(Photo by Scott Peterson/Liaison Agency/Newsmakers)
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Covering Conflict
War is journalism's most challenging and stressful environment. War makes and breaks numerous journalistic careers; for every star launched, hundreds of other journalists sweat through post-traumatic stress never to return to the profession. War has killed at least 32 media workers this year, ending the millennium on a bloody downbeat. And war in the 21st century will most likely become more complex, making the task of covering war more difficult and possibly more dangerous.
With so much professional difficulty and human cost, you might think the media's coverage of wars is exemplary. Hardly. With a communications and technology revolution enabling governments to control and restrict journalists like never before, with modern weapons platforms distant and remote (planes drop smart bombs at
an elevation of 15,000 feet, ships launch cruise missiles hundreds of miles out at sea), major wars have become largely inaccessible to the media. With minimal access to
battlefields and combatants, journalists flock to government press conferences seeking official information that is hard to distinguish from propaganda. At the same time,
diverse sub-national forces are exploding the myth of inevitable globalization and homogenization, setting brush-fire wars throughout the world where journalists run the very real risk of being slaughtered and dumped in an unmarked grave. The vast majority of these wars, however, are simply off the international media's screen.
Media coverage of wars is not merely too uniform and seriously flawed, but there is often no coverage at all. Of the 19 wars and 17 flashpoints erupting this year, how many were covered by the mass media? Did you hear Tom Brokaw discuss the ongoing war in the Philippines? When was the last time The New York Times had an article on Moldavia as a powder keg? The Times of London is not significantly better, and don't expect coverage of these "minor" conflicts on Japanese television. When conflicts are covered—the U.S./Iraqi Gulf War, NATO's air campaign in Yugoslavia, Russia's assault on Chechnya—how much is meaningful news and profound
analysis and how much is U.S. Pentagon spin or other government propaganda? At this point, how many people can tell the difference?
On the other hand, peace journalism insists that the techniques and intentions of war coverage must change in the coming century, and change radically. This theory of reportage denies the two-party, tug-of-war model of violent conflict and looks deeper into the complexities of the differing interests, and even shared goals, of the combatants. Peace journalism
reports not merely the causes of conflict but also explores possible solutions; it undergirds covering conflict with the goal of ending wars. But peace journalism is hardly getting a fair public hearing. Often shunned by the established media, this alternative is seldom discussed and rarely practiced. Ironically, the technology and institutions which created the communications revolution and the information society are now denying us information on both war and peace options, leaving us a dumber, more dangerous world.
Your comments and suggestions are encouraged. I would especially like to hear from war correspondents and individuals who have interacted with them. Write to
me c/o editor@mediachannel.org.
- Tom Nusbaumer, "War And Peace" editor, is a Vietnam veteran and seasoned journalist. He will be writing on war and journalism for the Media Channel.
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Peace Journalism's Solutions For Complex Conflicts
Peace journalism, sometimes ridiculed yet seldom understood, is a distinctive
approach to covering conflict, vastly different from the one pursued by most war
correspondents and mainstream media outlets. Writing for Media Channel,
peace journalist Jake Lynch, a reporter for SKY News and a peace journalism
analyst, explores coverage of the conflicts in Kosovo, Serbia, and East Timor. Lynch argues that there's an
alternative to most war coverage—an alternative that is, among other things, less
ideologically slanted, more factually accurate and, most important, potentially able to help solve conflicts
peacefully.
From The Media Channel, December 17 1999
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Risks Of The Trade
Journalists are told to weigh the risks, to assess whether a story is worth the
potential peril. Even so, there is one risk no
story is worth, in the opinion of a panel assembled by the Freedom Forum. "No video, no story, no words, are worth dying for," says
Michael Garter, former president of NBC News. But risk assessment is no simple matter, nor is the question of who is responsible for a journalist's safety. Is a correspondent, alone in a strange land, walking the razor's edge between fearless reporting and suicidal folly,
responsible for his or her own safety? Or does responsibility lie with the editor,
hundreds, if not thousands of miles away?
From Freedom Forum, November 8 1999
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Give The Complete Story A Chance
Write the complete story, encourages professional conflict-resolution facilitator
Dudley Weeks. For reporters covering military conflicts, this should include possibilities for
resolution. "The journalist should not seek to focus solely on the causes of the
conflict and the behavior that is perpetuating it," asserts Weeks. Yet, with limited time, limited
knowledge, and pressing demands, can a journalist flush out what warring parties
have in common instead of merely writing about what separates them?
From Media Action International, September 1 1999
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Interview: Covering East Timor
When East Timor exploded and foreign journalists fled, American reporter
Alan Nairn remained behind—to be arrested, it turned out, by the Indonesian army. Nairn's hard-hitting reportage had earned him an unenviable place on a government blacklist. Interviewed
by Media Channel Executive Editor Danny Schechter, Nairn talks
about the press coverage of East Timor—what it did well, what it did poorly and what it didn't do at all. He also has some advice for reporters covering future conflicts. Read the interview with Jakarta's least-favorite journalist or watch it in Real Video.
From The Media Channel, December 20 1999
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A Serbian Prison
Immediately after the NATO air campaign commenced, the German TV correspondent
Hanspeter Schnitzler was thrown into a Serbian prison where he was terrorized and humiliated for almost four
weeks. A gripping tale with piercing
insights about a journalist's struggle to survive, Schnitzler's story offers a rare inside view of
media propaganda from both sides of the war.
From International Press Institute, September 1 1999
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Three Kings, No Journalists
The Gulf War may have marked the beginning of a new kind of news reporting: The U.S.-Iraqi conflict gave purpose and prominence to CNN, the first in a line of 24-hour cable news channels. But, as told in David O. Russell's film, "Three Kings," this war may also have heralded the end of war journalism. "Three Kings: Hollywood vs. The Media, Take 3," a Media Channel original, looks at the most manipulated and powerless players in Operation Desert Storm: the media. From The Media Channel, December 20 1999
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Self-Censorship Or Death
In the world's hot spots, the
choice is often self-censorship or intimidation, if not worse, especially for local journalists. Write the truth, and you could
end up in a body bag. "But how many compromises can a journalist make," asks Claudia McElroy of the Committee to Protect Journalists, "before he or she stops being a journalist?"
From Committee to Protect Journalists, November 16 1999
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Kukes: Ground Emotion
At once high-tech and primitive, cosmopolitan and isolated, a theater of human passions ranging from intense happiness
bound up in paralyzing fear to tenderness mingled with rock-hard toughness—Kukes, Albania was a funnel for the war's wrenching emotions. For many desperate Kosovar refugees fleeing a burning nightmare, Kukes was not only their
first safe refuge outside their war-torn homeland, but the birthplace of the first hope that they would actually survive. In "Kukes Made Media Cry," John Daniszewski,
Cairo bureau chief for The Los Angles Times, tells us what it was really
like in this town of refugees. From International Press Institute, October 1 1999
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The U.S. Media's Coverage Of Kosovo
Michael Massing, formerly Executive Editor of Columbia Journalism Review,
sums up U.S. television coverage of the Kosovo War in one sentence: "Heavy on refugees, light on political and military analysis." Massing believes U.S. TV news reporting on the conflict was superficial,
biased, narrow, and dependent upon those same old "experts," to highlight
just a few of his critical observations. Yet there were bright spots in the coverage,
especially in newspapers, finds Massing, who also notes that there were excellent reports on
the Internet. This article is from the International Press Institute's new book, The Kosovo News And Propaganda War.
From International Press Institute, September 1 1999
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Surge of Violence As Millennium Ends
According to the World Association of Newspapers, "The number of journalists killed, jailed and censored increased in most regions in 1999, making the last year of the century a poor one for press freedom." This year alone, 47 journalists have been killed and 400 jailed to date.
From World Association of Newspapers,
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Peace And Censorship On The Web
During the recent conflict in Kashmir, the Indian government shut down Internet access
to a popular Pakistani newspaper's Web site. According to The Asian Age
correspondent Jaideep V.G., "The fear was that the paper's message could reach
and affect the minority Muslim population in India, turning it against the
government at the height of Pakistani-backed conflict in Kargil and on the brink
of the country's 13th General Elections."
In "A Virtual Bridge For Peace," Jaideep writes that Indian peace advocates who coexist on the Internet with their Pakistani counterparts believe the move to block the site portends an attempt by political and military leaders to increase control over non-formal communication channels. From Online Journalism Review, October 14 1999
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Pacifism Online
According to the University of Vermont history teacher Jay Moore, the U.S. Civil
War was the first war extensively photographed, Vietnam was the first televised war,
and Kosovo was the first Internet war. This onward march of communication technologies affects not only how wars are reported, but also how wars are resisted. During the recent NATO bombing, Moore writes in "The Internet As An Anti-War Tool," Western governments attempted to control the flow of information and put their exclusive spin on events. Yet the Web exposed these distortions and lies, "proving to be a great equalizer." The author sees the Internet as a networking tool and information provider which is transforming how we oppose war.
From Toward Freedom, July 1 1999
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The Myth Of The Internet War
Columnist Jon Katz challenges the notion that the Internet has become a powerful resource for propaganda-free information in times of international conflict. "The myth of the Internet war, media's latest over-hyped theme about the Net, was as widespread as it was wrong. If the war in Kosovo demonstrates anything about the Net, it shows that it's a dreadful medium for covering a war." In "War Coverage Is Not The Net's Strength," Katz argues that it was the conventional, not the digital, media which reported the meaning of the war and had the greatest political impact. The Internet, although at times interesting, lacks the credibility and focus to challenge the traditional media, asserts Katz. From Freedom Forum, April 13 1999
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AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE
MEDIA.
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