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The British news media have risen magnificently to the challenge posed by the earthquake in south-east Asia and have roused the British public from its self-centred navel-gazing long enough to be of some help, concluded the British news media this week.
The front page of the Daily Maul proudly displayed the figure - 4.9 million pounds - which had been raised for the Woodrow Wyatt Compassionate Fund thanks to the paper's pictures of British schoolchildren bowing their heads in memory of the earthquake's victims.
"The children were so photogenic that donations from the public nearly doubled after we ran them," said Daily Maul editor Bodger Swilbrite. "We are all very proud."
Among the quality papers, the Sunday Independent and Upper Middle-Class Advertiser ran the story of a British diplomat and his family, who were all killed in the earthquake except for the man's wife, who survived in time to be interviewed for the front page.
Such human interest stories are one of the factors which have considerable potential for making the news come alive for its readers, said media expert Bradley Ichneumon.
The media's success in motivating the British public to give up tens of millions of pounds to help the victims of the earthquake was "a staggering achievement," said Dr Ichneumon. It might even be possible, he added, to compare it to the incident during the war against opium in Afghanistan more than twenty years ago, when a BBC journalist single-handedly liberated Kabul on the air.
"People in the west really don't have much conception of the world outside their own comfortable lives," Dr Ichneumon explained. "That's where the media can really make a contribution - by providing human figures that the public can identify with, figures whose tragic stories can cut through - albeit temporarily - the complacent fog with which ordinary people surround themselves."
The British news media have risen magnificently to the challenge posed by the earthquake in south-east Asia and have roused the British public from its self-centred navel-gazing long enough to be of some help, concluded the British news media this week.
The front page of the Daily Maul proudly displayed the figure - 4.9 million pounds - which had been raised for the Woodrow Wyatt Compassionate Fund thanks to the paper's pictures of British schoolchildren bowing their heads in memory of the earthquake's victims.
"The children were so photogenic that donations from the public nearly doubled after we ran them," said Daily Maul editor Bodger Swilbrite. "We are all very proud."
Among the quality papers, the Sunday Independent and Upper Middle-Class Advertiser ran the story of a British diplomat and his family, who were all killed in the earthquake except for the man's wife, who survived in time to be interviewed for the front page.
Such human interest stories are one of the factors which have considerable potential for making the news come alive for its readers, said media expert Bradley Ichneumon.
The media's success in motivating the British public to give up tens of millions of pounds to help the victims of the earthquake was "a staggering achievement," said Dr Ichneumon. It might even be possible, he added, to compare it to the incident during the war against opium in Afghanistan more than twenty years ago, when a BBC journalist single-handedly liberated Kabul on the air.
"People in the west really don't have much conception of the world outside their own comfortable lives," Dr Ichneumon explained. "That's where the media can really make a contribution - by providing human figures that the public can identify with, figures whose tragic stories can cut through - albeit temporarily - the complacent fog with which ordinary people surround themselves."
1 Comments:
At 12:09 am ,
Raoul Djukanovic said...
Quite right too. The response has brought tears to my eyes, particularly this heartwarming tale of the kids who sold their prezzies, nobly sacrificing their own pleasure in order to splash a relative's regional news agency all over the front of the Moonie Times.
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