The Human Rights Visibility Game: Revisiting Media Bias, NGO Strategy, and Global Patterns of Attention

James Ron
Sep 23
4 min read

By James Ron

In 2006, I co-authored a study with Howard Ramos and Kathleen Rodgers examining a fundamental question: why do some human rights crises dominate international attention, while others are largely ignored?

Our human rights "hit list" from the 2006 article in Contexts — Our human rights "hit list" from the 2006 article in *Contexts*

Nearly two decades later, with major crises unfolding — especially in Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond — the conclusions remain urgent for understanding how global attention is allocated, and what that means for victims, NGOs, and media.

The Original Findings: Severity Isn’t Enough

We looked at human rights reporting in Newsweek and The Economist from 1986 to 2000. What we found challenged many assumptions:

The intensity or scale of abuses did not reliably predict whether a crisis would receive coverage.
Countries with strategic political ties to, or rivalries with, the West — like Russia, China, and Turkey — regularly attracted more attention than those with severe violations but less global relevance (e.g. Rwanda, Sudan, parts of Africa).
NGOs, too, followed this pattern. Organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch often prioritized cases likely to resonate with Western publics, donors, or media outlets.

In short, media visibility and advocacy attention tended to follow political relevance, not just need.

Today’s Parallels: Ukraine, Sudan, and the Politics of Visibility

The contemporary landscape offers clear echoes of our original findings:

The war in Ukraine (2022-present) draws massive media human rights coverage, international NGOs and Western governments mobilize resources, and public attention remains focused.
At the same time, crises in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other regions with prolonged suffering have not received sustained global visibility. While acknowledged, they lack the consistent coverage or political prioritization seen in Ukraine.

These patterns suggest that the drivers we identified two decades ago — strategic relevance, media access, NGO strategy — are still very much at play.

Implications for NGOs, Media, and Policy

Our original work pointed to a tension that remains unresolved:

NGOs must balance the moral imperative to document abuses wherever they happen with the pragmatics of advocacy — needing visibility, funding, and political leverage.
Media outlets — especially Western media — are more likely to cover stories that align with geopolitical interests or familiar narratives.
Citizens and policymakers are shaped by what they see; what is unreported or underreported tends to remain out of public awareness, out of political urgency, and often out of aid.

The problem with all this is that when the world only sees crises in the places that can attract media attention, many people suffer without ever reaching the radar of relief or policy change.

Questions for U.S. Stakeholders

Given these dynamics, there are several questions U.S.-based scholars, NGOs, and media organizations should ask:

How do U.S. human rights NGOs decide which crises to promote abroad? Are their choices driven by donor expectations, media coverage potential, or which stories “fit” existing geopolitical frames?
How does U.S. media shape which human rights stories Americans see? Which countries, types of abuses, or victims are consistently highlighted — and which are omitted?
How might emerging digital media and social platforms disrupt or reinforce existing biases? Do new communication tools help under-covered crises gain visibility — or do they amplify those already in the spotlight?

Why This Research Still Matters

The central lesson from our 2006 study is that global concern over human rights is never purely objective. It is always mediated by media power, donor priorities, and political structure. Crises with fewer political connections, weaker media infrastructure, or less donor appeal often get left behind — not due to lesser suffering, but due to lesser visibility.

By understanding these biases and patterns, we can begin to imagine more equitable advocacy strategies and media practices. We can aim to expand the circle of concern to include those suffering in obscurity, not just those in places that already matter in global politics.

Our Publications on this Topic

James Ron, Howard Ramos, and Kathleen Rodgers. (2006). “What Shapes the West’s Human Rights Focus?” Contexts, Vol. 5, Issue 3, pp. 23–28.

James Ron, Howard Ramos, and Kathleen Rodgers. (2005). “Transnational Information Politics: NGO Human Rights Reporting, 1986–2000.”International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 49, Pp. 557–587.

Howard Ramos, James Ron, and Oskar Niko Timo Thoms. (2007). “Shaping the Northern Media’s Human Rights Coverage.” Journal of Peace Research. Vol 44. № 4, Pp. 385–406.

James Ron and Howard Ramos. (2009). “Why are the US and Israel at the Top of the Human Rights Hit Lists?” Foreign Policy Online. Emilie Hafner-Burton and James Ron. (2013). “The Latin Bias: Regions, The Anglo-American Media, and Human Rights.” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 57, No.3, Pp. 474–491.

James Ron. (2025). Whose Rights Count? Media Bias, NGO Agendas, and the Global Politics of Attention.

About the Author

James Ron is a writer and social scientist who taught sociology and political science at Johns Hopkins, McGill, Carleton, CIDE, and the University of Minnesota.

James has consulted for the Canadian government, Human Rights Watch, CARE, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Swiss government.

His books include Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel(University of California Press) and Taking Root: Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South (Oxford University Press).

Read more about James Ron on www.jamesron.com and LinkedIn. Follow his research blog at www.jamesron.org or his personal writings at www.jamesron.net .