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1 The âtokenisationâ of development in the news
âWhat is development for? Is it to build dams? To increase the crops? Or is it to send a man to the moon?â These simple questions, raised by the late Polish journalist Ryszard KapuĹciĹski (2002: 6), encapsulated the paradox of news reporting on development: while it concentrates in the symbolic evidence of progress, it misses altogether the futility of the policies and acts that are purported to improve the life of those in poverty. For the thousands of millions who live in poverty, the billions of dollars in foreign aid and loans provided over the years by national governments, multilateral organisations and NGOs have made little or no difference to their lives (Easterly, 2003; Yontcheva & Masud, 2005). As Palagummi Sainath, who has decades of reporting development in India, argues, âdevelopment is the strategy of evasionâ (1996: 331): peopleâs needs are one thing, what policy makers deliver is entirely another. Journalism about development tends to reflect this evasion pattern, rarely going beyond the zeitgeist or dominant ideas of the time (Lugo-Ocando, 2015: 78). As such, news about development focuses on decoy tokens, representing symbols of progress that in reality are meaningless to people on the ground, especially those living in poverty.
One of the first things we did for this book was to briefly examine via LexisNexis how the news media cover poverty. The result was not particularly uplifting: less than half (47%) of over 2,500 articles about poverty in five British broadsheets between 2010 and 2014 mentioned âpolicyâ, and from that just over 10% offered any critical or analytical views to the related policies. Often one sees a clear emphasis on the surface problems of poverty â such as wars, famines and migration â and a recurrent emphasis in economic growth as the possible solution. Broadcast news is not different: all but 12 of a sample of 103 poverty news stories from BBC and CNN in 2013 incorporated critical news sources in their stories a lack of critical sources. And although we found business pages or specialised publications offer a more balanced variety of sources and discussions of the pros and cons of policies, the amount of such discussions is rather modest. For example, only 51 of the 867 stories in the Financial Times on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between 2000 and 2010 discussed its effects on the labour market and just 42 stories (or 5%) mentioned words related to âpovertyâ.
This preliminary analysis was in line with other research, which has over the years shown that the media in developed countries have done a very poor job in covering global poverty in particular and development issues in general (Lugo-Ocando, 2015; Malaolu, 2014; Scott, 2009). Instead of offering a truly critical news agenda on inequality and social exclusion as the underlining cause of poverty and scrutinising related development policies, news tends to concentrate on symbolic decoys that are the manifestations, but not the root causes, of poverty. This process of âtokenisationâ â which should not be mistaken for the same term used in computer science or linguistics â refers to the substitution of facts that reflect improvements in peopleâs life for those that give the appearance but are not legitimate measurements of poverty alleviation or well-being enhancement. News reporting of development often acts like an unwitting agent of sophism, disseminating specious arguments that appear to be true but which end up misleading the public or hallucinating it with the false comfort that something is effectively being done.
This chapter examines the key factors behind this tokenisation of development in the news, which we divide into three broad groups: (a) journalistsâ attempts to make poverty and development newsworthy at the expense of public understanding of them as a set of critical social issues and policies; (b) the fact that journalists tend to subscribe, uncritically, to certain ideas predicated by âeconomic scienceâ about lifting people out of poverty; and (c) the dominance of Western worldviews in development discourses, due to journalistsâ preference for elite news sources with âauthoritative powerâ who impose a âtyranny of expertsâ (Easterly, 2014) and the practical constraints that they face in accessing alternative voices.
Making poverty newsworthy
The moral hazard and the political threat that poverty poses to society, and our collective failure as society to overcome inequality in an age of advanced technology and almost unlimited resources, is probably the most important story of our time. The fact remains that the fruits of the most remarkable economic growth in the history of the world have not been shared equally (Kaplinsky, 2013; Milanovic, 2013; Ravallion, 2001). In countries such as Nigeria (Morales-Pita & Flynn, 2014) or Vietnam (Bland, 2011; Taylor, 2004), the benefits of sustained growth have gone to the pocket of a small elite, leaving behind millions in substandard conditions. In Africa, the number of people living in poverty did not decline but went up from 200 million in 1981 to 390 million in 2005. Today over 50% of the people on that continent live in poverty as defined by the World Bank (2013). Even in East Asia, where only 20% of the population lives in poverty nowadays compared to 50% in 1981, this growth has been accompanied nevertheless by a vast increase in inequality (Knight, 2013; Li, Sato, & Sicular, 2013). In China, for example, the Gini coefficient â a universally accepted measure of inequality â has reached the most critical point in its history. Furthermore, to the amazement of many, the Peopleâs Republic of China or the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, despite their claims of being socialist, still do not offer a universal and free healthcare system, while most of their citizens still have to pay for their childrenâs primary education (Blumenthal & Hsiao, 2005; Hsiao, 1995; Ma, Lu, & Quan, 2008).
In that context, common sense tells us that poverty, well-being and inequality â and the policies and actions that aim to tackle them â would be a constant source of deep-digging news and analyses in our media. It would be reasonable to expect that the media, in assuming its role as watchdog of power, would demand policy makers deliver tangible, effective results in relation to poverty and inequality. One would expect that their journalists would be as thorough and critical in their examination of development policies as they are in other news areas.
Yet the reality is not only that poverty is largely missing from the news agenda but also that, whenever it is present, there is relatively little insightful coverage of these issues (Kim, Carvalho, & Davis, 2010:570) in relation to inequality issues and broader development policies. Some scholars, such as development economist Jeffrey Sachs, describes coverage of global poverty as âpretty sporadicâ and laments the absence of media coverage in the US of the UNâs Millennium Development Goals (Hanrahan, 2009a). Others have shown that news about development intervention tends to concentrate on foreign aid, economic growth, infrastructure or Gross Development Product (GDP) without considering whether, and how, these elements do or do not reflect what they claim to be in the context of development discourses (Berger, 2003; Clawson & Trice, 2000; Lugo-Ocando, 2015).
This is not to say that news reporting of development policy has not improved over the time. In fact, the financial crisis, growing inequality and the continued existence of poverty have affected how the subjects of poverty and development have received more coverage, particularly since 2008. Journalists now appear to be more aware of the limitations of neoliberal policies promoted by major development institutions, and the undesirable effects of the globalisation process, enabled largely by these policies.
Reporting on development policies is more enquiring and deep-digging now than it was in the 1980s and 1990s, when the first wave of neoliberal policies rose. News coverage of IMF-led (International Monetary Fund) austerity programmes or free trade and deregulation, for example, is more analytical and to some degree more critical than it used to be. Yet the fundamental question of which policies can best address poverty and tackle inequality remains seldom contested in the media, while the ideological consensus seems to be faithfully reflected rather than questioned in prevalent narratives, which continue to suggest that economic growth as the key to development and present national and local corruptions as the main culprits of the failures of these types of policies.
Why, then, do we still see so much poor, red-herring news reporting of poverty and development out there in the news media? The answer for this is manifold but the very first factor that we need take into account is the perceived newsworthiness of poverty and development. To some extent, the relative scarcity of critical reporting and analysis of poverty in the media might come a surprise for outsiders: if the scale, scope and impact of an event or issue is a key traditional factor in determining its newsworthiness (Harrison, 2005; Hartley, 2013; Van Dijk, 2013), then we would expect poverty, as a structural issue that affects most of the world, to be a prime candidate for much critical news reporting.
However, the above shows that poverty and anti-poverty policies do not seem to have the kind of newsworthiness that complies with the expectations and dynamics in the newsrooms. Poverty, the biggest story of our time, is often missing from the front pages and primetime news reports, except when disasters strike and wreak havoc somewhere. So, for example, famines in Ethiopia or Somalia are big stories, while policies that address chronic poverty, such as the rural job creation scheme which the Indian government implemented in 2005, are not (Kareemulla, Ramasundaram, Kumar, & Rama Rao, 2013, p. 13).
The focus on events and disasters
In order to understand why, we need to take into account the dynamics of news production, which plays a pivotal role in defining the way poverty, and development in general, is reported. One reason lies in the fact both journalists and the main sources of development-related news, such as aid providers, tend to prefer âuncomplicatedâ accounts of concrete events to abstract processes (Franks, 2013:103). The nature of mainstream journalism practice is that it tends to deal with events as they arise (Harcup & OâNeill, 2001; Schlesinger, 1987). It is not a practice that lends itself to long-term trend stories or that is able to study complex topics in depth.
The need to make news accessible and engaging to publics, within the constraints of the political economy that defines the process of gathering, producing and disseminating news, leads journalists to striving for verbal and/or audio-visual narratives that help the public relate themselves to wider discourses. As such, rather than devoting space to analysing systemic macro socio-economic trends and policies, news editors tend to cover daily events and issues defined by their organisationâs editorial prerogatives. This means focusing on events that are relevant or interesting for their readers, are of commercial interest for the outlet, or fall within the priorities set out by the particular editor of the news day. At any particular point in time, a few big events tend to dominate the front page, but only for a short period, after which journalists switch abruptly to the ânext big thingâ (Boydston, 2008: 14).
This poses a challenge to the reporting of development, particularly poverty issues. In this area, big events are usually crises such as famines, disasters or interventions. Hence, a famine in Ethiopia goes to the front page because it can be portrayed as a short-term, dramatic and readily grasped event. Meanwhile, a long-term project that requires time to structurally address the problem, despite its potential large-scale positive impact in the long run, would rarely be reported in the same way. As Susan Moeller writes, âunless Americans [US citizens] are involved, unless a crisis comes close to home â either literally or figuratively â unless compelling images are available, preferably on TV, crises donât get attention, either from the media or their audienceâ (Moeller, 1999: 12). The same logic applies to news coverage of climate change, which often focuses excessively on spectacular or extreme events (e.g. melting ice, abnormal weather, tensions at global climate change summits) rather than on its disastrous but abstract and distant impacts on life (such as dislocation, immigration, the loss of livelihoods, severe poverty and so on) and the need for global policies to tackle these impacts (Hibberd & Nguyen, 2013). As Berger argues,
Poverty is not just specific news items, but a big-picture phenomenon, and a corresponding complication for journalism is that poverty is not an event, but a process. The significance of this is that it is less easily accommodated in conventional journalism, let alone researched and constructed. However, Indian journalist P. Sainath can still say of his reportage: âThe idea was to look at those conditions in terms of processes. Too often, poverty and deprivation get covered as events. That is, when some disaster strikes, when people die. Yet, poverty is about much more than starvation deaths or near famine. It is the sum total of a multiplicity of factors. That makes covering the process more challenging and more important.
(Berger, 2003: 4)
Dramatic storylines: Goodies versus baddies
In addition to the focus of dramatic events on the surface of poverty, Western media have tried other methods to make poverty and development news relevant and accessible to their primarily Western audiences â for better or worse. Trade agreements, for example, are often viewed through the lens of the political process, which focuses on negotiation among partners instead of examining the potential consequences of these agreements (Mazumdar, 2011; Servaes, 2013). This is in part because they are covered in the business pages and/or by political reporters focusing on trade policy as part of a political agenda. Another common method is to squeeze complex stories and issues into simple narratives, with the âgood guysâ, âbad guysâ and a plot that is structured in a particular manner. These âcharactersâ are indeed essential in the articulation of stories about development in the news. The characters tend to be âexpertsâ that form part of what William Easterly calls the âtechnocratic illusionâ (2014: 6) but they also appear in other forms and shapes. These are the âvictimsâ â such as the women and children in famines â and, of course, the villains, who are mostly the âcorruptâ and âineptâ officials of developing countries. While these make stories interesting, they often shy away from critical scrutiny of the deeper layers of poverty issues and development policies.
In news coverage of foreign aid, for example, the media, instead of scrutinising how and why aid is spent in certain ways in certain countries, tend to emulate the same geopolitical agenda that has long ill-defined villains and heroes in crude terms (Mawdsley, 2008) to justify the richâs own game for post-colonial power and influence. In seeing aid as financial gifts, for instance, journalists direct disproportionate attention towards making sure that it is in âsafe handsâ at the recipientsâ end (Easterly, 2002; Knack, 2004; Riddell, 2007). As such, there is a tendency of the media to single out certain villains and victims â e.g. corrupted governments or bureaucracy in the developing world â for the failure of foreign aid to fulfil its promises. Indeed, this viewpoint is faithfully adopted from the political circle. As well reflected in the following comment by Lee Herbert Hamilton, a former member of the US House of Representatives, that was widely reproduced by the media at that time:
Corruption is indeed a great barrier to success. Aid can work where there is good governance, and usually fails where governments are unable or unwilling to commit aid to improve the lives of their people. We should insist that governments receiving American aid live up to standards of accountability and transparency, and we should support countries that embrace market reforms, democracy, and the rule of law. In return, we should guarantee that aid levels will be predictable and sustained over time â so that governments attempting to do the right thing can plan prudently.
(Hamilton, 2005)
The âcelebritisationâ of poverty
On the other hand, the rise of global âinfotainmentâ has led the media to a tendency to displace the serious with the trivial and entertaining (Thussu, 2008). One particularly remarkable and intensifying trend is the focus on the personalities of the people in leadership positions and the political conflicts within organisations rather than on broader policy questions. Gaining much momentum after Robert McNamara was appointed as President of the World Bank in 1968 (Clark, 1981: 167), this trend has grown more pronounced in recent times, in parallel to the rise of the celebrity culture and its increasing power in defining what is news. One example of this is the reporting of the feud between two economists, Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly, which got more attention than the differences in their ideas. The debate between the two became public when Sachs responded to Easterlyâs critical review of his book, End of Poverty, in the Washington Post in 2001. Easterly prolonged the debate by defending himself with a rather personal attack on Sachs. Easterly supporters â such as Dambisa Moyo, the author of Dead Aid (2009), a book that calls for an end to foreign assistance to Africa â jumped onto his bandwagon to become overnight the darling of the US right-wing media. Equally relevant are the interventions of celebrities such as Irish singer Bono, who on the one hand calls for foreign aid to those in poverty but, on the other, publicly defends the tax evasion scheme of Ireland (Neate, 2014).
The focus on celebrities does not mean that the debates are deprived of ideology. On the contrary, celebrities tend to be used in the media narratives to represent a particular ideological stance. In the specific case of the Sachs-Easterly debate this was framed in the news as part of the broader left-right battle over the role of government (Pryke, 2014). Thus, Sachs and advocates of more aid were portrayed as pushing for big government while Easterly and Moyo tend to represent the side that sees government as part of the problem. However, at the end of the day, these celebrity debates are counterproductive because they are divorced from reality and, as such, oversimplify or obscure the challenges and problems that poverty poses.
Another consequence of this personality-driven news is that it diverts public attention from critically important events or issues of the day. In 2007, accusations against the then President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, who was alleged of impropriety in handling his girlfriendâs promotion at the institution over which he presided (Cole, 2007), received more coverage than the bankâs far more questionable general amnesty programme policy. Under this policy, private firms that had defrauded the World Bank in the past would not be penalised so long as they admitted their wrongdoing. In essence, it offered an amnesty to private companies, NGOs and individuals who had stolen or defrauded the bank, a criminal act in itself, if they fully disclosed past malpractice and promised âto stick with the rulesâ in future. In other words, organisations that had been caught red-handed in corruption would receive a mere slap on the wrist and be allowed to continue business as usual. Rarely did, however, the media question why the World Bank was allowing criminals, who had stolen money originally destined for those in poverty, to be let off the hook. Instead, most of the media, being too busy with the above personal scandal of Wolfowitz, gave little coverage to this particular issue and, where they reported on it, merely amplified the institutionâs version through that sup...
