Suzanne Franks
is professor of journalism at City University, London
Blog posts in total 12
Posts
Online abuse is a danger for many female journalists
The abuse faced by Caroline Criado Perez became a huge talking point over the summer of 2013. She was the campaigner who had founded The Women’s Room and led a highly successful social media campaign to have a woman represented on UK bank notes.
Why Michael Buerk’s 1984 famine report from Ethiopia entered media history
Next year is the 13th anniversary of the famous BBC report from Ethiopia in which Michael Buerk talked about a “biblical famine”. The images of Mohammed Amin, together with powerful words, produced one of the most famous television reports of the late 20th Century.
Reporting famine
Last week, Storyville on BBC4 told a gripping tale of journalism. Hitler, Stalin and Mr Jones was about the intrepid Gareth Jones who wrote variously for the Economist, Times and Western Daily Mail in the early 1930s.
Human rights: who's responsible for poor coverage in UK media?
Some parts of the tabloid press still show a relentlessly negative framing of human rights
China's role in Africa: pitting development against media freedom?
Last week, I spoke at the Oxford University China Africa Network on the implications of China's media interventions in Africa. There is ample discussion of China's role in the overall frame of African development. Opinion is divided on whether these interventions are a reinforcing of previous...
Sri Lanka doc highlights wider storytelling imbalance
The Sri Lanka's Killing Fields documentary which was shown late at night on Channel 4 was truly shocking. It is rare that such images are shown on mainstream television. And one might reflect that it was only because the victims were foreigners from a faraway and poor country that they were s...
Repressing revolution in the rest of Africa
The impact of social media on the uprisings in North Africa has been well documented. But spare a thought for the way these developments have played out further south: - Eskinder Nega, a journalist in Ethiopia, was picked up by the authorities from an internet cafe in Addis Ababa just for wri...
The limits of foreign news coverage
International news coverage may be declining in much of the Western media but at least people are talking about the trend, and what it might mean for news consumers. The respected Media Standards Trust is publishing a timely report, Shrinking World, which charts an extraordinary drop in the p...
Where are the women?
It's all very well broadcasters being required to balance election coverage scrupulously between the parties. What about the genders? What about using a stop watch to compute the amount of election broadcasting by chaps of chaps? Try comparing that with the exposure of the fairer sex in this ...
Geldof and Ethiopian aid - that old story
The row between Sir Bob Geldof and the BBC about the diversion of famine aid in Ethiopia has got pretty fierce this week. It arose out of an Assignment programme on the World Service and made front-page headlines as well as generating plenty of noisy comment and accusations. I added my own views...
The Land of Booming Newspapers
Across the world the newspaper industry is full of woe - the victim of declining circulation, ageing readership and falling advertising revenue. But in Brazil, the powerhouse economy of South America, newspapers are thriving. In 2007, total circulation of Brazilian newspapers rose a remarkable ...
Can news be free?
Rupert Murdoch has made the most noise in telling us that news is not a free good. But instead of his News International, the rather more modest Johnston Press has bravely decided to break ranks and try charging a subscription for premium content on some of its regional titles. Online readers...
