This website began with one observation and two questions: after many years of scanning the news on TV, in newspapers, and now on the Internet, a person would have the vague notion that there are many, terrible, far-off tragedies around the world.

A few we hear about often: Iraq, the Middle East, AIDS, and even Sudan, for example. But many others only pop up intermittently in the news -- one day a small item on a flood that has killed hundreds and sent thousands more fleeing, another day a report on a devastating African war. Major crises, it seems by any measure, yet only rarely glimpsed in the news.

So we asked ourselves two basic questions that perhaps any concerned global citizen might wish to know:  1) Just what exactly are the world's worst humanitarian crises? 2) And how much are the news media covering them?

To answer those two questions, we did our research, created a methodology, and present the results here on an ongoing basis for your inspection. Each month, you can see what are the world's worst crises in various categories and how many news stories were written about these crises by news organizations around the world (at the moment, we track __ news outlets).

In addition to this basic data, we will seek to highlight particularly notable news stories worthy of your attention -- and provide some of our own in-depth pieces on crises that you might have heard of and may wish to know more.

To summarize, this website has three key objectives:  

     1. TO

IDENTIFY the world's worst humanitarian crises, as measured by the number of people killed or affected. So far, the categories we cover are conflicts, repression, disease, disaster, and transnational crime. There are, no doubt, other categories of crises we hope to add over time.

     2. TO QUANTIFY how much these crises are covered in the major news media in the U.S. and internationally. And, for added perspective, we also measure the coverage of popular stories in the news.

     3. TO ENCOURAGE thought as to whether crises are receiving appropriate, too much, or too little coverage. The goal is not to achieve definitive answers so much as to stimulate thoughtful discussion. We hope the data provided here offers a good starting point.

For more information on how we carry out each of these tasks, please see our Methodology section. We welcome your suggestions, critique, and criticisms. This is an ongoing effort, and no doubt we will find better ways to do things.

There are all kinds of worthwhile news -- some practical, some entertaining, and some that is urgent. This service hopes to highlight the last of these -- news coverage of significant human suffering and efforts to alleviate it.

Thank you for your interest.