IRIN Evaluation Report - March 2003
by Graham Mytton & Sharon Rusu

International

25. All users in this category spoke well of the service, praising the quality of the reporting, the coverage of difficult areas and the content of the material.

    'IRIN is an absolutely excellent service and an anchor for so much other coverage. I'm not in the habit of praising the UN but in this case, it really is a worthwhile project. At a time when most news organisations have decimated their capacity on the ground, we really need IRIN's overview and their orientation.'
    Executive Editor, AllAfrica.com, Washington

    'IRIN is especially useful for Rwanda, the DRC, Sudan and difficult areas and places to cover. We cannot cover everything ourselves. It's good for figures on numbers of deaths, refugee statistics, movements of people, and problems of one kind and another.'
    BBC correspondent, Nairobi.

    'The world is a better place for having IRIN. It is run by good journalists whom we know. It is not like a UN spokesman who...is just wasting our time by going through the motions, or is not news sensitive.'
    News Agency correspondent, Nairobi

26. Similar support and enthusiasm is also found in the editorial offices of the BBC World Service's African section and Channel Africa. Producers and journalists in both copy-taste all IRIN's African output every day. They tend to use IRIN material as a starting point for their coverage. As radio stations they need material that works best in the radio medium - interviews with key people involved in a story or event, or an illustrated report from someone on the spot. News agency copy in text form is generally used directly only in bulletins, and tends to be used far more as source material for reporters doing their own stories or conducting interviews.
27. The BBC World Service's use of IRIN provides a major extension to the global reach and influence of the agency. It has the largest global audience of all international radio broadcasters. Most of its audience listen mainly for world news, and through this medium alone IRIN content will at times reach more than 150 million listeners in over 40 languages as well as English.
28. As we note with some domestic media later, Channel Africa, South Africa's external radio service on short-wave, satellite and the Internet, uses IRIN as it would a major news agency. It makes extensive use of IRIN, and has done so even more in the past twenty months since major budget cuts forced them to cut back on their previously well-established network of stringers and correspondents around Africa. They use both the English and French material. They get stories from IRIN that otherwise they would not be able to obtain and use it extensively for news about all parts of sub-Saharan Africa. IRIN background pieces were also described as 'excellent' for Channel Africa's purposes.

    Advocacy

29. Media in this category are specialist media that use IRIN when and where it provides content for areas in which they have an interest. The relationship with or reliance on IRIN is especially strong when the main reason for the existence of the agency in question is to provide information on areas in which IRIN operates. That is why they use IRIN and they tend to view it as a source on which they can rely for coverage of area and subject matter of particular interest.
30. Pambazuka in South Africa uses IRIN to provide appropriate content for its service in the absence of sufficient content from their own subscribers and members. IRIN was 'as good as subscribing to a wire service'. And for Pambazuka it was 'a very suitable one.' Alertnet, InfoSud and Media Action International among others use IRIN for areas where each believes it to have special strengths. In each case they use several other sources.

    'IRIN is very focused, and very useful. Its focus derives from its concentration on two areas, Africa and Central Asia. We know it best from what it reports from Africa. Its distinctiveness comes from its geographical and topic focus.' Editor Alertnet

31. But Alertnet tends to use IRIN more as a lead to stories than as a direct source. For some reason they thought that they were not able to use it for copyright reasons.²¹
32. InfoSud and Media Action International each use IRIN more for African than Central Asian stories. For both, IRIN had special strengths.

    'IRIN is a very consistent and reliable site on the Horn of Africa, and probably the best.' Editor Media Action International.

    'IRIN is timely and important because of its coverage of parts of the DRC that are otherwise not reported - the east and north east especially and the border with CAR.' Editor Infosud.

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