A Journalist's View of Peace Journalism

Taplow Court, the U.K. Centre for the Buddhist Society for the Creation of Value in Buckinghamshire, U.K., is home to the Conflict and Peace Forums which, during each of the past three summers, has offered three-day programs on Conflict Transformation, Reconciliation, and Peace Journalism. BRC publications manager Amy Morgante was a participant in the summer peace journalism course, “News for a New Century,” held last September 2-5. The focus of the course is a re-thinking of the responsibility of the journalist in order to develop a new approach to news and the media. Here is Program Chair Jake Lynch's summation of the dominant issues. (Jake is a correspondent for Sky News and The Independent.)

How often is a conflict portrayed in our news as a tug-of-war, a zero sum game between two parties at loggerheads over one issue? Think back to coverage of the Kosovo crisis, characterized as “The Serbs” determined to stop “The Kosovars” from having their “independence.” Put it like this, and an inch gained by one side can only be the same inch lost by the other, so both cannot “win” at the same time. And if only one issue divides them, how can the motives for unexpected or disobliging behavior be explained? A classic example of bias injected into reporting comes from Newsweek: the obduracy of President Milosevic was attributable to the influence of his wife, “an extremist even more fanatical than himself.” Extremists and fanatics cannot be reasoned with and must, perforce, be coerced into “backing down”—a logic which makes violence seem to make sense as a means of settling disputes.

Peace Journalism instead maps a conflict as a round table, consisting of many parties, many issues. It acknowledges a complex, interlocking pattern of fears, inequities, and resentments which can only be overcome by seeking, devising, and implementing complex, interlocking solutions.

What would happen, for example, if we focused in a new fashion on the continuing plight of Serbian refugees in Serbia, many more of whom were created as a result of NATO's bombing? What if we breached the bipolar model by transgressing the boundaries between familiar—but simplistic—categories of victim and oppressor in this decade's Balkan upheavals?

What if, in treatment of East Timor, we focused on the fears of transmigratees, standard-bearers for Indonesia's post-colonial settlement, in a country where living standards had suddenly plummeted in a financial crisis precipitated by Western banks, and scapegoating of newcomers had already brought widespread violence?

What would happen in journalism if we humanized all sides, insisted on parity of esteem for testimony in place of “worthy” and “unworthy” victimhood? What if we stopped pinning all blame on one demonized party?

What if we truly aspired to agenda-free reporting? Currently, all reporting contains an agenda by the time the reporter gets the story. At present, there is not even a functioning distinction between journalism which is conscious of containing an agenda and that which is not so conscious. What is at issue is the analysis journalists bring to their work and how they share it with their audiences.

Fortunately, there are road-tested alternatives at hand, discussed in Conflict and Peace Forum publications, The Peace Journalism Option and What Are Journalists For? We must break the umbilical cord with official information sources, which has London or Washington “confirming” things reporters cannot possibly check for themselves while (say) Belgrade only ever “claims” them.

Privileged perspectives are all too often camouflaged with weasel phrases like “said to be,” “thought to be,” and “it is being seen as.” These perspectives slide in at the top of program rundowns and onto front pages. We should be alerting audiences to a world of perspectives. We should equip them to ask: Who wants me to believe this, and why? In place of the traditional journalistic search for “the truth,” we should move toward a recognition of, and respect for, many truths. What is important may be to shed some light on the processes by which certain truths are routinely commended to our attention, while others are systematically ignored or suppressed.

A journalism capable of engaging readers, listeners, and viewers in such a dialogue would offer a new and long-overdue basis for trust. News determined to pick up and examine ideas for peaceful outcomes and solutions, no matter who suggests them, could start to provide incentives for conflicts to be resolved nonviolently.

Under the leadership of Professor Johan Galtung, a pioneer of peace studies as an academic subject and director of the TRANSCEND Peace & Development Network, the forums on peace journalism at Taplow Court have attempted to throw the spotlight on the issues of objectivity, impartiality, the so-called Official Sources industry, and on news distortions. The objective of the peace journalism seminars is to assess the impact of the journalist on war and peace and to alter the current bias-riddled approach to journalism. As The Peace Journalism Option puts it, “Peace journalism humanizes all sides of the conflict and is prepared to document deceit and suffering as well as peace initiatives from all parties.”

(You can find out more about Conflict and Peace Forums and their peace journalism publications at: www:poiesis.org; e-mail: conflict.peace@poiesis.org)