The Politics of Humanitarian Journalism (Book Chapter)

In this chapter, we examine what we know, and do not know, about humanitarian news and identify the major challenges such journalism currently faces. In doing so, we hope to help producers, researchers and audiences of humanitarian news to reflect critically on the increasingly complex ethical and political dilemmas inherent in this field.

We argue that the most pressing issue is the relationship between humanitarian journalism, the field of politics and the operation of power in global governance more generally. We distinguish three key areas of research on humanitarian journalism - content, production and reception – and show that politics and power are under-examined in all of them.

This chapter is part of the Routledge Handbook of Humanitarian Communication, edited by Lilie Chouliaraki and Anne Vestergaard, published in 2021.