The Media and Aid in Sub-Saharan Africa

Closely examining the relationship between foreign correspondents of international news media and humanitarian organisations, Lena von Naso shows how the changing nature of foreign news and of aid is forcing them to form a deep co-dependency that is having a serious and unnoticed effect on Western news coverage.

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News coverage on Africa is closely connected not only with how Western audiences see the continent, but also with how a wide Western audience builds its opinion on issues that carry consequences for the public's and governments' support and policy towards development aid. The Western media reinforce a picture of a continent that drowns in chaos, is dominated by conflicts, diseases, corruption and failed democratisation. Whose interests lie behind that? How does foreign news on sub-Saharan Africa emerge, which actors are relevant in its making, and on the basis of what interests do these actors shape the coverage that is then presented as 'neutral information' to a broad international audience?

Closely examining the relationship between foreign correspondents of international news media and humanitarian organisations, Lena von Naso shows how the aid and media sectors cooperate in Africa in a unique way. Based on more than 70 interviews with foreign correspondents and aid workers operating across Africa, the book argues that the changing nature of foreign news and of aid is forcing them to form a deep co-dependency that is having a serious and largely unnoticed effect on Western news coverage.

This comprehensive examination of a new paradigm will interest students and scholars of media and journalism, African studies, development and humanitarian studies and the aid and media communities operating across Africa.