Media must do more in crises

In West Africa, an American media organization working with Liberian and Sierra Leone journalists provides war-affected civilians with crucial humanitarian information, including guidance for child soldiers wishing to escape.

Similarly, in South Africa, a local media group uses multi-ethnic children's television to promote social harmony. In the Balkans, a Swiss-based foundation working with ethnic Albanian and Serb reporters produces daily radio shows over Kosovar stations to help young people cope with their uncertain futures.

Alongside traditional relief agencies, the media are gradually emerging as a key player in alleviating the plight of populations in crisis. Not only are they helping the international-aid and peacekeeping community respond more appropriately to emergency situations, they're also ensuring that refugees and other victims receive the information they need to survive.

At least a dozen media organizations, plus international broadcasters, such as the BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Netherlands, are now acting as vital links to people in crisis from West Africa to Afghanistan to East Timor. Groups such as Search for Common Ground, Vuleka, Internews, the Hirondelle Foundation, and Media Action International are producing an array of often innovative communications approaches - some of them via the Internet - that are beginning to influence international aid interventions worldwide.

With mainstream broadcasters such as CNN unlikely to report the location of food distribution points or how to deal with rape trauma, such initiatives are bridging what has until recently been a staggering information gap. These include humanitarian "news you can use" broadcasts for disaster victims, distance-education programs for children in war, refugee newsletters, post-conflict youth radio, health soap operas, the distribution of wind-up or solar radios, and even interactive "road shows" to promote anything from peace-building to racial tolerance and HIV-AIDS awareness.

Since the 1994 Rwanda genocide, experience has shown that local populations that know what is happening are far better equipped to confront disaster. Credible, impartial information not only helps victims deal more effectively with rumor, landmines, cholera outbreaks, or the tracing of lost relatives, but it also enables them to understand better the way the international community operates.

Certain organizations, such as UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross, are aware of the media's enormous potential for reaching out to populations in crisis. Numerous others, however, still fail to grasp the importance of outreach.

Countless opportunities are being lost, with millions denied the right to be informed. In Chechnya, hundreds of thousands of refugees facing harsh winter conditions have little idea about the availability of food or medical relief. Yet no donor, presumably because of the political implications involved with Russia, is willing to fund a simple humanitarian newsletter.

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