Preface -- Section Two

This series of four papers undertakes to examine the benefit of linking the two relatively new concepts of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and ‘Peace Journalism’. The aim is to explore how media people, media interest groups and the general public, together, can influence the current media culture through an increased awareness about the impact of media productions, reporting styles, journalistic conventions, and the risks affecting journalists today, including that of becoming traumatized through emotionally challenging media work.

Section one dealt with the concept of emotional intelligence and psychological trauma in the media context.

Section two of this paper will begin with an outline of the historical evolution of journalistic perceptions since their inception over one and a half centuries ago. The currently evolving distinction between a ‘war’ and ‘peace’ journalistic orientation as a new and promising influence on the mainstream media can only be appreciated before the background of earlier perceptions regarding the role of journalism and war correspondence.

Either orientation influences the media, concerning, for example, whether newspaper or TV reporting practices tend to select news items according to their market-value on the day, or the degree to which they could improve the state of the world. One of the important recognized aspects in the new field of Peace Journalism is the need for journalists to familiarize themselves with conflict analysis tools for a more impact-conscious and responsible way of presenting world news in the media. This section of the paper will also deal with the subject of newly emerging risks to media professionals’ physical lives, particularly in the current "war on terror"-climate.

2. The Evolution of Peace Journalism

"We were just leeches, reporters trying to suck headlines out of all this death and suffering."

Robert St. John¹

"It seemed to be a tradition…that you mustn’t let the sordid side of war creep in."

Robert St. John²

The following section will present some examples of how journalistic styles have evolved historically, and identify some involved problem areas that persist until today.

According to Phillip Knightley, author of "The First Casualty"³, (an in-depth analysis on the history of war correspondence over a period of thirty years), war correspondents characteristically considered themselves part of the military establishment and never doubted or criticized the institution of war itself – a trend that began with William Howard Russell,⁴ who was the first acknowledged war correspondent, reporting from 1841 onward.

On the quality of early war correspondents, Knightley quotes an American journalist as saying: "Men turned up in the army as correspondents more fit to drive cattle than to write for newspapers"⁵, and Knightley quotes the following comment by J. Cutler, author of The North Reports the Civil War: "Sensationalism and exaggeration, outright lies, puffery, slander, faked eye-witness accounts, and conjectures built on pure imagination cheapened much that passed in the North for news".⁶

Knightley writes that most journalists of the American Civil War considered it their job to boost the morale of both the military and the civilian side, and did not consider it appropriate to report on things that might be unpleasant to read or to criticize any actions on the part of the army or navy. He says that during the Civil War it was commonplace for people to no longer believe what was written in the papers due to the gross level of exaggeration on both sides. This trend is likely to have been exacerbated by editors’ instructions like the following one from the Chicago Times to its reporters: "Telegraph fully all news you can get and when there is no news send rumors (sic)".⁷

Knightley says that the commercial pressures were such that a correspondent could survive on completely fabricated stories but would be sacked for sending no news at all. As a result, bribery of officers and making money on the side for journalistic favours, including selling insider information affecting the stock exchange, was rife.⁸

Knightley says that the war correspondents of the period between the end of the Civil War and WWI were often failed aspirants to a military career⁹ who generally showed "little humanity and no historic perspective"¹⁰, and often even personally contributed to the number of deaths.

According to Knightley the correspondents of that era tended to become the heroes of their own stories; often carrying pistols to protect themselves, with some doing intelligence work on the side and one American journalist even started his own small wars in Africa and then reported about them.¹¹ Their overall concern, according to Knightley, was to get news to their papers before their rivals did and that war for them was mostly "a highly profitable game"¹². One general is reported as greeting some arriving war correspondents with the words: "Gentlemen, I am delighted to welcome you. I think I can give you good sport".¹³

Knightley mentions a statement by MacGahan in the context of the 1877 Russian-Turkish war as marking the departure from the detached attitude of most of the early war correspondents.¹⁴ Knightley quotes MacGahan as saying: "I think I came in a fair and impartial frame of mind …I fear I am no longer impartial, and I am certainly no longer cool…There are things too horrible to allow anything like calm inquiry; things the vileness of which the eye refuses to look upon…".¹⁵

Knightley also mentions Forbes in the context of this reporter’s gruelling account of a battle during the Zulu war where a large number of British troops had perished under extreme circumstances. Knightley wonders if there may have been a connection between the fact that the account of this event remained the last piece Forbes ever wrote; mentioning that Forbes, in his final delirium three years later, was heard calling out: "Those guns, man those guns, don’t you hear those guns?".¹⁶.

This is an interesting account in view of the fact that it can be safely assumed that Forbes would have been greatly affected by what he witnessed in order to report on it but operated in an era where journalists were expected to treat events with the same unemotional stance as the military. There was no awareness in those times, either concerning the troops or the reporters of the events, that such experiences can lead to severe psychological traumatization. It stands to reason that in a climate where there is an acknowledgement of how people are affected by their experiences, these emotional experiences are also more likely to be owned and admitted to. Forbes may simply have become incapable of facing and reporting on war events any longer. Yet in a climate of expected cool detachment from his professional experiences it may never have been acknowledged that he could have been traumatized to the point of having to terminate his very successful career.

In another example characterizing earlier phases of war correspondence, Knightley mentions a Colonel, who was a war correspondent during the South African Boer War, who habitually conveyed distorted messages about the real state of affairs in his dispatches and subsequently became an undisputed hero.¹⁷ Knightley points out that at the same time realistic accounts by other correspondents were ignored by their offices; that it had been decided that "the myth was a better story than the facts"¹⁸. As an example, Knightley mentions an early newsreel film depicting a Red Cross tent under fire from the Boers, with a complete set of brave medical staff treating a wounded soldier – a film that was shot using actors in a London suburb.¹⁹

This account, as well as a multitude of other false reports regarding that war alone, is reminiscent of the first Gulf War nursery story in more recent days (whereby Iraqi soldiers allegedly killed Kuwaiti babies in incubators – a story that turned out to be completely fabricated for propaganda purposes). This convincingly shows that the employment of impressive, if false, data for effect has a long history and that despite decades of complications and discreditations resulting from it, it has not discouraged such media practice on the whole.

Knightley quotes sources according to whom the four years of WWI marked the most discreditable period in the history of journalism²⁰. He says about British WWI editors that "their skill lay in knowing how to get the war over to the man in the street, how to exploit his vocabulary, prejudices, and enthusiasms" ²¹, and that the public "was not convinced by logic but seduced by stories".²²

Some critical voices convey the impression that since then, the lessons that might have been learned from nearly another century of war correspondence don’t appear to have changed modern war reporting in a radical way. John Pilger draws this comparison between the WWI period and today’s war correspondence: "Silence is different now; there is the illusion of saturation coverage, but the reality is a sameness and repetition and, above all, political safety for the perpetrators".²³

In "Crisis Reporting – Crisis of Reporting?"²⁴, Sonia Mikich, ARD-Studio Director in Paris, is quoted as perceiving a decline in the willingness to present complex subjects, at the same time as the speed of global reporting is increasing. She also conveys the impression that certain journalistic trends have not essentially changed in more recent times; according to her, every war within the last decade has been followed by a media campaign of self-criticism and discussions of all that had gone wrong on the media side. She says that the content of the "j’accuse-campaign" is typically a carbon-copy of the previous ones; including criticisms of polarizing positions, of adopting the military’s jargon, and of the trend of being influenced by the positions of certain politicians. In her observation, the delay in the surfacing of facts about the actual events and the degree of propaganda-manipulation is just as consistently recurrent as the campaign of self-questioning.²⁵

Drawing on historical analysis of the impact of (war) reporting on the course of world events over the last one hundred and sixty years puts several, seemingly modern, media phenomena into a perspective of really being only the replay an old theme.

2. 2. Modern-day Challenges facing Journalists

Robert Fisk, an experienced correspondent for The Independent (UK), points to the dramatic change in position affecting journalists internationally in the current climate, compared to several decades ago. He sees the conflicts in Lebanon, Algeria and Bosnia as marking a departure from the era when the parties to a conflict respected the position of journalists as impartial reporters of conflicts.

The Survival Guide for Journalists²⁷, written and produced by Peter McIntyre, directly addresses the risk to journalists’ personal lives. The risks referred to, according to the authors, arise from journalists being in combat zones or other risky places in the course of their work; but several references are also made to the risk of journalists being harassed, threatened or actually killed because of some party’s investment in preventing the reporting of issues that are contrary to their interests.

The Guide distinguishes between the positive reception correspondents often receive from front-line troops, in contrast to the often rather suspicious perception on the part of senior military commanders. It describes correspondents being seen as an "unwelcome factor", "a nuisance and a security risk", as well as often being associated with propaganda for the other side, and hence even as a potential enemy, although one "they are not supposed to shoot".²⁸

John Dayal²⁹, an Indian journalist points to a challenge concerning large sections of the Indian press; he describes a situation similar to that mentioned by Knightley about the role of the British media in the pre-WWI era and its typically being linked either to politics or industry.

His account appears important in view of the fact that it refers to a democratic country, in official terms, that is not usually associated with the same tendency of crushing dissent as would be expected in the case of dictatorships. His comments highlight two different media challenges: it is an account of media failure on the one hand and at the same time an appeal to journalists to remedy the situation through a conscientious way of presenting it in the international media.

Dayal mentioned his own case at a conference on media issues in Berlin in 2000 to demonstrate first-hand a risk many journalists face in their work, even outside of any acknowledged combat zones. Dayal, who had been repeatedly accused by a neo-fascist political party—at that time in power in New Delhi—of telling lies about India and of giving the country a bad name abroad, told the conference attendees that he was unsure as to what consequences he would face on his return to Delhi for statements he made at the conference.

Hugh Lewin³⁰ points to another modern challenge in the form of new media technologies, which according to him present some potentially dangerous risks. He cites the example of the Liberian civil war, where a warlord was in the position of announcing his advance on Monrovia, to the BBC, from remote territories. In this way the warlord had the capacity to influence the course of action taken by the other side without any prospect of an independent verification of this information.

Lewin points to the broadcaster’s dilemma of deciding whether to broadcast or not, without any means of distinguishing fact from deception. Lewin warns against reliance on new technology as a means of improving the quality of media coverage. He quotes James Robbins, a BBC diplomatic correspondent, as saying that the world was now subjected to the "untreated sewage of 24-hour news"³¹

Nik Gowing³² argues that due to the constant abundance of real-time information, also through illicit access, information-dominance is no longer necessarily on the side of the institutions of government. Gowing says that, while responsible parties from democratic states are often in possession of the most sophisticated technology for the acquisition of information, they are often less able to maximise an information advantage through the inherent consensus-seeking structures in democratic systems. Warlords or dictators, on the other hand, are not subject to such limitations and may capitalize on any available information to ruthlessly pursue their aggressive military goals. Gowing notes that, at the same time, oppressive governments can no longer rely on what he calls an "information vacuum defined and controlled" (by themselves).³³

Robert Fisk³⁴ conveys a sense of resignation and indignation regarding what he sees as an erosion even of media people’s own morale about the profession. He cites his, very personal, experience as an example of an increasing trend in the media to treat other journalists with a lack of professional and personal respect. In December 2001 Fisk was severely beaten by a group of Afghan refugees who had lost their relatives in a US air raid and mistook him for an American. As a result he almost died. He expresses his disappointment about a headline in the Wall Street Journal, which read: "Multiculturalist Gets His Due".³⁵

Fisk points to the circumstances of Daniel Pearl’s journalism work-related death and notes that this "shameful, unethical headline"³⁶ had appeared in Daniel Pearl’s own newspaper. The wording of the headline came about as a reaction to Fisk having portrayed Pearl’s unfortunate experience by expressing compassion and understanding for the Afghani people’s conduct, because of what had endured, saying that he would have done the same in their position.

Aidan White, the General Secretary of the international Federation of Journalists refers to a process over the last few years of "creating a culture of risk awareness in all aspects of journalism"³⁷, rather than looking at safety for journalists as "just an issue when bullets start flying".³⁸ According to the International Federation of Journalists, more than 1100 journalists and other media workers have been killed in the past twelve years in the line of duty.³⁹

The authors of the Survival Guide for Journalists point out that violence against journalists is often directly employed for political purposes and with the aim of intimidating other journalists so that they won’t report on undesirable issues. Furthermore, the Guide reports, 90% of journalists get killed in the country they live in, a fact which further contributes to the under-reporting of their deaths, compared to the relatively higher profile event of a foreign correspondent being killed. The manual criticizes the trend, on the part of some international teams, of hiring local journalists so that they take the risks instead, without the same measures of protection that would be considered appropriate for the foreign team.

Other potential risk areas for journalists mentioned in the manual are governments or international judiciary bodies. As war crimes are increasingly prosecuted, journalists can also become targets—as witnesses to be eliminated—to prevent a perpetrator’s future prosecution for war crimes being reported on by a correspondent.

Other risks include the difficulty of distinguishing friendly from enemy forces, as poorly equipped opposing forces sometimes exchange captured or killed combatants’ uniforms and equipment; or journalists falling prey to some warring party’s cosmology, according to which, when mistaken for a combatant, the correspondent will be perceived as a warrior endowed with magic powers that can be transmitted through the consumption of his body parts.

In recent times, an increasing area of risk is the phenomenon of taking journalists hostage for political purposes. These may include the publicity generated for the hijackers’ cause through the abduction of a high profile journalist; gaining leverage in political negotiations; as an economic commodity through extracting large sums of money for their release; or as an act of revenge when the journalist is seen as belonging to the ‘enemy side’.

The manual mentions the case of murdered Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl as an example of the increasing risk facing journalists in the pursuit of their normal professional activities. Pearl was apparently offered an interview in Karachi that would link Richard Reid, the ‘shoe-bomber’, to Al Qaeda, but was instead abducted and murdered after being accused of being a spy.⁴⁰

The authors of the Guide point out that the official figures on journalists’ deaths only include situations of journalists being killed in wars or civil conflict, while omitting other occupational hazard related cases like traffic accidents due to time pressures; unsafe technical conditions or physically challenging situations; diseases or food poisoning; as well as leaving out the impact, on journalists, of mental and emotional scarring, including the effect on journalists of learning about the traumatization or deaths of other journalists.

Other circumstances through which journalists are compromised or put at risk, according to the Guide, occur due to some military commander’s efforts "to feed them propaganda and misinformation".⁴¹ or when they distract correspondents from reporting on undesirable facts; or refuse to cooperate with, or even shoot at, journalists; while militias will sometimes extract protection money from journalists.

Robert Fisk sees a link between the erosion of ethical standards in journalism, not only in their conduct, dress, attitude, the way they come across in their work and their attitude to the profession itself, on the one hand, and the increasing risk journalists face through being seen as targets of political "instrumentalization" on the other hand. Fisk particularly criticizes colleagues who are "clowning around with a gun", wearing "military costume" or a "silly helmet".⁴²

In a similar vein, Jack Laurence comments on the usefulness of a police inspector’s advice to journalists to "think about what it looks like to someone with a gun in his hand down the road, when you point a camera at him"¹³⁸, and Sonja Mikich warns of the risks involved in the increasing identification of war reporters as "warriors".⁴³

According to Phillip Knightley, the concept of war correspondents being perceived as warriors is not a new one, originating historically with editors employing young officers to send letters from the battlefront, whereby these reporter-officers considered themselves first of all soldiers.⁴⁴

2.3. Discussing Peace Journalism

There has been an increasing awareness about the impact foreign correspondents have through their way of reporting over the last few decades. Professor Johan Galtung coined the term Peace Journalism in the 1970s as a form of reporting that focused on the causes and possible solutions to conflict and on preventative steps, with a view to enhancing the prospects for peace.

Many voices from within media circles are calling for a more impact-responsible way of reporting. Aidan White, the General Secretary of the international Federation of Journalists sees journalists and other media staff as having a crucial role in "cutting through the fog of deception, lies and manipulation of information…", as well as showing "the impact (of events) on the life of ordinary people".⁴⁶

Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick argue in favour of an ethics of journalistic intervention that strongly takes into consideration the consequences of reportage, both for those who are being reported on and those who are the receivers of the reported-on events.

Galtung distinguishes between two ways of reporting conflict, which he refers to as "the low road" and "the high road", whereby he calls a focus on violence and war and on who wins "the low road", and refers to "the high road" when the focus is on a conflict and its peaceful transformation.⁴⁷

This view is reflected by other senior voices within media circles. Jay Rosen, a journalism professor and director of the Project on Public Life and the Press at New York University demands that the media adopt a sense of responsibility for the way in which the framing of stories impacts on the conduct of society. He warns that "one headline of a false report is enough to ruin a career, a marriage, and a life. Journalists need to get back to the ethics of the job they hold, for in their hands they virtually ‘hold life’".⁴⁸

Lynch and McGoldrick propagate the framing of reports on events in ways that present a broader perspective, thus avoiding polarizing perspectives through giving voice to those parties that are not the two major parties in conflict. The aim is to convey the complexity of a story in a way that avoids any manipulation of the viewer or listener or reader while they are forming an opinion. To achieve this they recommend the use of conflict analysis tools.

Embedded war journalism could be seen as an example of framing whereby the setup for the acquisition of information and its reporting is already a ‘framed’ one. Embedded journalists may have the freedom to report about events how they want to (as they see them), but their access to information is limited to very restricted circumstances. In contrast, the public’s impression of embedded journalism may be that of a far more realistic reflection of front-line events, including regarding the course and impact of the Iraq war on the local population.

Galtung points out the difficulty of discerning what constitutes truth in the media context and equates this situation to that of a medical scenario where the causes of a disease might be reported on in all truthfulness, but any possibilities of a cure or remedy could be omitted and he raises the question as to how truthful a pure fact-reporting style would be when considered in view of a wider reporting perspective that included cures and other options.

Galtung compares the common reporting model to that of a military command situation and to questions like who advances or who capitulates short of their goals, whereby losses are counted in terms of the numbers of killed, wounded, and material damage. He also sees the polarization of the involved parties’ interests as one of the key problems in media coverage, akin to the reporting-style of sports events, where "winning is not everything, it is the only thing"; an attitude that to him is often reflected in the presentation of an "us versus them" perspective.⁴⁹

Another danger often referred to in this context is the escalation of violence by one party in an attempt to blame the increased violence on the other party in the conflict and thus attract support from outside parties such as the international community or, even, to give the impression that further perpetration of violence on the part of one side against the other is justified.

Galtung is also critical of a pure fact-reporting media-style. He equates the mere listing of facts to a medical situation where the causes of a disease might be reported on in all truthfulness, but any possibilities of a cure or remedy would be omitted. He uses this example to emphasize how, in his view, specific reporting styles can impact on the situations that are being reported on in a positive way through a wider reporting perspective that includes "cures and more options".⁵⁰
The message in Galtung’s medical metaphor may capture Martin Zint’s appeal to journalists to make use of their position to act "as mediators or facilitators for non-violent solutions to conflicts".⁵¹ This could be achieved, in keeping with Galtung’s recommendations, through a presentation of events that assists in opening up communication channels between parties in conflict and through pointing to options formerly not considered by these parties. Since these options would be pointed out by an outsider (the journalist), this may, in some situations, make them more acceptable and could potentially have the effect of deescalating violent situations. There might be less risk of a loss of face by either party, or of a perceived demand for yielding to another party’s interests.

Jean-Marie Etter, President of the Fondation Hirondelle,⁵² says that the emotional effect of events on people typically results in fear, which often evokes the generation of "hate media". An extreme example of "hate media" was the incitement to violence against ethnic Tutsi (who were referred to as cockroaches) and moderate Hutu by Radio Milles Collines, the Hutu extremist radio station, in the build-up phase of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Etter promotes the creation of a "trust-rebuilding media" as an antidote to "fear media" and an "empathy media" instead of "hate media". He sees fear as a widespread emotional factor in a conflict-ridden society, and hence a socially significant phenomenon and crucial issue to address when considering a useful media approach.

Lynch and McGoldrick also refer to the problematic issue of a "feedback loop" of cause and effect interfering with objectivity in journalism. They give the example of the reporting of policies put forward by politicians as solutions to problems, whereby the way the problem is diagnosed, as presented by the journalist, often hints at particular, implied solutions. They mention the feedback loop as an example of "the part news plays in the social construction of reality".⁵³

Lynch and McGoldrick point to the responsibility journalists have in the collective understanding by viewers and listeners of media products through the way in which they inevitably condition their audiences. They say that once the public can rely on a specific way in which the media will report on events, that reporting is open to manipulation by those who have an interest in a particular position or an omission of facts. They speak of an atmosphere in which people know how to select and tailor facts in such a way that they will be reported by journalists, and they also point to a tendency of governments instrumentalizing facts in ways that suit them.

Lynch plainly says that "individuals in a media-savvy world have internalised the narrative structures which best appeal to news – the stories reporters want to hear"⁵⁴. In this context, Lynch cites the untrue, but reported, example of a nineteen-year-old Albanian woman bereaved after her younger sister had allegedly been shot by Yugoslav forces. When the statements the woman made in the interview were finally revealed as untrue, one Albanian is reported as saying that the lie was justified if it served to assist in motivating Western intervention in the conflict.

Lynch and McGoldrick see it being the journalist’s responsibility to work around such manipulations and establish facts that either back up or contradict allegations and that include all the stakeholders’ interests concerning the issue at hand. As the choice of facts is not coincidental, journalists are involved in the ethics of deciding which facts to give voice to and how. The authors see peace journalism as pursuing the distinct agenda of operating in ways that are peace-promoting.

2.4. Sceptical voices

The term Peace Journalism is sometimes met with considerable resistance from within media circles. Sometimes it is perceived as falling outside of the definitions of a journalist’s responsibilities in aspiring towards objective media coverage, or as being simply unrealistic. McGoldrick has also suggested alternative terminology including conflict analysis journalism, holistic or change journalism, as well as ethical or post-realist journalism.

Sonja Mikich recalls an interview she did with a German OSCE officer who had just witnessed the massacre of many civilians, at the hands of Russian soldiers, at Gudermes near Grosny. According to Mikich, the interview with the officer, who was furious about what he had witnessed, resulted in the OSCE acquiring an image of something like a moral authority in Germany and, as a result, the mission’s members operating in Grosny were able to have more impact in working both with the Russians and Chechnyans. In view of the effect Mikich’s interview with this very angry officer and his detailed account of the Russian atrocities had, she raises the rhetorical question as to whether or not this constituted peace- or war-journalism. She uses this example to emphasize her objective of giving a voice to the victims, and to express her view that war correspondence should be subject to the same guidelines of journalistic ethics that apply to any good media practice, without any specific rules for such contexts.⁵⁵

Catherine Mayer says that in deciding "whether to lead opinion – and in which directions – or whether merely to reflect it,…journalists could be said to grapple with problems of ‘peace journalism’ on a regular basis", but she says that most of them would reject that label as such as "an irrelevance, assuming a greater degree of influence than we are ever likely to wield".⁵⁶

In spite of such views, the term peace-journalism continues to serve the purpose of identifying those journalists adhering to its objectives as opposed to those who feel bound by traditional media conventions, particularly that of objectivity. One of the main characteristics of peace-journalism is that it doesn’t pretend, or aim, to be ‘objective’. Rather it is based on the view that journalists, both for conventional and production-related as well as personal reasons, cannot be objective in what, how, and why they are reporting something.

The traditional journalistic claim to ‘objectivity’ has increasingly been challenged. Ben Bagdikian points out that different individuals writing about the same scene never produce precisely the same account.⁵⁷ Criticism and doubts concerning the concept of objectivity in journalism go back a long way. As early as 1937, Leo Rosten, as quoted by Richard Harwood, said: "Objectivity in journalism is no more possible than objectivity in dreams. What the newspaper man tells, what he considers worth telling, and how he tells it are the end products of the social heritage…and a psychological construct of desire, calculation, and inhibition".⁵⁸

Harwood considers that the current state of affairs is well captured in this statement by Morris Ernst, a civil liberties lawyer who represented the Newspaper Guild in the 1930s: "The question really raised is not whether news shall be unprejudiced, but rather whose prejudices shall colour the news".⁵⁹

BBC correspondent David Loyn presents a frequently quoted strong counter-position in the ‘objectivity’- as well as the "peace versus war journalism debate". In "Witnessing the Truth" Loyn refers to peace journalism as the most "pernicious" form of a variety of newly emerging journalistic orientations in the last few years. To him good journalism is about upholding what he sees as its traditional values, such as fairness, objectivity, balance, as well as "rat-like cunning", … a plausible manner and a little literary ability" ⁶⁰. He says that "what happens" should be reported with "imagination and appropriate skepticism".⁶¹ He sees journalists as always outside of events and he particularly disagrees with Galtung’s perspective that journalists are active participants in the events they report on.

Loyn is of the opinion that journalists are at risk of compromising their integrity, for example when reporters "work artificially to seek out peacemakers" in a peace journalism oriented approach. He sees the role of correspondents as being "witness not actor", and in "pursuing" the truth. In his view, the objectives of peace journalism enter into an area of "moral relativism which threatens the whole business of reporting".⁶²

These statements have been challenged by other journalists. Jake Lynch emphasizes that "…there are many truths…", and Des Freedman questions the validity of Loyn’s concept of truth and objectivity when he asks: "Witnessing whose truth?".⁶³

While Loyn criticizes peace journalism for reducing "what is really going on"⁶⁴ through "fencing it in with an ethical framework"⁶⁵, he propagates at the same time a distinct agenda when he says that journalists are confined by "certain assumptions"⁶⁶ which they share with their audience. He presents these assumptions as a given condition implying that the journalist has no mandate to raise awareness in a direction other than in keeping with these assumptions, nor any responsibility to question them in view of certain realities.

Jake Lynch captures this contradiction in Journalist Ethics and Reporting Terrorism, when he says that "Journalists observe reality, select the elements they consider important, draw conclusions and organize them into a narrative,…", but he argues that compared with practitioners in other fields journalists operate "within limited boundaries in regard to critical self-awareness and responsibility".⁶⁷

Danny Schechter, in response to David Loyn, sees peace journalism as a "healthy alternative"⁶⁸ to what he calls "the skewed coverage"⁶⁹ by the media of the Iraq war. Schechter mentions a report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a US media watchdog, that expressed severe criticism of US media objectivity flaws in the pre-Iraq war era.

Schechter argues against Loyns’ interpretation of objectivity, saying that "journalists have to take some measure of responsibility for the impact their work has, as do media companies"⁷⁰, and he defends the suggestion that "journalists might do more to examine how conflicts could be resolved rather than focus on the blood and gore".⁷¹ He points to the risks of a certain type of media coverage, whereby, if for example the coverage of the Middle East-conflict involved mainly "an endless exchange of violent attacks"⁷², the larger context would be missed. He says that if the media focus was limited to daily incidents of bloodshed, this "just reinforces the sense of tragedy and futility of two peoples pictured only as hating each other"⁷³, whereby the "cumulative impression"⁷⁴ was one of the conflict being unsolvable. He also criticizes the media for rarely explaining or contextualizing the impact of the Israeli occupation on the lives of everyday Palestinians, stating that such reporting did not provide a background that "makes for meaning".⁷⁵

Schechter sees journalists as players in the world they report on rather than outsiders and argues in favour of media coverage that does not involve journalists abandoning their values or social conscience, but rather of being more assertive about demanding better coverage in the face of competitive pressures from the corporate world and the "need for ratings and revenues".⁷⁶

The editor of The Philosophers Magazine says that "objectivity is a matter of degree and about minimising the extent to which our beliefs and accounts depend upon our particular localised and subjective viewpoints".⁷⁷ He also says that news reporters "must ... be committed to truthfulness, judging what facts need to be brought to our attention in order that we can see through appearances to the real structure and motives that lie behind them".⁷⁸

Milgram refers to the media’s role as "therapeutic educator", which he sees in "distributing preventative messages, creating awareness, and educating potential helpers and receivers about meanings, priorities, and appropriate behaviors".⁷⁹

Hannes Siebert points out that journalists are faced with what he sees as an unreasonable expectation of considering themselves to be standing outside of an event, in the "no-man’s land of objectivity", while "never openly embracing one’s own and others’ humanity"⁸⁰, but of providing a mirror for society without conveying anything about the greater context in which the reported events occur. He points out that such an attitude is not achievable in any way, due to a number of factors that impact on reporting styles. He says that the journalist’s own ability to reflect events is much affected by the medium that is used: TV, radio, print or internet, as well as their own worldview and their sense of responsibility towards the people that are being reported about.

One of the strongest journalistic voices arguing against objectivity in reporting as a quality to aspire to is that of Herbert Matthews of the New York Times, writing in the context of the Civil War in Spain. Knightley quotes Matthews as saying: "I would always opt for honest, open bias. A newspaperman should work with his heart as well as his mind".⁸¹ Knightley also quotes Matthews as saying: "A reader has a right to ask for all the facts; he has no right to ask that a journalist or historian agree with him".⁸² BBC journalist Nik Gowing, in an interview, only a couple of weeks after covering the East Timor crisis in 1999, said: "A lot of our colleagues are now if you like beginning to feel that they can and should take a degree of moral high ground at certain points and I think it’s quite understandable".⁸³

Harwood quotes a German sociologist, Helmut Schelski, as citing the more extreme example of a "salvationist personality" type which, in his view, was characteristic of European journalists. Schelski describes the philosophy of the "Salvationists" in this way:

This variety of statements from different media and academic sources on the issue of objectivity and the role of the media may serve to highlight the extremes in possibilities and their consequences, and the fine line between ideology and perceptions of an ‘ethic of responsibility’ in journalism, as referred to by Lynch and McGoldrick. McGoldrick regards the attitude of some journalists who consider the consequences of their reporting as "coincidental and beyond their control"⁸⁵ as untenable; she equates this attitude to that of a car company who tries to justify the damage that cars do to the environment in similar terms. McGoldrick estimates that journalism is about twenty years behind the efforts of the corporate world to introduce ethical business conduct in their field.

2.5. Cultural Issues in the Media

Another issue of relevance to the debate on peace journalism is that of cultural insensitivity in the media. In one example, Irena Brezna, in The Solace of Cliché⁸⁶, speaks about the clichés applied to the reporting of situations from cultures with vastly different social codes of conduct to the country where the material is being released. She cites the example of the war in Chechnya where, for the purpose of better fitting in with the aimed at Swiss audience’s expectations, reporters invited emotional responses from their war-affected Chechnian interviewees that were completely contrary to the local cultural code. In commenting on Chechnyan cultural sensitivities, Brezna says that "lamenting one’s fate is regarded as bad taste"⁸⁷, and mentions that at the same time scenes that capture local people’s typical and authentic responses are often systematically edited out by Western media producers because of concerns that such scenes would be less convincing to Western European audiences. Brezna strongly expresses her criticism, saying that "A successful director relies on standard-issue tears"⁸⁸ and comments on a Zurich studio director disrespectfully enjoying his sandwiches while editing footage from mass graves in Grozny. In the same vein, Brezna says: "The naked backside of a corpse flashes around the world. It sums up the humiliation of a culture where exposure of certain body parts is taboo".⁸⁹ To Brezna, the culturally insensitive insistence on the public display of emotions, even encouraging victims to play-act them, Western-style, for the camera and the editor’s disrespectful conduct constitute two separate violations in a society where "the dead are more sacred than anything else".⁹⁰

McGoldrick also refers to the issue of a Western cultural bias and in discussion of international conflicts she recommends looking at the common denominators of conflict, rather than the West assuming a superior stance over the conflicts in developing countries. She also mentions that the consequences of such biased Western attitudes are often not realized, pointing to the contradiction of politicians in the West expressing surprise about youth violence while they themselves are responsible for political decisions regarding major acts of violence against other states. McGoldrick also speaks of a distorted perception in the West regarding the impact of Western policies on other nations and criticizes the media’s trend to represent Britain and the US as peaceful countries, when from the perspective of so many nations "...they are the planet’s most warlike countries".¹⁰⁰ She considers a peace-journalistic media orientation as an important forum for educating the public towards a more realistic perspective on how certain situations are perceived in non-Western environments.

Hugh Lewin criticizes a prevailing "journalism of morbidity" or "body-count-reporting"¹⁰¹ in South Africa during the Apartheid-era. In his impression reporters were solely driven by reactions to violent events without any background on causes or options and says that the "parachute journalists" flying in for the occasion were often much more inclined towards presenting very unbalanced views than local reporters who had the language and cultural background to put things into a greater context.

According to Lewin this strongly promotes stereotyping, conjuring up "Heart-of-Darkness" myths about Africa and portrays, according to Liberian journalist Thomas Kamara, the notion of conflict as intrinsic to the African psyche¹⁰². This aspect has been pointed out by a number of authors, according to whom Africa as a continent has acquired an image of the "world’s basket case"¹⁰³, through the media’s chronic overemphasis on wars, famines and disease presented in an unbalanced ratio with success stories.

2. ibid.

3. Knightley, Phillip,(2004), The First Casualty, The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

4. ibid., p.16.

5. ibid., p.21.

6. ibid., p.21.

7. ibid., p.23.

8. ibid., p.23.

9. ibid., p.45.

10. ibid., p.46.

11. ibid., p.45.

12. ibid., p.46.

13. ibid., p.47.

14. ibid., p.53.

15. ibid., p.53.

16. ibid., p.56.

17. ibid., p.76.

18. ibid., p.76.

19. ibid., p.77.

20. ibid., p.103.

21. ibid., p.89.

22. ibid., p.89.

24. Peace Journalism – An Introduction, in The media in Conflicts, Accomplices or Mediators, p.54 http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/00960.pdf (accessed on 02.01.05)

26. Robert Fisk, When Journalists become targets, A Survival Guide for Journalists, p.66, http://www.ifj.org/pdfs/safetyall.pdf., (accessed on 22.02.05)

27. ibid.

28. ibid.

31. ibid.

32. Nik Gowing, March 2, 2000, Information in Conflict, Who Really Commands the High Ground?, Annual Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives Lecture
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=193&paper=483, Phil Taylor’s Web Site, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/info/lec00.htm, (accessed on 05.03.05)

33. ibid.

33. A Survival Guide for Journalists, p. 67, http://www.ifj.org/pdfs/safetyall.pdf., (accessed on 22.02.05)

34. ibid.

35. ibid.

36. ibid.

37. ibid.

38. ibid.

39. ibid.

40. ibid.

41. ibid., p.66

43. In The Media in Conflicts, Accomplices or Mediators, p. 100,
http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/00960.pdf (accessed on 02.01.05)

44. Knightley, Phillip,(2004, p. 16), The First Casualty, The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

46. A Survival Guide for Journalists, p.6, http://www.ifj.org/pdfs/safetyall.pdf.,
(accessed on 22.02.05)

50. ibid.

52. Jean-Marie Etter (Thun, November 2, 2004), at a seminar on "Public Participation in Establishing Peace", organized by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, http://www.hirondelle.org/hirondelle.nsf/0/09cf6f676af1c835c1256f71005169cc?OpenDocument, (accesses on 15.03.05)

53. Lynch/ McGoldrick, Day 3,Theories of news, p.2, Part Two - the Feedback Loop, http://www.uq.edu.au/journ-comm/docs/summer/7270/7270-day3.pdf. (accessed 10.02.05)

54. Lynch, http://www.impacs.org/pdfs/what is.pdf, (accessed on 02.01.05)

57. Ben Bagdikian http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/DemoMedia_Bagdikian.html, (accessed on 02.02.04)

58. Richard Harwood (December 4, 1997), delivered to the Committee of Concerned Journalists, Columbia University, New York, NY http://www.journalism.org/resources/education/forums/speeches/harwood.asp, (accessed on 02.01.05)

59. ibid.

62. ibid.

63. Des Freedman, 26. 2.2003, Witnessing whose truth? http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-92-1218.jsp, (accessed 02.02.05)

65. ibid.

66. ibid.

67. Lynch, Journalist Ethics and Reporting Terrorism, The Conflict, Security and Development Group Bulletin, March to April, 2002, p.9, http://www.terrorismresearch.net/docs/lynch.pdf, (accessed on 02.03.05)

68. Journalism & war (15.05.2003), Open Democracy,
http://opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-92-1227.jsp, (accessed on 05.03.05)

69. ibid.

70. ibid.

71. ibid.

72. ibid.

73. ibid.

74. ibid.

75. ibid.

76. ibid.

77. The philosophy of journalism: not truth but truthfulness; The Sunday Mirror, (June 1, 2003) http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/030601/weekend23461.html, (accessed on 12.02.05)

78. ibid.

79. Milgram, N., Sarason, B.R., Schönpflug, U., Jackson, A. & Schwarzer, C. (1995, p.485).
Catalyzing community support. In: Hobfoll, S.E. & De Vries, M.W. Extreme stress and communities. Impact and intervention. Kluwer Academic Publishers: The Netherlands:473-488.

80. Hannes Siebert, Debunking the "Big O" (p.31), In The Media in Conflicts, Accomplices or Mediators, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/00960.pdf (accessed on 02.01.05)

81. Knightley, (2004), The First Casualty, The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq, (p.208), The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

82. ibid.

86. in Dreams of Authenticity: war, TV, and the Chechen Mask (20. 8. 2003); http://www.opendemocracy.net/articles/ViewPopUpArticle.jsp?id=2&articleId=1442
(accessed on 20.02.05)

87. ibid.

88. ibid.

89. ibid.

90. ibid.

91. Annabel McGoldrick, 2000, Peace Journalism – An Introduction, in The media in Conflicts,
Accomplices or Mediators, p. 20 http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/00960.pdf (accessed on 02.01.05)

92. ibid., p.52.

93. ibid., p.54.

94. ibid.

95. Knightley, (2004), The First Casualty, The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq, (K.xiii), The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

98. ibid.

99. ibid.

100. ibid.

101. ibid.

102. ibid.

103. ibid.

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Dr. Gabriele Frohlich is a medical practitioner, psychotherapist, workshop facilitator, and global consciousness coach with international experience, and has an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies.