Forget feast or famine, it's time to tell the complex story of development | Global Development Professionals Network | Guardian Professional

Forget feast or famine, it's time to tell the complex story of development | Global Development Professionals Network | Guardian Professional: "If the first casualty of war is truth, the first casualty of a disaster situation is complexity.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a New York Times journalist who complained that NGOs had represented the situation in Haiti too simply and optimistically. No one, for example, had brought up land tenure, which quickly revealed itself to be one of the major challenges understood by few in the post-earthquake confusion. I pointed out that my organisation, Global Communities, had spoken about land tenure almost immediately – but nobody listened. Instead, the media focused on stories of desperate chaos or children miraculously pulled from rubble. We agreed that poor reportage is a hungry mouth that both sides feed. But there is no point in complaining about journalistic practices until we, communications professionals, first examine our own."



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