HomeNGOs and civil societies for the most part have had a schizophrenic relationship with the media. This has largely been influenced by the simple fact that they don’t speak the same language. Media houses don’t find stories that are released by the media as interesting especially when it comes to their audience.
On the other side of the divide, NGOs release different reports which are complex and pay little attention to news values. These are the news values that media houses look at before they adopt a story: bad news, immediacy, human interest, proximity, timeliness, conflict, novelty/oddity, currency, prominence, and impact.
Bad news- Generally the media angles toward bad news because of its impact on people’s emotions. When someone kills their lover it evokes raw emotion and sparks conversation. A traditional news media outlet is heavily reliant on advertising revenue. That means they need their numbers to go up so that they can have bargaining power. NGOs should paint the real picture of what’s happening on the ground. If there is debilitating hunger that is affecting marginalized communities disproportionately, highlight that. And the media will all be too happy to pick it up.
Immediacy/urgency- How does that story relate to the current happenings in a country or the world? For example, since the Russia-Ukraine conflict started, it has highlighted the plight of refugees and also how racism still affects Africans living in Europe. When you take the prevailing times into consideration, you can fashion your story out of that and the media will 8 out of 10 times pick it up.
Human interest- The media stories also must have an element that touches the emotions of people. Ohio State University writes that stories must compellingly capture the audience’s attention and appeal to their attitudes and beliefs. For example, a story about marginalized communities, children, women being raped and men being killed in war are good human interest angles.
Feature stories do well to capture audiences but they must also offer hope and viable solutions that are being applied to help these people. If an NGO wants to highlight some of the programmes that they’re undertaking, they should highlight individual cases. Then build up to show what they’re doing for a whole community. In the same breath, they should also show people who have benefited from the programmes and projects.
Prominence- One of the reasons why civil societies and NGOs use celebrities and prominent personalities in their programmes is the following they have. When you bring a famous actor/musician such as Mercy Masika who has been working with UNHCR to acquire support for refugee children, people will want to jump in.
When the media editors and journalists see these personalities, they know it’ll shore up their numbers. Therefore they won’t pass up such an opportunity.
The NGOs need to develop a relationship with editors and journalists. Get journalists who specialize in such stories. Devex suggests that you can even call them for a meeting and have conversations about how you can collaborate.
Press briefings should also be short and direct. Since many of the communication officers are former journalists, should advise you on how to make press briefings newsworthy. They should also have information that will bring real impact to the audience.
