Crisis Reporting: Deeper, Broader, Better

Drought and displacement in Somalia: Fleeing from dust and starvation. Photo by UNHCR

ICFJ administered a five-week Arabic online course on crisis reporting. The course, which took place April 15 to May 20, 2008, explored various topics, including natural disasters, humanitarian interventions and health crises.

The course covered:

• Humanizing and personalizing crisis stories - found ways to tells stories through the eyes of individuals affected
• Sourcing - examined a crisis from all possible angles and attempted to understand motives and fears
• Examining emotional involvement and biases - learned how to avoid manipulation by one side or the other
• Avoiding stereotypes and generalizations - including how choice of language affects perception

Drought and displacement in Somalia: Fleeing from dust and starvation. Photo by UNHCR