Lifeline Media: Reaching Populations in Crisis

A guide for anyone involved in setting up media related projects in conflict and post conflict settings. The approach used in the book is designed to ensure that affected populations always have access to well produced humanitarian information in a manner that enhances local media capacity. The author explores how the skills of professional Western journalists can best be applied in realising this objective. As a resource for international journalists, producers, relief workers, consultants, and others, Lifeline Media is a sourcebook that sees media as a powerful tool in assisting populations in crises.

The book has four sections plus bibliography and contact list:

• Designing Programmes for Populations in Crisis – conflict theories, in field assessments, working with local partners, selection of communication channels (radio, television/video, information technologies)
• Humanitarian Information Programmes – emergency projects, questions of objectivity, programme formats, specialised emergency programmes (health, children, women, humanitarian values, tracing activities..)
• Media Projects for Peace Building – how to tackle perceptions (and misperceptions), how to bring about cooperation, the role of reporting, examples of innovative media projects
• Measuring Impact – the role of evaluation as an on going process of learning, how to establish indicators, rapid survey methods

Author: Loretta Hieber is a journalist and radio producer who worked for international broadcast organisations in Paris, Munich, and Bern. A specialist in the coverage of humanitarian issues, she has produced documentaries and news reports focusing on conflict and development themes in Somalia, South Africa, the Middle East, Yemen, and other crisis areas. In the 1990s she held a Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a Fellowship at Harvard University's Programme in Refugee Trauma. In addition, Ms. Hieber has developed several initiatives on media and conflict and worked as a consultant for media projects on behalf of international organisations, including UNICEF and UNESCO. Ms. Hieber is co founder of Media Action International, a Geneva based foundation.