Developing News

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: The elusive, shape-shifting nature of development in the news -- What is development, anyway? -- This book's critical examination of development news -- Thematic organisation -- 1 The "tokenisation" of development in the news -- Making poverty newsworthy -- The focus on events and disasters -- Dramatic storylines: Goodies versus baddies -- The "celebritisation" of poverty -- The 'cult of economics' -- An exact science? -- "Kicking the ladder"--Dominance of Western worldviews -- Authoritative power to speak -- Practical challenges in newsgathering -- Any hope for change? -- 2 Journalistic conventions and the geopolitics of development narratives -- Geopolitics in news articulation -- Pack mentality and journalistic conventions -- Development news as geopolitical propaganda -- From colonial rhetoric to Truman's development categories -- Cold War discourses -- Concluding notes -- 3 The "number game" in development news -- Naïve empiricism -- "Numbers rule the world"--One dollar per day to get out of poverty? -- The holy grail of GDP -- Concluding notes -- 4 Communicating containment and the Alliance for Progress -- Ideological and practical factors -- Alliance for progress as a propagandist narrative -- The "equal partnership" discourse -- Mediatised development -- Lessons from the Alliance -- 5 News coverage of foreign aid: A case study of the Millennium Villages Project in African, US and UK media -- Background to the chapter: The many problems of news coverage of foreign aid -- Background on the MVP -- About this study -- African press coverage of the villages -- US/UK coverage of the MVP -- Early stages: Ideologies and personalities as news -- Second phase: Critical voices from the blogosphere -- Third phase: The Idealist