Guardian Live: Humanitarian issues and the power of the media

For this second livestreamed event in our series we will discuss how has media reporting on humanitarian issues changed over the past 20 years? How could it become more progressive? And how can the Western media utilise its power to better the lives of the vulnerable people it reports on? Professor of Cultural History and executive director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, Bertrand Taithe will join Annie Kelly, an award-winning human rights journalist for the Guardian and Observer, will chair a panel including Lindsey Hilsum, international editor for Channel 4 News and Waad Al-Kateab, Syrian journalist, and creator of the BAFTA-winning documentary For Sama.

In 2015, the UN refugee agency reported that war is one of the main reasons behind human displacement, and for decades we have seen refugees putting their lives at risk to escape greater dangers in their home countries. How these stories are reported has a momentous impact on how refugees are received and treated. Many lose their stories to offensive monikers, or their individual identity to reporting that covers migration on a massive scale, and fails to connect with the people behind the headlines.