Excerpted from "Reporting the World: a practical checklist for the ethical reporting
of conflicts in the 21st Century" (by Jake Lynch, Conflict & Peace Forums, 2002). Read more about the book here.
Developed by more than 200 journalists and media experts, this "checklist" offers a series of points under four main headings. Participants worked together through seminars and roundtables and drew on the insights of Conflict Analysis. (See www.reportingtheworld.org for more information.)
These are for journalists to consider whenever they commission, edit, produce or write a story about conflict, in order to help them think through and engage with the ethical implications of their work.
1) How is violence explained?
• How does the explanation arise from the way violence is reported?
• Is a report confined to a classic 'blow-by-blow' account of direct violence?
• Or does it also show the impact of structural and cultural violence on the lives of people involved?
• Does it illuminate the intelligible — if dysfunctional - processes which may be creating the conditions for violence?
• What are we led or left to infer about what should, or is likely to happen next?
2) What is the shape of the conflict?
• Is the conflict framed as a 'tug-of-war' — a zero-sum game of two parties contesting a
single goal, so whatever one side wins, the other side loses?
• Or as a 'cat's-cradle' — a pattern of many interdependent parties, with needs and interests which may overlap, or provide scope for integrated solutions?
3) Is there any news of any efforts or ideas to resolve the conflict?
• Is there anything in the report about peace plans, alternative ideas or any image of a solution?
• Must these aspects of a story wait until leaders cut a 'deal'?
• Do reports of any deal help readers or audiences to assess whether it is likely to tackle the causes of violence?
• Do we see any news of anyone else, besides leaders and their officials, working to resolve or transform the conflict?
4) What is 'our' role in this story?
• Is the underlying or implicit message that 'these people will not be OK until our (benign) intervention, now in prospect'?
• Or does the report suggest that 'they would be OK, but for our record of (malign) intervention'?
• Is there anything in the reporting about interventions already underway, albeit perhaps undeclared?
• Is there any examination of the influence of previous or prospective interventions on people's behaviour?
• Does it equip us to assess whether more, or less intervention might represent a solution, or to discriminate between different kinds of intervention?
The checklist offers clear and specific criteria for assessing international news.
It is intended to fortify reporters, producers and editors alike in overcoming self-censorship and the constraints of consensus and inertia, in favour of thinking through stories for themselves from a reliable set of 'first principles'.
It also addresses the need to promote journalists' own emotional self-knowledge and psychological well-being, especially when covering conflicts, if they are to continue to perform this service effectively.
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