Glenda Cooper
Glenda Cooper is the current Guardian Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, where she is researching how the media and aid agencies work together - or don't - during natural disasters. For the past 12 years, she has worked as a journalist around the world for a range of media including the BBC, the Washington Post, the Independent and the Daily Mail. She is now also a presenter on Channel 4 Radio News's The Morning Report.
Burma's bloggers show power of citizen journalists in a crisis
By Glenda Cooper
The pictures were often grainy and the video shaky, but in media terms, they were gold dust. The bloggers of Burma used new technology to tell the world about last week's protests in their previously closed country. Thanks to them, we saw pictures of monks marching through the streets of Rangoon, and heard crackly phone calls with a chilling soundtrack of gun shots.
Many pointed out the difference technology has made compared with the 1988 uprising, when the junta's bloody suppression was largely hidden from outside view. It's no surprise then that last Friday, the authorities suspended internet links to the outside world and blocked mobile phone lines.
... Full article
By Glenda Cooper
The pictures were often grainy and the video shaky, but in media terms, they were gold dust. The bloggers of Burma used new technology to tell the world about last week's protests in their previously closed country. Thanks to them, we saw pictures of monks marching through the streets of Rangoon, and heard crackly phone calls with a chilling soundtrack of gun shots.
Many pointed out the difference technology has made compared with the 1988 uprising, when the junta's bloody suppression was largely hidden from outside view. It's no surprise then that last Friday, the authorities suspended internet links to the outside world and blocked mobile phone lines.
... Full article
Aceh tsunami survivors put media pressure on aid groups
By Glenda Cooper
Angry residents are confronting a housing contractor on an Asian Development Bank project. The mood is one of aggression; the contractor has his hands out trying to calm down the men who've come to complain.
Nothing unusual about that. Two years on from the tsunami, there is, understandably, frustration in Banda Aceh among people still waiting to be rehoused. Nor is it unusual these days that a photographer from the local newspaper, Serambi Indonesia, is on hand to snap the protest as it happens.
... Full article
By Glenda Cooper
Angry residents are confronting a housing contractor on an Asian Development Bank project. The mood is one of aggression; the contractor has his hands out trying to calm down the men who've come to complain.
Nothing unusual about that. Two years on from the tsunami, there is, understandably, frustration in Banda Aceh among people still waiting to be rehoused. Nor is it unusual these days that a photographer from the local newspaper, Serambi Indonesia, is on hand to snap the protest as it happens.
... Full article
The truth about Sri Lanka's Baby 81
By Glenda Cooper
You probably don't know the name Abilass Jeyarajah. Looking back on coverage of the Sri Lankan tsunami, you're much more likely to recognise the nickname he was given at the time: Baby 81.
It was the ideal story; a young baby miraculously rescued from the wave, but with no identification to show whom he belonged to, a symbol both of the devastating impact of the tsunami and of the spirit of survival.
... Full article
By Glenda Cooper
You probably don't know the name Abilass Jeyarajah. Looking back on coverage of the Sri Lankan tsunami, you're much more likely to recognise the nickname he was given at the time: Baby 81.
It was the ideal story; a young baby miraculously rescued from the wave, but with no identification to show whom he belonged to, a symbol both of the devastating impact of the tsunami and of the spirit of survival.
... Full article
Aid groups in Sri Lanka tackle 'fat cat' image
By Glenda Cooper
There is a joke that goes round about aid agencies in Colombo. Try saying the acronym NGO in a Sri Lankan accent; it sounds very much like the word "enjoy" - and that, say many journalists, is the attitude aid workers have taken to their work in the country.
Certainly that's how many Sri Lankan newspapers have portrayed NGOs: as fat cats enjoying their dollar salaries, riding round in big cars and staying in the best hotels. Of course this is not an unfamiliar criticism: It's one that agencies come across in many different countries.
... Full article
By Glenda Cooper
There is a joke that goes round about aid agencies in Colombo. Try saying the acronym NGO in a Sri Lankan accent; it sounds very much like the word "enjoy" - and that, say many journalists, is the attitude aid workers have taken to their work in the country.
Certainly that's how many Sri Lankan newspapers have portrayed NGOs: as fat cats enjoying their dollar salaries, riding round in big cars and staying in the best hotels. Of course this is not an unfamiliar criticism: It's one that agencies come across in many different countries.
... Full article
Colombo's plans to resettle war-displaced spark concern
By Glenda Cooper
Everyone calls it the Cemetery, because that's what this field on Sinna Urein in Batticaloa was originally. When the dry earth gets very hot or is disturbed, skulls and bones make it to the surface.
"NGOs usually bury people when they are dead," says Jathran, 32, one of the thousands who've fled an escalation of fighting in Sri Lanka's civil war. "The difference is this time, they've brought us here before we've started dying."
... Full article
By Glenda Cooper
Everyone calls it the Cemetery, because that's what this field on Sinna Urein in Batticaloa was originally. When the dry earth gets very hot or is disturbed, skulls and bones make it to the surface.
"NGOs usually bury people when they are dead," says Jathran, 32, one of the thousands who've fled an escalation of fighting in Sri Lanka's civil war. "The difference is this time, they've brought us here before we've started dying."
... Full article
