Reject cultural familiarity and cover people equally

Conventional news coverage often inadvertently reinforces a ‘hierarchy of human life’ by focusing on humanitarian crises that are considered more culturally familiar to their audience. Humanitarian journalists not only seek to reject ‘cultural familiarity’ as a news value, but try to re-balance the uneven levels of media coverage it produces by reporting under-reported crises.

As one reporter told us, “we believe suffering is equal wherever and equally deserving of attention… All the attention here and no attention there… is continually motivating to try to redress that imbalance.”