Peace Journalism

Annabel McGoldrick

Sujets

• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Hawthorn Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 0001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781907359477
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Peace Journalism copyright © 2005 Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick
Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick are hereby identified as the authors of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988. They assert and give notice of their moral right under this Act.
Published by Hawthorn Press, Hawthorn House, 1 Lansdown Lane, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 1BJ, UK
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The ideas expressed in this book are not necessarily those of the publisher.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electronic or mechanical, through reprography, digital transmission, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Publication of this book was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
Photographs were taken by the authors and are their copyright, unless otherwise credited.
Cover illustration Guernica by Pablo Picasso copyright © Succession Picasso/DACS 2005
Cover design by Hawthorn Press
Design and typesetting by Lynda Smith at Hawthorn Press, Stroud, Gloucestershire
Printed in the UK by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
Printed on paper sourced from sustained managed forests and elemental chlorine-free
Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyrighted material. If any omission has been made, please bring this to the publisher’s attention so that proper acknowledgment may be given in future editions.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978-1-907359-47-7


Guernica , by Pablo Picasso, is known as perhaps the most powerful modern image of the cost and horror of war. An Indonesian official once welcomed Peace Journalism because, he said, it would make reporters less inclined to cover the violence visited on people in Aceh by troops his government sent into the province. No misconception could be more damaging – Peace Journalism entails disclosure, not suppression. Both Guernica and Guernica have been on the frontline of that battle. The infamous massacre in the little Spanish town, by German Air Force bombers in 1937, was falsified by the double agent, Kim Philby, in his guise as a Times reporter, to imply that landmines planted by the Republicans might have been responsible. Decades later, the tapestry depicting Picasso’s masterpiece, at UN Headquarters in New York, was covered by a curtain as US Secretary of State Colin Powell faced the world’s media to make the case for invading Iraq. We are on the side of Guernica , the painting, if it is a side; in favour of full and honest reporting of both conflict and violence, including images and perspectives of non-violent responses and solutions. That is what Peace Journalism is all about.
Phillip Knightley, author, The First Casualty
The aim of this ambitious book is to spark off a revolution in journalism – to change the way the media reports wars. It is important and long overdue. Behind it is the fact that the relationship between media and military has undergone a major change. The way a war is fought has now become a media event, presented as a struggle between good and evil with only two outcomes possible – victory or defeat. This has left war correspondents disorientated and confused, faced with the choice of being regurgitators of government and military propaganda or cynical onlookers struggling to explain events that shape the lives of people and nations.
Lynch and McGoldrick insist that there has to be a better way. Journalists should go back to first principles. They should give a voice to all parties. They should show empathy and understanding, focus on suffering, expose untruths on all sides, explain the background, highlight peace initiatives and stop demonising one side while glorifying the other.
Of course, all this is easier said than done. But this is not just a book of theory. It is packed with sensible, easily understood, practical exercises in understanding peace journalism. It is suitable for both old hands and newcomers alike. You cannot put it down without being convinced that the authors are right and that the world will be a better and safer place if their recipe for a reporters’ revolution wins the support it deserves.
Stuart Rees, Professor Emeritus and Director, Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, University of Sydney
In powerful and empirically rich analyses, – with examples from Iraq to Northern Ireland, from Indonesian provinces to Rwanda, from Morocco to Afghanistan, from Israel to the White House – Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick show how reporting which reinforces official versions of reality has a huge and dangerous influence on public understanding…
In Peace Journalism , two skilful and astute journalists show how society at large can think about and value non-violent responses to conflict. This elegantly written, often humorous and always encyclopaedic book could have a major influence on the way events are reported and how the public perceives them. Whether this potential is realised will depend on the willingness of media owners and journalists to replace pre-conceived views of reality with a consideration of how violence may be explained and how ways of reporting could help to resolve conflicts instead of inflaming them.
If this significant work is studied and promoted, journalists could become more discerning and more analytical, less prone to be co-opted – or embedded – by official accounts of ‘the way it is.’ In the task of using non-violent perspectives to report conflicts, journalists and political scientists, educators, politicians and the general public now have available the most refreshing and constructive analysis of media practice which has appeared for years.
Majid Tehranian, Professor and Director, Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research
Peace Journalism is a daring and sober guidebook for journalists to practise what journalism should be all about: to inform without fear or favour. The authors, two distinguished journalists, call it ‘peace journalism’ in order to contrast it with what is the prevalent practice today, namely ‘war journalism’. Through lucid presentation and practical exercises, the authors demonstrate how a journalist can be a humane observer-participant in un-humane circumstances. They apply the insights of social theory to global journalism and show how to avoid the prevailing prejudices and stereotypes. This book should be required reading for all students and practitioners of journalism in a world that desperately calls for understanding instead of obfuscation, compassion instead of loathing, and sustainable peace instead of cycles of violence.
Kim Sengupta, special correspondent, the London Independent
This is an important study of how conflicts are influenced by the way they are reported in the media, how journalists are so often not just observers but play an active part in shaping events on the ground. The analysis and conclusions in the book will not be to everyone’s liking. But the authors have provided a valuable service in focusing on an issue which is of special relevance now amid the continuing and bitter recriminations over the Iraq war.
Associate Professor Chris Nash, Director, Australian Centre for Independent Journalism
This book is worthy of the goal it has set itself: how journalists could and should insert the missing question ‘Why?’ back into their coverage of war and conflict. It comes from two seasoned international correspondents at a time when our news seems drenched in mindless bloodshed, to make a compelling argument: to stop the violence, we have to change the way we report it. This book deserves a place on the desk of every reporter, and every thinking person.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Roy Greenslade
Guardian media commentator and Professor of Journalism at City University, London
Preface by John Kampfner
Editor, New Statesman and author of Blair’s Wars
Foreword by Philip Hammond
Senior Lecturer in Media, London South Bank University
Prologue

• A critical self-awareness
• Conflict Analysis tools for journalists
• Responsibility and the Feedback Loop
• A paradigm shift, a journalistic revolution?
• Using this book
• The name – a problem?
Chapter 1 The Peace Journalism Model

• Why do we need the Peace Journalism model?
• Definitions of Peace Journalism
• Invading Iraq – a case study
• Two versions of a suicide bombing – as War Journalism and Peace Journalism
• Seventeen tips for practical Peace Journalism
Chapter 2 Conflict Analysis – Anchorage for Journalists

• Why study conflict?
• What is conflict?
• Conflict theories and terminology
• The Conflict Orange
• Mapping a conflict
• What do we mean by Peace?
• Two versions of Casablanca bombings – using Conflict Analysis in reporting
• An alternative ‘5 Ws’
• A code of practice from India
Chapter 3 Reporting and Understanding Violence

• Two versions of a violent incident in Macedonia
• A typology of violence – Direct, Structural and Cultural
• The Rwandan genocide
• A note on ‘evil’
• The struggle for context
• Understanding and condemning – two child murders by children
• Explaining or excusing? The suicide bomber’s brother
• Hard cases – al-Qaeda and the Bali bomb
• Literacy in non-violence
• Heroes of non-violence
• The legacy of violence – Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq
• Consequences for reporting
• Realism versus the Cycle of Violence
• A framework of understanding
Chapter 4 War Propaganda

• How to recognise it and why it works
• NATO’s war on Yugoslavia – a case study
• Developing strategies to resist propaganda
• Truth and lies
• The psychology of propaganda
Chapter 5 Scenarios and Dilemmas

• ‘Tension is rising’
• Beginnings of violence
• Early warning – Rwanda