Sudan – the media challenge

One subject is top of mind at the moment for many charities working in international development: Sudan.

It is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster and yet it is not getting the aid or the public attention that it deserves.

Many development agencies believe that the key to changing the status quo is media coverage. Yes, there has been some coverage. For example, just in the past few days, The Times has published an excellent series of articles by Anthony Loyd. But the coverage has been sporadic.

Lack of public awareness of the crisis Sudan

As a result, there is very little public awareness in the UK about the severity of the crisis in Sudan. Anthony Loyd spelt it out: in the last two years, there has been a death toll of 150,000 and 11 million people have been displaced from their homes.

A couple of months ago, IBT was approached by three leading development charities – Plan International, Christian Aid and CAFOD – and asked to facilitate a discussion with journalists. The aim was to explore ways in which we could all work together more effectively to increase media coverage of Sudan.

Earlier this week, that discussion took place. Around the table were journalists from The Financial Times, The Economist, The Daily Telegraph and the BBC. All were there because they had a strong interest in covering Sudan. What the journalists told us was a painful reality check for us all.

The humanitarian situation is very bleak

But first we heard from humanitarians with direct experience of Sudan. Waseem Ahmad, CEO of Islamic Relief Worldwide, told us about his trip to the country in September. He was based in Port Sudan and visited four camps around the city. What he witnessed was, he said, ‘heartbreaking’. ‘The situation on the ground was unimaginable’ he told the journalists, ‘with refugees arriving every day, selling their belongings, trying to flee the country. There was chaos everywhere, eyewitnesses spoke of violence, mass murder, rape, forced marriages. What we heard was horrific’.

Ahmad’s comments were echoed by Mohammed Qazilbash, country director for Plan International. ‘This is a war against women and children’ he said. ‘Adolescent girls are being raped and abused by all factions.’ And the famine that has resulted is, he said, ‘war-induced’.

Both Ahmad and Qazilbash spoke about the difficulty of delivering aid with extensive banditry, extortion and blockade of supplies. Both also praised the dedication of local teams of aid workers who were continuing to deliver medical and food supplies against the odds.

Why journalists struggle to cover the story

After hearing about the extent of the humanitarian disaster we wanted to understand from the journalists why this was not headline news every day. The discussion that ensued focused on three key factors:

• Logistics – access to Sudan is extremely difficult. It’s hard to move around the country, security is a big challenge and journalist visas are in short supply.
• The static nature of the story – since there appears to be a stalemate in the civil war, with no settlement in sight, there is little sign of movement in the story. The journalists emphasised that they could not keep reporting the same story. They needed a fresh angle.
• Lack of audience interest – this was particularly painful for the charity directors to hear. All the journalists told us that Sudan was a hard sell to their editors. When they did run stories, there was little audience interest. This didn’t mean that they would not cover the story but it did limit their ability to cover it on anything like a regular basis.

So where does this leave us going forward?

There were some signs of optimism. It appears that it is now easier to get journalist visas. The two-year anniversary of the start of the conflict is coming up in April and there is likely to be more coverage to mark that event. And the BBC told us that they would continue to report on Sudan at different points in the year.

How journalists and charities can work together

There were also some suggestions from the journalists about how charities could work more effectively with the media to promote Sudan:

• Find an angle – keep looking for a new angle to pitch to editors.
• Access – this is key. Journalists want to feel confident that, if they travel to a location with a charity, then they will definitely have access so that they can see and tell the story at first hand.
• Provide a filming/reporting facility – this will help to overcome some of the safety and logistical challenges.
• Charities should work together – the journalists felt that charities could be more effective if they co-ordinated their approaches to journalists.
• Provide more detailed logistical information – there was also a suggestion that charities should prepare a detailed brief for journalists, showing which agencies were operating in which parts of the country and what kind of reporting facility they could offer.

Our aim at IBT is to work with the media to continue to engage UK audiences with global stories like Sudan. We provide regular briefings with journalists. If you are interested in joining our network, you can find more details here: www.ibt.org.uk

In the meantime, we will continue to make the case for more coverage of Sudan and share the insights from this event as widely as possible.