It's Difficult Working In Somalia

August 9, 2011, 5:09 pm

Networks Step Up Coverage in Famine Zones

By Brian Stelter

Television networks in the United States have stepped up their staffing in Somalia and Kenya in recent days amid what the United Nations calls a worsening humanitarian crisis there.

On Monday, the top anchors for CBS and CNN, Scott Pelley and Anderson Cooper, respectively, brought their newscasts to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, where nearly 380,000 Somali refugees are living. Later this week, another network anchor, Ann Curry of NBC, will be in the region to cover the famine.

The networks are rotating reporters in and out of the region, meaning that they do not always have a reporter there. The crisis has been difficult to cover at times because of the security threats posed by the Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls parts of Somalia.

Television coverage plays a pivotal role in galvanizing public attention and, during disasters, in instigating donations to relief groups. As Stephanie Strom of The New York Times reported, the famine had largely been off the media radar in July, and fund raisers said they had received relatively few donations.

News executives at one network, ABC, asserted that its competitors were slow in acknowledging the importance of the crisis, which officials have called one of the worst humanitarian disasters in decades.

On Aug. 5, an ABC spokesman said in an e-mail message, “This is a story that has been overshadowed by the debt debate in Washington and is only now starting to get the media attention it warrants.”

ABC first aired reports from a correspondent in the region, Lama Hasan, on July 16 and 17, and then sent the weekend anchor, David Muir, whose first report was televised on July 27.

When Mr. Muir came back to the United States last week, he reminded viewers on “World News” that ABC had been “the first network to report from Kenya,” and he described an “overwhelming” response. “Doctors Without Borders tells us viewers of ‘World News’ have donated more than $100,000,” he said on the broadcast on Thursday. “They thank you, and of course, so do we.”

Implicitly rebuffing ABC, NBC said in a news release last week that it had paid “careful attention” to the crisis, citing reports by Rohit Kachroo, a reporter who is jointly employed in Africa by NBC and the British network ITV. Mr. Kachroo reported on the crisis in Web videos on July 6 and 7, and on television on July 21. “What’s sadly common about this is, it’s been going on for some time, but the world is just taking note,” the “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams said that night.

On July 31, the NBC correspondent Kate Snow arrived in the region, and on Aug. 4, she was joined by the chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel.

CBS, the third-place network news division, caught up this week. Mr. Pelley, who took over the “CBS Evening News” in June, anchored from Kenya on Monday night, and will anchor from there again on Tuesday night, according to a spokeswoman. Erica Hill, a co-host of “The Early Show,” is there as well.

After an initial burst of attention, NBC and ABC do not have reporters in the region now. NBC said that Mr. Kachrool would be back on Wednesday and that Ms. Curry, a co-host of “Today,” would be there this weekend.

An ABC spokesman said “we are continuing to cover the story working with our partners and aid organizations there.”

CNN has had a correspondent, Nima Elbagir, in east Africa since mid-July. Sharply increasing its coverage, the channel had Mr. Cooper and the medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta fly into the region over the weekend with Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, who is on a fact-finding tour.

Mr. Cooper’s trip coincided with a scheduling change for his nightly newscast, “Anderson Cooper 360:” it is now shown live at 8 p.m. Eastern and repeated at his old time, 10 p.m.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cooper traveled to Mogadishu, where he is embedded with the African Union troops that are fighting the insurgents. He will remain in Mogadishu on Wednesday, CNN said.

The Associated Press, which supplies information and images to media outlets around the world, has a reporter in Mogadishu and another at the refugee camp at Dadaab. Its television operation transmits video “from stringers across the country” of Somalia, a spokesman said, while an A.P. team on the Kenyan border regularly crosses into Somalia to cover the refugee situation.

The A.P. also has a staff photographer, Jerome Delay, at a camp outside Dadaab, and has been providing pictures to media outlets from freelancer photographers in Somalia.

As in past famines and humanitarian crises, photographs of desperate refugees have had a powerful effect on those who see them; one such photo of a malnourished child was published on the front page of The New York Times on Aug. 1.

In an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered” the photographer, Tyler Hicks, said that the famine “hasn’t been covered in the way that it should be because of the difficulty of working in Somalia.”

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Picture from "Anderson Cooper 360°" blog.