I need advice.
A friend of mine is going to be doing some training for journalists on aid and relief work. She asked me what jargon I think journalists need to know, what aid clichés I hate seeing, and any pet peeves in general on reporting about aid work. I had some answers for her, but I thought I could probably collect a lot more by asking the readers of this blog.
So, let’s hear it: What are the words journalists need to know? What are the words to avoid? And how can journalists find the real stories in the aid world?
Here’s my list, to help start the conversation:
1) Not paying attention to the money. An aid group’s freedom to act is heavily dependent on their donor funding. It’s easy to blame an aid agency for not doing X, but if they’re funded by OFDA to do Y, then X isn’t an option for them.
2) Lumping all aid groups together, as though they have the same motivation, skill set, and competency.
3) Getting hung up on either a savior narrative that focuses on one person as a hero, or a villain narrative, that decides all aid is a failure and picks a single agent as scapegoat.
4) Declaring aid a success or failure without looking at similar aid efforts in other years or locations for context. Not having an actual idea of what success would consist of, yet still declaring failure.
5) Spending the whole article giving visual descriptions and leaving out actual content.
6) Taking donor press releases as gospel. Or, alternately, ignoring them.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Oistein Thorsen, Tom Murphy and Saundra, Alanna Shaikh. Alanna Shaikh said: Just posted a request for advice on Blood and Milk http://bloodandmilk.org/?p=1719 […]
from @lksriv on twitter:
Stop using “giving voice” “voiceless” “voice for the voiceless.”
http://goodintents.org/good-intentions-blog/sayings?cf9DBF6732=636055276!QURTXHBhYmxvIGhhbGt5YXJkOm1ja3JlYWxtOpgtseUbmqZU83a9R+3LmOE=
Hey Alanna,
You probably already know this but Tales from the Hood had an excellent blog post on this subject on Nov 23rd. I find it very interesting that someone in journalism is concerned with accurate depictions of the developing world and the earnest efforts to modify the (often times) underlying complications that impede progress. The delivery of this training will be the real challenge – how can such complex a topic be taught in a single session?
Meaghan
Meaghan –
Most journalists I know are committed to finding the truth of the stories they tell, so I am not especially surprised by the training. Journalism is hard, poorly paid work, and in my experience people do it because they care about reporting the truth. I admit they don’t always succeed, but I doubt it’s due to lack of motivation.
Other ideas on what to avoid
1. Making poor people out to be miserable (destitute and living in the middle of an active conflict is of course another matter)
2. the word “stakeholders” (yes I understand its convenient)
3. Making aid workers out to be martyrs (we like what we do, and if we’re honest, we get more out of it than the people we attempt to serve
4. The phrase “capacity building” in all but the most specific contexts
5. Using refugee/immigrant for people from poor countries living elsewhere and ‘ex-pat’ for people for developed countries living out of their country of birth. All those words have specific uses, just be consistent.
6. Make very clear the difference between major urban centers and the interior when reporting on an issue. Most reporters write their story from the capital….the people you speak with will most likely have different priorities, come from specific groups, be part of different networks, etc…
Good luck pleasing your stakeholders while avoiding these cliches. You will need to build significant capacity at the ground level to adequately report on the issues affecting impoverished W. Africans, and the malaria ridden makeshift camps they live in on the outskirts of African capitals where Western ex-pats can access first world amenities in posh neighborhoods. I admire your dedication to improving aid-reporting.
Conor Godfrey
reporting from Washington, D.C.
In regard to finding stories, I would advise that they look at what the project managers identified as the measures of effectiveness BEFORE the aid work begins. Then, see how the project’s effectiveness rates against those measures. If the measures of effectiveness are altered after the project starts, then find out the rationale why – is it because the measures did not make sense, or was it because the project was not rating well against those measures?
Get a wide variety of opinions, not just the nonprofit or the people receiving aid. Talk to business owners, religious leaders, and people not receiving help. They may have a very different opinion about the impact of assistance.
Talk to whomever the coordinating/oversight body is supposed to be. Whether it’s a government office, the governor, or a cluster coordinator. If they’re willing to talk, they’ll have the ability to compare across organizations trying to do similar work to give a broader idea of the issue. But, as always, listen with skepticism as well.
Visit several organizations tackling the same issue. Observe the different ways they are trying to meet the same goals, then get to the heart of why one organization has chosen to do things differently than another.
Understand the power of funding. Aid follows funding, what doesn’t get funded doesn’t get implemented. Try to understand what they’re doing because it’s good practices and what they’re doing because it pleases donors.
So what are some alternative words? “Stakeholders”: funders; donors; taxpayers; targets; clients; beneficiaries; shareholders; contractors; consultants; steak eaters; bag holders . . .?
Journalists should also analyse the complex choices that aid workers face in particular political contexts, particularly in conflict zones (I will limit my comment to what i know – I am in Afghanistan). “Aid is not working” narratives are useless without trying to understand the difficult choices that aid workers and other organisations have to make because of political dynamics at the local level. Sometimes there is no good way to do it and you just do your best with what you have. Whatever all (including many aid workers) would like to believe, aid is also a political process, not just a technical one. It has political impacts and it is easily politicised by different groups.
Hi Alanna,
As a journalist who recently moved from a dinosaur newspaper to covering development and global health issues online, I am constantly amazed at the fuzzy and awful language on this beat. Even the word “development” is so vague as to be useless.
I’d suggest your friend start at a more basic level, exploring the problems with the lingo of development with the journalists and then move on to specific words, conceits or “narratives” to avoid. We need to know where to start before we learn where not to go …
best
Tom
Tom – that’s a fantastic point. It’s important to keep in mind the vague and conflicting meanings that many international development terms possess. Do you think it’s worse for this industry than others?
Is the training for in-country journos or foreign journos who’re coming into X developing country?
For foreigners:
1. report on gov’t or aid officials even though tracking down and verifying information will be infinitely more time-consuming and frustrating than if you were doing a similar story at home. A lot of foreign reporting tends to only focus on “the people” and their struggle and nowhere in the text can the reader ID an official decision-maker. To be frank, covering a protest is really easy; walking through a refugee camp and generally getting ppl to talk about their problems is easy. What’s hard is reporting on the guy behind the desk who made the decision that keeps those people protesting or living in squalid camps. Do the hard thing and ID the decision-maker, including name and department. That’s the reporting that helps your readers to make decisions.
2. follow the money–same as when you’re covering a story back home.
3. Mentioned above but bears repeating: DO NOT REPORT FROM AID AGENCY PRESS RELEASES. Befriend the comms people; they are incredibly helpful. But your function and mission are different. (And try not to get too grouchy about making significantly less than them 🙂
For in-country journos, same as above but also, kudos for reporting on and applying a critical lens to aid and relief work.
Alanna, I’m not sure where I’d place development as compared to other industries when it comes to its level of jargon or otherwise imprecise language. Some sectors, like say chemical engineering, is incomprehensible to outsiders … but who cares? When it comes to development, however, I think it does matter if the message or strategy language is unclear because so much of this “industry” is based on public or government support for the activities.
I covered a lot of things when I was a newspaper hack and development lingo reminds me most of health care lingo — which is usually vague to either disguise an unpleasant situation (like death or disease) or the fact that people are trying to make money off the unpleasantness. I mean, it isn’t really health care. It’s sick care.
Anyway, I think it’s great for those working in development to try to help journalists improve coverage. As we peel back the layers, it becomes more real and more interesting — if at times unpleasant.
Cheers
Tom
I strongly agree with Tom’s emphasis; specificity, describing exactly what you’re looking at, will solve 98% of your problems. I re-read George Orwell’s Politics of the English Language all the time… it’s hella easy to forget to be specific. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
This isn’t directly about jargon, but I would hope your friend could print out and hand out copies of the International Federation of Journalists Guidelines and Principles for Reporting on Issues Involving Children – http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?index=192&Language=EN