depth articles have explored the links between climate change and poverty, the funding and organizational rifts between family planning and HIV/AIDS initiatives, crop diversity and seed preservation as a food security strategy, and the global threat of drug-resistant tuberculosis.
This Week In Development
Each week, MediaGlobal publishes This Week in Development, an online newsletter chronicling the development-related events of the previous week in easy-to-read news briefs. The briefs often expand on the week’s mainstream news headlines, but all include original reporting, much of it gathered from interviews with officials and personnel in the field of development.
The newsletter contains seven to nine stories and is contributed to by all participants in MediaGlobal’s Young Writers Initiative. Topics covered in a typical week might include the highlights of a new sustainable farming initiative, an overview of a recently released development report, statistics on a medical crisis facing the developing world and an outline of UN Security Council deliberations pertaining to the Least Developed Countries. All stories contain brief interviews or comments collected from sources close to their subject.
This Week In Development is distributed electronically to hundreds of editors, journalists, policy makers and representatives of community, national and international development agencies.
South-South Voices
 |
The concept of South-South cooperation is increasingly recognized as an integral component of sustainable global development, and initiatives that transfer technology, expert knowledge and investment from one developing country to another are gaining critical support among members of the international community. But because many of these exchanges take place without the involvement of media-rich donor countries, they too often attract little or no attention from the mainstream press.
To help fill this gap in the coverage of developing country partnerships, MediaGlobal produces and distributes South-South Voices, a detailed monthly news magazine covering issues of South-South cooperation. The magazine centres on the cultural, political, economic and scientific aspects of cross-border collaboration.
South-South Voices typically contains six to eight articles and an exclusive interview. The magazine highlights current trends in South-South cooperation, as well as North-South and triangular partnerships. Contributing correspondents follow the month’s most significant South-South events, often focusing on the work of the United Nations Development Programme’s Special Unit for South-South Cooperation (SU/SSC).
Topics also include the activities of the Group of 77 developing nations (G77), the emergence of a vibrant creative economy between countries of the South and the sharing of medical and technological advances between nations affected by the same health crises and economic challenges.
Face-to-Face interviews
The Face-to-Face section of the MediaGlobal website links readers to the latest exclusive interviews by MediaGlobal correspondents. Subjects are chosen to represent the diversity of voices within the international development community. Presented in question and answer form, Face-to-Face interviews are designed to explore specific development issues, ideas and philosophies. Such in-depth conversations between reporter and expert provide MediaGlobal’s readers with the kind of nuanced information that rarely makes its way into a conventional news article.
Fast Facts and Further Reading
For readers interested in learning more about issues of food security, economic development, public health and environmental sustainability in countries of the global South, MediaGlobal offers a compendium of external resources. With a growing library of downloadable versions of the latest reports, policy papers and fieldwork resources, MediaGlobal’s website acts as a one-stop introduction to the ideas, findings and practices of the international development community.
Ideal for use by journalists, students or those unfamiliar with the staggering effects of poverty, disease, hunger and environmental degradation on the world’s least developed countries, MediaGlobal’s Fast Facts page provides a comprehensive collection of basic statistics. Compiled from United Nations sources, these figures are an excellent resource for readers from all sectors and serve as an important reminder of the plight of the world’s neglected populations.
For those seeking more detailed background knowledge on issues highlighted in MediaGlobal’s news coverage, in-depth resources on economic development, global health, food security, and earth changes and the environment are available in PDF format. Set side by side with MediaGlobal’s most recent feature articles, these UN reports, studies and practical guides are made as accessible as possible, placing extensive information on key development issues quite literally at readers’ fingertips.
While these resources are available to anyone, they are aimed specifically at the media. MediaGlobal encourages greater coverage of the Least Developed Countries, a core tenet of the Global Media Compact, by providing interested reporters and editors with immediate access to a wealth of information. By making detailed reports and surveys readily available to other members of the press, MediaGlobal serves as a link between the often isolated and amorphous international development community and the general public in both the North and the South.
PARTNERSHIPS
In an increasingly globalized world, the value of collaboration cannot be underestimated, and MediaGlobal strives to embody this principle by working in partnership with other development organizations and news agencies to promote thorough coverage of critical issues facing developing nations.
MediaGlobal has worked closely with the United Nations Development Programme’s Special Unit for South-South Cooperation to address subjects such as the potential of creative industries to boost economic growth in countries of the South, and the UN’s participation in the World Expo 2010, to be held in Shanghai, China. Each quarter MediaGlobal publishes South-South in Action, an inter-agency newsletter designed to create awareness amongst the UN agencies throughout the world on the methodology of mainstreaming South-South Cooperation.
In 2007 MediaGlobal began work with the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Trilateral, an initiative by three leading nations of the global South to promote cooperation and exchange. MediaGlobal participated in IBSA’s program to highlight South-South solutions to global poverty, leading an on-site media campaign in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The campaign focused international attention on the success of a locally-led waste removal and composting programme that improved health standards, generated employment and revitalized a community.
As part of the Global Media Compact, MediaGlobal has joined forces with the United Nations Office of the High Representative of the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States and the United Nations Development Programme in their efforts to encourage more holistic press coverage of the developing world. The Commitment is a quarterly newsletter edited and published by MediaGlobal has a focus on the world’s most vulnerable countries.
In these respects, MediaGlobal is not a strictly independent news source, although it adheres to strict standards of accuracy and thoroughness when reporting on the projects and initiatives of its partner agencies.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
MediaGlobal’s primary goal is to serve as an active, effective participant in the global effort to achieve equitable, sustainable development in the world’s most vulnerable countries. To this end, MediaGlobal’s objective as a news service is to supply comprehensive information on the under-reported trends, issues and events that speed or thwart such development.
Over the years, MediaGlobal’s articles and news stories have kept pace with the mainstream media’s coverage of international events. But rather than mirroring the content of other publications, MediaGlobal’s reporting aims to contribute new viewpoints and perspectives to the global press community.
A brief sampling of MediaGlobal’s archives demonstrates a commitment to comprehensive reporting on world events from the perspective of the developing world.
Monitoring the progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a commitment by United Nations member states to halve poverty and improve global health by 2015, has been a constant item on MediaGlobal’s editorial agenda. Exploring the human impact of the MDGs has led to articles on Malawian villages putting poverty reduction models into action, Zambia’s programme to abolish fees at health care facilities, and the role simple table salt can play in improving world health and spurring economic growth.
On issues of global trade, MediaGlobal focused its coverage of World Trade Organization’s Doha talks on the effects of agricultural subsidies, aid-for trade initiatives and the impact other economic programmes had on the economies of the Least Developed Countries.
MediaGlobal continues to cover the threat of the Avian Flu and the H1N1 pandemic, increased international pressure to combat malaria, and Africa’s dire water shortages. MediaGlobal focuses on issues of climate change, as the international community turns greater attention to mitigating the effects of global warming. With over 40 percent of the population of the Least Developed Countries under age 15, youth employment and health initiatives were highlighted for their role in achieving the MDGs, as was the growing trend in migration resulting from environmental degradation and climate change.
Among the leading issues that MediaGlobal has focused on, the global food crisis has dominated headlines around the world. MediaGlobal’s coverage has been on agricultural and environmental solutions. MediaGlobal has placed special emphasis on issues concerning women – perhaps the most neglected demographic in the developing world in terms of media coverage. Stories about women’s role in preserving traditional agricultural practices, the unmet need for contraceptives in sub-Saharan Africa and the legacy of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations, among many others, have addressed some of the critical issues facing women of the South.
MediaGlobal in the News
MediaGlobal’s participation in the launch of the Global Media Compact, one of the first partnerships of its kind, received considerable coverage by news services around the world, including Xinhua, United Press International, Scoop Independent News and Editor and Publisher and several newspapers in Africa, Asia and Europe.
MediaGlobal’s articles are routinely picked up by other publications. United Press International has carried MediaGlobal’s coverage of the environmental aspects of the Darfur conflict, attacks on education in Afghanistan, China’s involvement in rising tensions between Chad and Sudan, and global declines in terrorism.
Blogs and websites specializing in development news have carried MediaGlobal’s recent articles on women’s participation in natural farming initiatives, mushroom farming in Namibia, and a microfinance project in Yemen, among many others.
LOOKING FORWARD
By nature of its organization, MediaGlobal is in a state of constant change, as its staff identifies new challenges and adapts their work to meet critical needs. The Young Writers Initiative ensures a steady flow of fresh ideas, as future journalists, diplomats and field workers bring fresh perspectives and enthusiasm to their work.
Voices from the field
Over the next year, MediaGlobal will concentrate on forming a network of correspondents in developing countries and around the world. This on-the-ground perspectives is integral to MediaGlobal’s central goal of providing readers with holistic and humanizing coverage of breaking development news.
New channels of communication
While maintaining print journalism as its primary medium and continuing its online publications, MediaGlobal is seeking to expand into other forms of journalism.
Forming an online television resource to cover development issues and showcase documentaries made by filmmakers from the developing world is MediaGlobal’s next priority. Using Internet protocol television technology (IPTV), MediaGlobal’s future development channel, the Development Channel, will reach an even broader international audience, giving not only a voice, but also a face to the world’s underrepresented populations.
Building on a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, content will come from UN Television as well as other UN agencies. Additional programming will be contributed by MediaGlobal’s correspondents in New York and members of its growing field network.
IN CONCLUSION
The American playwright Arthur Miller wrote, “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.” In a world that shares increasingly common goals and the benefits of shared successes, even as it copes with the ever more global threats of climate change and economic instability, journalists must learn to speak new languages. MediaGlobal is committed to the belief that a good international press must include the voices of the whole world.
