Media agenda setting and donor aid

On January 26th 2004, the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean unleashed three floods.   The first was quite literally a catastrophic flood; a wall of water that killed hundreds of thousands.  The second was a torrent of news coverage that inundated every corner of the globe.    The third was an outpouring of humanitarian assistance that was pledged and delivered on an unprecedented scale.  Each of these floods was extreme to the point of unique and the combination of the three simply has to be considered one of those few, truly exceptional events that serves as a defining moment in history.  And that is the problem.

The problem with this is that our common knowledge regarding the role of the news media in the humanitarian response to crises, and to a lesser extent the provision of development aid, is defined by events like the tsunami.