WWS -- What is the role media should play in covering humanitarian crises? Does the press have a responsibility to somehow expand their coverage in crisis situations?

Peter Bell -- Over recent months CARE has been delivering food to more than one million Nigeriens. CARE is distributing some 40 percent of the World Food Programme's allocation of food. It took a caravan of 115 camels for us to get food to one remote community at the end of a barely passable road.

There's been a lot of press coverage of hunger, even starvation of babies and children. There's no question that there's been a serious, serious crisis. At the same time, there's virtually no coverage by the press of the success stories. For example, CARE has worked since the early 1990s with savings and loan associations that now engage some 225,000 rural women. Those women have been able to add to the income of their families; many have actually been able to put aside and store food, so that when you make your way around Niger today, you find that those families were better able to weather this crisis.

Julius Coles -- Similarly, I can discuss the same type of success that Africare has had in the northern part of the country: we are working in a very drought-prone area that's most severe at the foot of the Sahara Desert, and I recently visited there. I was traveling in Niger in January, about 600 miles from the capital, and people were growing food with water from wells that had been dug with financing provided by the modernization program we had carried out. And they were harvesting onions and potatoes in areas that you would never think that they could grow food. The area of Agadaz, the reduction of the impact of the famine there, from my point of view was also the result of successes we've had with our world development programs and agriculture programs. While we're still carrying out feeding programs in that area to supplement the food production that's being carried on there, we have also moved to the Tolbury area, which is one region that we were not working in before.

Peter Bell -- The media in [the U.S.] make Africa a story of violence, chaos, tragedy and destitution. Africa's plight can seem overwhelming and hopeless. But in fact, organizations like CARE have learned a tremendous amount about how to advance development in poor communities: for example, I mentioned our efforts with basic education, safe water, increased agriculture production, and access to credit. It's really not that overwhelming. Because the media focus so much on catastrophes within the African context, Africans may come across as being passive or helpless. In fact, when I visit African communities I meet people who are courageous, determined to improve their lives, and energetic in the face of all sorts of adversity. It's just incredible to see the courage that they demonstrate. If Americans had the opportunity to visit African villages as I have, they'd have a lot more hope for Africa and be more willing to invest in Africa's future.

Julius Coles -- And then it's getting the press to come out to cover the successes, rather than the crises. And that's what has to be done because right now it's like you say, most of the reporting focuses on the negative. And Africa is more than that. It's a continent of over 50 countries and very diverse -- some are better off than others, some are doing very, very well, and others are not doing well. But most of the countries are being grouped as a basket case and I think that a lot of Americans misunderstand that Africa is not just one large basket case. They are very good success stories: Guinea, Mali, Madagascar, and there are so many stories of success out there just not being picked up by the press.

Peter Bell -- I've recently returned from a visit to several countries that experienced major conflict. What struck me was not how dire their situations are, but the hope I saw as they attempt to recover. I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, where they are preparing for their first elections since 1960. And I talked with young women who had been raped and abducted into the rebel forces. CARE is working to demobilize and reintegrate them into society. The young women talked enthusiastically about the coming elections and their hope that the elections would produce a more legitimate government. And that a legitimate government would, in fact, provide an environment of law and order in which there would be no more rapes. Or if rape did occur, the perpetrators would be punished. Now they may be a bit naïve, but they're tremendously hopeful. That kind of approach -- a positive perspective on their own future -- is very typical, even in parts of Africa that have experienced the greatest trouble over the years.

Julius Coles -- Recently I was in New York -- you were there, actually - at an event and Dick Parson of CNN was asked, "Why is it that you don't show CNN International in America?" And the response that came back was that American audiences don't want to watch CNN International. They prefer to watch these talking head shows and reality TV and so forth, so network executives would not think of this as a winning proposition. So I would challenge the major news networks and say, "You have this public responsibility where if people want to watch in-depth world news coverage or not, maybe it's doing public good by at least running it at least 2 to 3 hours a day; maybe at different points in your schedules." But I think that the press has a responsibility to inform the public. Some do it better than others, but still, there's not enough being done to inform the American public. The British and the European television networks do a much better job of coverage of world news. And maybe there's more of an interest in Europe for these types of stories, but I think we need to take that in the American society; to begin to push it a little bit more.

Peter Bell -- Media coverage does matter. I remember when I first went to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during the Clinton administration and urged her to give greater attention to advancing a just and lasting peace in Sudan. Her initial response to me was, "CNN doesn't cover Sudan." So I went to the president of CNN news and urged more coverage of Sudan. They responded. I don't think the only reason was because of my intervention, but they did respond. We have a responsibility within the humanitarian community to go to the media. And when the media does cover Africa, we also need to urge them to put crises into context. Why is a crisis occurring? What are the possible solutions? If the media tell the larger story -- and they show what can be done -- what is actually being done in some settings, Americans will respond.

WWS -- For policy makers and others who would like to be able to better respond to future crises, what were some of the policy lessons learned from Niger?

Julius Coles -- One instructive set of decisions was the treatment of the crisis by neighboring Mali, versus the Republic of Niger. In Mali the government moved swiftly to get food to the deficit areas, using their own transport means from the areas where they had food to put food where it's not.

Peter Bell -- Yes, I think that step one was the Mali government moved swiftly to acknowledge that they had a crisis.

Julius Coles -- Next, Mali acted on that and began to move food. If you look at what happened in Niger, [the government] delayed acknowledging the crisis, then tried to rely on market forces to solve the crisis and what they did was try to subsidize the food to go to the deficit areas, but market did not respond to that.

Peter Bell -- And in an earlier stage when they thought the harvest was going to be pretty good, they exported food to Nigeria and then discovered too late that they had a food deficit back at home.

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