Wed, March 19, 14:00-16:00 Matthew Powers: Can NGOs Do Journalism? Understanding the Information Work of Humanitarian and Human Rights NGOs University of Westminster, Harrow Campus (tube stop: Northwick Park) Room A6.8 Registration: at latest until Sunday, March 16, per e-mail to [log in to unmask] Abstract For much of the 20th century, most of the international news reaching American audiences was produced by foreign correspondents stationed in news bureaus scattered across the globe. Whatever that model’s merits and shortcomings, there is little doubt it is a model under duress – if it’s not entirely broken. At the same time as foreign news coverage has been shrinking, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam – have assumed increasingly prominent roles in the provision of information from abroad. Can NGOs play a role as journalistic entities by providing international affairs information? On the one hand, NGOs may represent an expansion of international news reporting, as their work might expand news coverage to locales and issues that otherwise receive little coverage. On the other hand, NGOs may constitute a threat to international news reporting by blurring the lines between advocacy and journalism. In this talk, I draw on interviews, participant observation and content analysis to argue that NGOs encounter journalism in at least three distinct ways. First, at the level of general news media, NGOs find their acceptance conditioned by a process of journalistic purification, wherein their work is accepted only if it obeys the norms and rules of journalistic production. Second, at the level of the prestige press, NGOs find increasing receptivity as information providers as a result of their broader inclusion in elite political debate. Third, found mostly online, NGOs ignore news organizations altogether and pursue their own direct-to-public communication, mixing journalistic and advocacy formats. I conclude by exploring some of the implications of these findings for the broader study of contemporary journalism and advocacy. Biography Matthew Powers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington-Seattle. His research interests include journalism studies, transnational advocacy and comparative media. His academic writings have been published in Journal of Communication, Journal of Communication Inquiry and Journalism Studies, among others. At present, he is working on a manuscript about the role NGOs play in the changing landscape of foreign news.