Glenda Cooper
Glenda Cooper is a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford. She has just completed a Guardian research fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, researching how the media and aid agencies work together - or don't - during natural disasters. For the past 12 years, she has worked as a journalist around the world for a range of media including the BBC, Channel 4, the Daily Mail, the Independent and the Washington Post.
Is it time for Media Social Responsibility?
Earlier this month at a conference in Madrid I took part in a day-long discussion on the knotty question of the relationship between the media and humanitarian agencies. It included a debate on how media and agencies could collaborate better. ...
A new year's resolution for aid agencies and broadcasters
As the first full week of the new year kicks off, self-improvement is at the forefront of most people's minds. Instead of the usual resolutions to give up smoking, eat less and go to the gym, my plea for aid agencies and journalists is: rethink your relationship. ...
Burma's bloggers show power of citizen journalists in a crisis
The pictures were often grainy and the video shaky, but in media terms, they were gold dust. The bloggers of Burma used new technology to tell the world about last week's protests in their previously closed country. Thanks to them, we saw pictures of monks marching through the streets of Rangoon, and heard crackly phone calls with a chilling soundtrack of gun shots. Many pointed out the difference technology has made compared with the 1988 uprising, when the junta's bloody suppression was largely hidden from outside view. It's no surprise then that last Friday, the authorities suspended internet links to the outside world and blocked mobile phone lines. ...
Aceh tsunami survivors put media pressure on aid groups
Angry residents are confronting a housing contractor on an Asian Development Bank project. The mood is one of aggression; the contractor has his hands out trying to calm down the men who've come to complain. Nothing unusual about that. Two years on from the tsunami, there is, understandably, frustration in Banda Aceh among people still waiting to be rehoused. Nor is it unusual these days that a photographer from the local newspaper, Serambi Indonesia, is on hand to snap the protest as it happens. ...
The truth about Sri Lanka's Baby 81
You probably don't know the name Abilass Jeyarajah. Looking back on coverage of the Sri Lankan tsunami, you're much more likely to recognise the nickname he was given at the time: Baby 81. It was the ideal story; a young baby miraculously rescued from the wave, but with no identification to show whom he belonged to, a symbol both of the devastating impact of the tsunami and of the spirit of survival. ...
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