Famine and the media

Few of us can deny that when we think of famine in Africa – we think of emaciated, helpless people (especially children with “starvation bellies”) living in barren, dry deserts. These people are usually “traditional” Africans, wearing jewelry made out of bones and little clothing, not yet integrated into modern African society. This image, ingrained in our minds, is the result of "hegemony," a concept developed in the 1920s by an Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Hegemony refers to the integration of a certain set of values, beliefs, and morals into our thought process through socialization in our everyday lives. Hegemony also involves power dynamics. According to Peet and Hartwick, what we believe and think tends to be "supportive of the established order and its dominating classes" and hegemony "mystifies power relations, camouflages the causes of public issues and events, encourages fatalism and political passivity."

In the case of famine in Africa, because few of us will ever have the chance to travel to Africa and talk to those suffering from famine, we rely on the media to provide us with information about what famine looks like, how it is caused, and what is being done or should be done to address it. I searched YouTube to provide a more concrete example and found this video from New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman on famine in Northern Kenya in September, 2009.


I was pretty impressed when I discovered that de Waal’s description of the portrayal of famine in the media (in a book written in 1997) still holds true in 2009. According to de Waal, most reporters go into famine situations with a pretty good idea of what famine looks like (thanks to hegemony) and their job is just to search for the right combination of elements to make the viewer feel involved and, of course, to evoke a response. Most reports are a sort of "fairy story" with a helpless victim in distress, a villain (often the weather) and a savior. In this video, we see the helpless people of the Turkana region – seemingly dying in front of our eyes, the representation of geography/weather as the villain (phrases such as "bone-dry desert" and "unforgiving landscape" are used) and the hero, World Vision.

In the last post, I mentioned James Ferguson’s book the Anti-Politics Machine in which he deconstructs a World Bank report about Lesotho. I’m going to attempt to deconstruct some of the elements of this video, applying some concepts from both Famine Crimes and the Anti-Politics Machine:

Portrayal of famine sufferers as “traditional”

Modernization theory of development holds modern, Western countries as the ideal and assesses the development of other countries in terms of how far they have “advanced” in becoming like the West, socially and economically. One of the themes of note in the Lesotho World Bank report was the representation of Lesotho as aboriginal – “not yet incorporated into the modern world, so that it can be transformed by the roads and infrastructure, education.” Gettleman describes the Turkana as “some of Kenya’s most traditional people” who have “fought off modernity.” He also, for some reason, notes that they “still” scar their skin and wear feathers in their hair. The implication, to me at least, is that the lack of modernity in the lives of the Turkana and the persistence of their traditional practices play a role in their starvation.

Ferguson discussed the idea of a “less developed” country as “historically retarded” and one in which “poverty appears as a result of not yet having been introduced to the modern world.” Presenting conditions or lifestyles as traditional vs. modern makes it seemingly simple to solve the problem. If the Turkana people would just stop fighting off modernity, they would find all sorts of ways to earn a living and prosper and wouldn’t be suffering from famine. Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry on the Turkana notes that “in recent years, development aid programs have aimed at introducing fishing among the Turkana (a taboo in Turkana society) with varying success."

Lack of consideration of politics

de Waal, describing famine in the 1980s in Kenya, attributes relentless impoverishment among pastoralists of northern Kenya to a history of displacement from their land, violent government attacks, restriction on movement, ethnic discrimination and other human rights abuses. The political contract that does exist between the Kenyan government and the people of Kenya has been exploited for political gains and is focused mostly in urban areas. During times of famine, the Kenyan government tends to provide food aid to their political allies and those who can keep them in power (the people of Turkana are neither of these). None of these issues are even hinted at in the overly simplified New York Times report – there is no mention of politics at all.

This video, by the Kenyan news agency NTV is from August 2009, just a month before the New York Times report. It begins the same, displaying the Turkana people forced to eat wild fruits. The report quickly transitions into discussing the government’s plans for an emergency response.



The New York Times report does not make any mention of this emergency program by the government, either because it never materialized (which should also be newsworthy) or because it worked with an apolitical humanitarian agency to create the report. The report simplifies the issue of famine to being caused by weather and traditional practices. Additionally, through hegemony, the report undermines and even makes negligible the Kenyan government’s responsibility to the people of Turkana in the eyes of viewers (politicians, aid workers, donors) across the globe.

Relationship between aid agencies and journalists

de Waal primarily focuses on the intimate, contractual relationship between the media and international agencies in Famine Crimes. He quotes George Alagiah of BBC television:

"Relief agencies depend on us for publicity and we need them to tell us where the stories are. There's an unspoken understanding between us, a sort of code. We try not to ask the question too bluntly: 'Where will we find the most starving babies?' And they never answer explicitly. We get the pictures just the same."

de Waal attributes this relationship to a few factors: the fear of journalists to venture into the unknown without being accompanied by an aid worker, laziness on the part of the journalist, and “knowing that the editor wants and ‘aid angle’ anyway and will not appreciate a complicated inquiry into local politics.” In the New York Times article, Gettleman points out a woman who has walked 15 miles to wait for food from World Vision – "one of the few aid agencies out here." The Turkana people are shown carrying bags of food donated by World Vision. The video becomes part news report, and part commercial for World Vision.

Gettleman’s report also mentions that World Vision helped build an irrigation project to grow corn in the desert but it has failed because there is no rain. This brings up the issue of accountability of aid agencies. Do the Turkana traditionally grow corn and do they want to? Is the land in the Turkana region suitable for growing corn? Why put money into an aid project that depends on rain in a region that has experienced years of droughts? The World Vision worker that Gettleman interviewed probably thought that an irrigation project was a great idea and because of the way it is presented in the report (as an obvious solution to the problem that unfortunately fell victim to the villainous weather) we, as the unknowing viewer, agree. According to de Waal, aid agencies tend to experience immunity from journalistic scrutiny about their competence and effectiveness and this is the key problem in the relationship between the two.

Exploitation of and lack of accountability to famine sufferers

I cringed when watching some of this report – it seemed so sensationalized and exploitative. The only time the people of Turkana get a chance to speak – they are portrayed as completely helpless, saying things like “the only thing I can do is to take her to get some help – to wait here until she dies.” Are they not angry at the situation? Are they happy with World Vision’s response? Has anyone asked them what they want or what they see as a solution to the problem? The World Vision worker does mention that, in speaking with the community, people are concerned about losing their livestock but the only solutions being presented are bags of food and irrigation projects. de Waal on lack of accountability of the media states that "Western journalists do not need to worry if they present famine victims in false, offensive, or degrading terms because they know that the people portrayed will not complain and have no recourse mechanisms." In all of this, none of the major players - the Kenyan government, World Vision, or the international media – are actually, legitimately accountable to the people suffering from starvation.

Famine Crimes was written in 1997 and it would have been nice to discover that his analyses no longer apply today. The fact that they do, though, shows how humanitarian agencies continue to perpetuate their own existence and are, at least partially, to blame for the continuation of famine in Africa.