The various agencies that work in the developing world may do plenty of good work, but to get the money to do it they've got to use the latest marketing methods. And that means using the media to send their messages.
The agencies have to ensure the media send back the most poignant images, and the ones that emphasise the good being done by Irish money and people abroad.
The costs of such methods? They include destructive stereotypes: why do so many of us half-believe that Africa is populated solely by starving babies, their emaciated mothers and a few kindly Irish nurses?
They also include a creeping cynicism: agencies spend some of those lovingly raised dollars to jet journalists to the scene of a crisis or a project; then they may spend some more money printing T-shirts that will be passed out to workers and "victims" alike so that they appear in newspaper and TV pictures. And the cynicism extends to the journalists too; A A Gill wrote recently in the Sunday Times Magazine about Western journalists gathered at a hotel bar in southern Sudan complaining that the local feeding centre didn't contain enough "skellis" - people so thin they look like skeletons. The media's addiction to visually dramatic disaster situations also influences the agencies' agenda. An agency, especially one that specialises in longer-term development projects, may reckon it is not equipped to help in a particular disaster - but it can't afford to miss out on the publicity that comes by following the cameras to this month's most notorious trouble spot.
As a result, worthwhile but less dramatic work may lose out.