Developing News

Jairo Lugo-Ocando is an Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Before becoming an academic he worked as a correspondent and news editor for several media outlets in Latin America and the US.An Nguyen an Associate Professor of Journalism in the School of Journalism, English and Communication at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom. A former Vietnamese journalist and an Australian-educated scholar, he has published widely in several areas, including digital news consumption and citizenship, public engagement with science news, and news and socio-political changes in a globalising world.

• ContentsList of figuresAcknowledgementsIntroduction: The elusive, shape-shifting nature of development in the newsWhat is development, anyway?The critical examination of development newsThematic organizationChapter 1: The "tokenization" of development in the newsMaking poverty newsworthyThe focus on events and disastersDramatic storylines: goodies versus baddiesThe "celebritisation" of povertyThe cult of economicsAn exact science?"Kicking the ladder"Dominance of Western worldviewsAuthoritative power to speakPractical challenges in newsgatheringAny hope for change?Chapter 2: Journalistic conventions and the geopolitics of development narrativesGeopolitics in news articulationPack mentality and journalistic conventionsDevelopment news as geopolitical propagandaFrom colonial rhetoric to Truman’s development categoriesCold War discoursesConcluding notesChapter 3: The "number game" in development newsNaïve empiricism"Numbers rule the world"One dollar per day to out of poverty?The Holy Grail of GDPConcluding notesChapter 4: Communicating containment and the Alliance for ProgressIdeological and practical factorsAlliance for Progress as a propagandist narrativeThe "equal partnership" discourseMediatised developmentLessons from the AllianceChapter 5: News coverage of foreign aid: a case study of the Millennium Village Project in African, US and UK mediaBackground to the chapter: the many problems of news coverage of foreign aidThe case of the Millennium Villages ProjectBackground on the MVPAbout this studyAfrican Press Coverage of the villagesUS/UK coverage of the MVPEarly stages: ideologies and personalities as newsSecond phase: critical voices from the blogosphereThird phase: The IdealistConstraints on media reportingConclusionDisclaimerChapter 6: Disempowering news: the feminization of developmentThe feminisation of poverty"Empowering" women – for less gender justice?Gendered news practicesChapter 7: New technologies for old ideasAn ICT-driven new economyTechnology as geopoliticsTechnology as colonial legitimisationTechnology without politics?Chapter 8: Malthusianism and news framing of population growthShifting the blameLegitimising racismMalthusianism returns as the Bell CurveTowards a better news articulation of population issuesConclusion: Beyond the North-to-South lecture: can the news media ever get to the core of development?Us-versus-them propagandaWhat is being ‘sold’What is being missedWhere to from here?ReferencesIndex

'Developing News isn’t just another study of "development" but a thorough, briskly written and radically new take on what Western media have retained from decades of change in the "Third World" and reported them to Western readers. Read this book to learn how the public’s interpretation of the global South has been shaped, mis-shaped and riddled with ideology. Then lend it to your favourite, or least-favourite, journalist. '--Susan George, President of the Transnational Institute‘At last, a comprehensive and historically-informed discourse on development by two scholars from the global South: Lugo-Ocando and Nguyen provide a powerful critique of development news and news about development. Highly recommended.'- Daya Thussu, Professor of International Communication, University of Westminster, London