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We live in a world where we can watch disasters and suffering unfold around the world. New technologies mean that every war, every famine, every hurricane can be covered live and direct. But do we actually notice what is happening to those involved? Polis Summer School student Andrea Abril has been thinking through the moral dilemmas. This is her report: Hannah Arendt, the German political theorist, wrote about the "Politics of Pity". Firstly , she made the distinction between those who suffer and those who do not. She also wrote that 'seeing' and 'looking' are considered as different concepts because sufferer and observer are physically distant - despite the closeness that modern media brings. This creates the "spectacle of suffering", unfortunate people are observed by those who do not share their suffering, who do not experience it directly and who, as such, may be regarded as fortunate people. This theory can be applied to sufferings representation in media. Audiences are observers of the misery of the unfortunate but within a distance, which is not just geographical, but also emotional.

"I asked the Polis Summer School students to finish their 12 day course by giving me a code for the road. Tell me, I said, what should be the guiding principles for journalism about people who are suffering or are from other countries. Here are the ideas from different groups of students for some ethical guidelines."

The New York Times is running a slideshow by photographer Jan Grarup about life in the Daadab, reportedly the oldest refugee camp in the world. "The strength of the project rests within its immediacy," Mr. Grarup said. "It has an honesty to it." I was in Daadab not so long ago myself. I may not have been there for long but I was there long enough to notice that life in the camp wasn't one you would wish on the  worst of your neighbors -Kenyans and Somalis from Somalia aren't the best of neighbors. In the camps there is of course suffering but I would also have loved to see images of the children that were playing in the camp, images of the schools set up, images of the street with all the shops where refugees who've refused to be victims of circumstances are taking charge and rebuilding their lives. Where are the photos of the weddings that happen in the camp and where are the photos of people who despite their many tribulations, still observe prayers without fail? Where are the photos telling the other side of the story?

"In Biafra in 1968, a generation of children was starving to death. This was a year after oil-rich Biafra had seceded from Nigeria, and, in return, Nigeria had attacked and laid siege to Biafra. Foreign correspondents in the blockaded enclave spotted the first signs of famine that spring, and by early summer there were reports that thousands of the youngest Biafrans were dying each day. Hardly anybody in the rest of the world paid attention until a reporter from the Sun, the London tabloid, visited Biafra with a photographer and encountered the wasting children: eerie, withered little wraiths. The paper ran the pictures alongside harrowing reportage for days on end. Soon, the story got picked up by newspapers all over the world. More photographers made their way to Biafra, and television crews, too. The civil war in Nigeria was the first African war to be televised. Suddenly, Biafra's hunger was one of the defining stories of the age-the graphic suffering of innocents made an inescapable appeal to conscience-and the humanitarian-aid business as we know it today came into being. "

Philip Jones Griffiths (b. 1936) is a Welsh-born photojournalist known for his coverage of the Vietnam war. Griffiths studied pharmacy but started as a freelance photographer in 1961, traveling to Algeria in 1962. He arrived in Vietnam in 1966, working for the Magnum agency. Magnum found his images difficult to sell to American magazines, as they concentrated on the suffering of the Vietnamese people and reflected Griffiths's view of the war as an episode in the continuing decolonisation of former European possessions. He was able to get a 'scoop' that the American outlets liked, photographs of Jackie Kennedy vacationing with a male friend in Cambodia. The proceeds of these photos enabled him to continue his coverage of Vietnam and to publish Vietnam Inc. in 1971. The book had a major influence on American perceptions of the war, and became a classic of photojournalism. In 2001 the book was reprinted with a foreword by Noam Chomsky.

Images shape our perceptions. The manufacture of consent has rarely been more engineered. With everything from wars to presidential campaigns being stage managed and with mainstream news increasingly fed by official sources, reliance on usual sources of news images has become increasingly dangerous. Majority world countries suffer particularly from stereotypical representations, and while the media worldwide is increasingly being dominated by a few players, it becomes particularly important for news sources to be diverse and varied. With Getty and Corbis controlling the stock market, and Reuters, AP, AFP and EPA dominating the wires, communities in the west are looking for new ways to challenge established media, especially through citizen journalism. The majority world has traditionally been represented by white, middle class, western photographers. But having local photographers is not in itself sufficient. While editorial control remains in the North, stories will continue to have a northern slant, and the only way in which this can be challenged is through alternative sources being formed that are independent of western and corporate media. DrikNEWS is designed to fill this void. This agency, an independent body of Drik Picture Library, aims to cover news photography and investigative reporting by disseminating both locally and internationally through the web.

The Challenge Posted January 16th, 2008 by admin "It's a familiar scene. Following the onset of a major disease outbreak or natural disaster, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the local community must join forces and act quickly to alleviate suffering. You, your colleagues and groups that don't normally work together now need to communicate, assemble teams, share information, make plans and coordinate a response. Yet despite everyone's best intentions, a wealth of resources, deep expertise and tremendous effort, you still face challenges in trying to work together. The response once again proves confused, inefficient and far less effective than it should have been. As a population waits for help, delays mount up, resources are wasted and too little arrives too late. Will the cost, once again, be measured in human lives?"

http://www.ted.com Accepting his 2007 TED Prize, James Nachtwey talks about his decades as a photojournalist. A slideshow of his photos, beginning in 1981 in Northern Ireland, reveals two parallel themes in his work. First, as he says: "The frontlines of contemporary wars are right where people live." Street violence, famine, disease: he has photographed all these modern WMDs. Second, when a photo catches the world's attention, it can truly drive action and change. In his TED wish, he asks for help gaining access to a story that needs to be told, and developing a new, digital way to show these photos to the world. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 23:41)