“DEN PERFEKTE SYMBIOSE” - Kommunikationsforum

ABSTRACT
”The perfect symbiosis”– The dependencies between NGOs and
journalists in the media’s coverage of the developing countries
In this thesis, I have explored the interactions between NGOs and
journalists in the media’s coverage of the developing countries and
furthermore discussed how these dependency relations affect the fields’
normative tasks in society. By interviewing a range of journalists from the
media as well as communication- and press officers from six larger Danish
NGOs, I have analyzed the relationship between the agents and explored
how these relations affect the agents’ self-understanding.
By applying Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, I argue that the governmental
implementation of requirements to the NGOs’ structures has pushed the
NGOs towards the economic field of power and commercial parameters. As
a result, the NGOs are arranging their messages to fit journalistic standards
and criteria in order to achieve media exposure. While the NGOs are
adapting to commercial logics, they are driven further away from the logics
that defines the field’s characteristics and purposes. The NGOs are forced
to simplify fundamental and complex issues to fit the media’s portrait of the
developing countries. This requires a degree of populism that consolidates
a stereotypical image of the countries and results in a compromise with the
very cornerstone of their field: To represent the people in the developing
countries.
Meanwhile, the media’s structural position in the economic field of power
means that the media is much dependent upon outside forces themselves.
While the NGOs have incorporated media logics to attain their goals, the
media has experienced tighter editorial budgets and an increased
competition within the field. Consequently, the journalists have become very
dependent upon information from external sources. The news desks do not
have the means, knowledge or familiarity with the developing countries to
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