Responsibility to report: The politics of British press reporting of the Darfur humanitarian crisis

Abstract

This article aims to establish whether the news media adopt a responsibility to report when covering humanitarian crises. It explores British press coverage of the genocide in Darfur and finds that the British press maintains traditional and ethnocentric frameworks that undermine the need for responsible reporting. Ultimately, the news values of negativity, elite people and elite nations have determined coverage of the Darfur crisis, and official and Western sources have been used to maintain credibility and a sense of identification with the domestic setting. Geopolitical biases continue to determine what stories are newsworthy, and political context remains scant. Sparse use of foreign correspondents and meagre inclusion of personal experiences suggest that journalists remain detached from the crisis, urging political rather than humanitarian intervention. This article concludes that the British press maintains institutionalised approaches to reporting humanitarian crises by avoiding attachment.