Peace Journalism: What, Why, Who, How, When, Where

TMS PEACE JOURNALISM, 2 Jan 2017

Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service

What Is Peace Journalism?

Imagine a blackout on everything we associate with medical practice; never to be reported in the media.  Disease, however, is to be reported fully, in gruesome detail, particularly when elite persons are struck.  The process of disease is seen as natural, as a fight between the human body and whatever is the pathogenic factor, a micro-organism, trauma, stress and strain.  Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. It is like a game, even like a sports game.  Fair play means to give either side a fair chance, not interfering with the ways of nature where the stronger eventually wins.  The task of journalism is to report this struggle objectively, hoping that our side, the body, wins.

That kind of journalism would be disease-oriented, and the journalist could refer to himself as a disease journalist or correspondent.  He would be firmly rooted in the tradition of midwifing negative events hitting elites into news.  His concern would not be to highlight how diseases might be overcome, except by means as violent as the disease itself (open heart surgery, chemo- or radiotherapy.)   The softer approaches would go under-reported; so would anything known as preventive medicine.

Fortunately, reporting on health and disease has liberated itself from much of that fatalistic tradition.  There is also a clear tradition of health journalism.[i]  But there is not, yet, a corresponding tradition of “peace journalism” whereas “war and violence journalism” seem to be in good standing. But exactly what could be the content of that concept, peace journalism?

In general there seem to be two ways of looking at a conflict, the high road and the low road, depending on whether the focus is on the conflict and its peaceful transformation, or on the meta-conflict that comes after the root conflict, created by  violence and war, and the question of who wins.  Media evenb confuse the two, talk about conflict when they mean violence.     The low road, by far dominant in the media, sees a conflict as a battle and the battle as sports arena and gladiator circus.  The parties, usually reduced to the number 2, are combatants in a struggle to impose their goals. The underlying reporting model, often very visible, is that of a military command: who advances, who capitulates short of their goals; counting the losses in terms of nos. killed, wounded, and material damage.  The zero-sum perspective draws upon sports reporting where “winning is not the only thing, but everything”.  The same perspective is applied to negotiations as verbal battles: who outsmarts the other, who gets the other to say yes; who comes out closest to his original position.  War journalism has sports journalism, and court journalism!, as models.

The high road, the road of peace journalism, would focus on conflict transformation.  Conflicts would be seen as a challenge to the world, like having 2,000 nations wanting a nation-state in a world with only 200 countries, and only 20 nation-states.  As people, groups, countries, and groups of countries seem to stand in each other’s way (that is what conflict is about) there is a clear danger of violence.  But in conflict there is also a clear opportunity for human progress, using the conflict to find new ways, being imaginative, creative, transforming the conflict so that the opportunities take the upper hand. Without violence.

In this there is no argument that violence should not be reported.  But the first victim in a war is not truth, that is only the second victim.  The first victim is, of course, peace. That good reporting, low road or high road, should be truthful, is obvious. But truth journalism alone is not peace journalism.  And truth does not come easily given the tendency to take sides once the “who wins” perspective has been adopted.  If one side is backed by one’s own country, nation, class or that particular paper/station/channel, then the low road invites untruthfulness, as witnessed in the Gulf, Somalia and Yugoslavia wars.

Here is a short list of tasks for the peace correspondents, intended as an introduction to the elaborations below:

1. What is the conflict about?  Who are the parties, what are their real goals, counting the parties beyond the conflict arena where the violence, if any, takes place? The list is often long.
2. What are the deeper roots of the conflict, in structure and culture, including the history of both?
3. What kind of ideas exist about other outcomes than one party imposing itself on the other, particularly creative, new ideas? Can such ideas be sufficiently powerful to prevent violence?
4. If violence occurs, how about such invisible effects as trauma and hatred, and the wish for revenge and for more glory?
5. Who are working to prevent violence, what are their visions of conflict outcomes, their methods, how can they be supported?
6. Who initiate reconstruction, reconciliation and resolution, and who are only reaping benefits like reconstruction contracts?

More reporting of this kind, and the conflict in and over Northern Ireland would have entered a more peaceful phase long ago.  Focus on the violence of IRA/RUC only hides the conflict and nourishes more violence.  Focus on nonviolent outcomes, empathy with all parties, creativity: and peace may come.

Building on this introduction, the following Table 1 is an effort to fill both concepts with operational content:[ii]

Starting with the first two victims of a war, peace and truth, we then add the next two victims: people and solution.

Both categories are given content reading the Table  vertically.  And the position taken here is not that good reporting on conflict is some kind of compromise, a little from the left hand column, a little from the right.  The position taken is in favor of peace journalism, and against war journalism.  There is a challenge in the term “peace journalism” and that is entirely intended.  If a society sees a need for war reporting the way it is described here, then better leave it to the ministries of (dis)information, of defense (war), of foreign affairs, etc.  Do not corrupt the media by giving the task to them, having them take it on voluntarily, or forcing them into that kind of journalism like the Pentagon did in the Gulf war, following the English model from the Falkland/Malvinas war.[iii]

As a normative model the Table clearly favors the left hand column.  But as a model descriptive of what actually happens in the world today some comments have to be added.  Most media are in-between.  When a war peaks, like in the Gulf and Yugoslavia, the war journalism column is clearly activated.  But before and after there are often some hesitant, amateurish moves into the left hand column, as against the professionalism, and courage! of the seasoned war correspondent doing his propaganda for war.

A note: we tend to focus on wars between states.  But what is said here also applies also to violence between other groups, to rape and wife battering, mistreatment of children, race and national strife, class conflict.  The violence is reported and the blame is usually fixed clearly on one side.  In fact, all the advice for peace journalism applies to all these cases.

The war focus in war journalism will polarize and escalate, calling for hatred and more violence to avenge and stop “them”.  This is in line with a neo-fascist theory of war termination: let them fight and kill each other till they get “ready for the table”.[iv]

The broader category is “peace enforcement”, peace by warlike means.  For some it matters that peace comes about “the old way”, forcing the other party to submit to one’s own will and superior force, saving own status in the world hierarchy, the status of the war machine, and the status of war itself as an institution (and war journalism as a form of journalism).  The old content may dress up in new clothes still for some time.

Peace journalism tries to depolarize by showing the black and white of all sides, and to de-escalate by highlighting peace and conflict resolution as much as violence.  How successful has to be seen. But changing the discourse within which something is thought, spoken of and acted upon is a very powerful approach.[v]

Peace journalism stands for truth as opposed to propaganda and lies, “truthful journalism” being, as mentioned, one aspect of peace journalism. It is not “investigative journalism” in the sense of only uncovering lies on “our” side.  The truth aspect in peace journalism holds for all sides, just like exploration of the conflict formation and giving voice (glasnost’) to all.   Peace journalism is a “journalism of attachment” to all actual and potential victims; war journalism only attaches to “our” side.  The task is to report truthfully both war and peace, shaming the adage that “peace must be working, there is nothing in the media”.[vi] The task of peace journalism is serious, professional reporting, making these processes more transparent. The task of peace advocacy is better left to peace workers.

2. Why Peace Journalism; Why War Journalism?

The first question is normative, why do we need a peace journalism we do not have?  What we have is war journalism, so the second question is descriptive  How do we explain that?

The first question is easily answered, in two parts.  For many a moral answer would be both necessary and sufficient: because a focus on solving conflicts rather than winning them, given the horrors of modern warfare, may reduce human suffering.

But there is also a non-moral (not amoral) answer:  because what is described as “peace journalism” gives a more realistic image of what goes on in the world.  What is described as “war journalism” reflects the warrior logic of a world of states pitted against each other, with international conflict and war being matters of the states and the statesmen, not to be touched by the common folks.  The world comes nicely divided into nation-states (in fact only about 10% of them are close to uni-national).  The citizens are supposed to identify with their state, that also goes for the media.  Consequently, the reporting will take the form of, and indeed be informed by, communiques from the top  military command, reflect their world views, and contain what they deem good for people to know.

But today’s world is globalizing, alphabetizing and democratizing.  If the world is to move closer to one country, then issues have to be seen from more angles than one’s own.  Moreover, education is no longer an elite privilege; in today’s world very many are as much or better informed than the elites.  And democracy makes them demand the right to participate in matters affecting them.  Conflict and wars do.  War journalism is simply passé, a relic of the past.  Change is overdue.

But there are more factors sustaining war journalism than the zero-sum patriotism of the classical state system.  Media feed on news.  And news is something reported today that happened yesterday (or one hour ago, or right now if the media report in real time) and was not the case the day before yesterday (or two hours ago, or a split second ago).  The time cosmology of news is punctual, based on events.  Processes that need more time to reveal where they are headed, need more time to unfold.  The difference between one day and the next may pass unnoticed, moreover, the direction may not be typical of the long term trend.  And then there are the permanents, phenomena that do not change or only at glacial speed, and for that reason usually pass unnoticed, not only by journalism but also by the professionals, the social scientists. They are taken for granted since they have always been around, like the coast-line and the mountain-range.  It is usually assumed that processes and permanent (such as the historical background or the cultural parameters) would be the stuff commentary (on news) is made of.

Does it make sense to say that war journalism is news, peace journalism is commentary?  No doubt the violent act, a bullet fired in anger, an explosion, is made to order: it is an event, neither process, nor permanent.  To analyze a conflict formation is commentary.  To dis/uncover the stakes of parties far removed from the arena in the outcome of the conflict, and how they try to influence that outcome, is news. Peace proposals by important groups of NGOs about the abolition of land-mines, is news.  But it may still take some time for journalists to see it that way; in spite of the fact that today such NGOs, like Pugwash, may have more impact than most states in the world.

But even if it is news, is it “hard news”?  If hard news is about hard power, violence, sticks and carrots, and not the soft power of persuasion and nonviolence, then this is by definition.  Hard news is produced by war journalism, compatible with that kind of mind-set.  But there is another and more interesting interpretation: hard news are [1] undisputable facts, and [2] consequential.  Soft news satisfy neither one, nor the other.

But is that really the case?  Typical peace journalism items that did not really make it as news, although it was all known at the time it happened, would include the following:

The real end of the Cold War in the streets of Leipzig 11 October 1989, 75,000, demonstrating nonviolently, defying Stasi force; one month before the fall of the wall.  Majority women.

The cover-ups in the Gulf War:

• Hill and Knowlton news management: incubators, organized demos
• the oil bombing by the Coalition, the fake bird,
• the depleted uranium contamination,
• the “tractor” mass killing, burial alive, on the Road to Basra
• the bunker bombing,
• the number of military and civilians killed in Iraq,
• smart bombs not being smart,
• the significance of bombing Basra
• Saddam Hussein’s goals: honor, dignity, courage, not to win,
• Saddam Hussein’s proposals fall 1990 for negotiation,
• King Hussein’s peace initiatives
• the talk with the US ambassador before invading
• The Pérez de Cuéllar peace approach for Yugoslavia in his strong letters to Hans Dietrich Genscher against early recognition,
• The numerous Yugoslav peace groups, mainly women, mediating
• The massive conscientious objection in Yugoslavia and Western fear of recognizing them as political refugees,
• Joe Camplisson, a peace worker from Northern Ireland, and his mediation between Moldova and Transdniestria.[vii]
• The Mothers of the Russian Soldier peace initiative in Chechnya.

Nobody can claim that these are not important, verifiable and highly consequential events.  But they are not captured by the war journalism mind-set, the major factor behind missing key facts. To do an adequate job that mind-set has to be changed.

However, that conclusion presupposes rationality.  In the real world strong factors counteract that commodity, adding deeper perspective on why the media are so irrational.  News communication operates under the strong influence of many factors, and four of them seem particularly relevant:[viii]

Table 2.        A four factor news communication model

The “ideal”, top news event, is something negative (not positive, that is less interesting) happening to a person (not structural/institutional, abstract, less interesting) in the elite (not ordinary people, less interesting) in an elite country (not second, third or fourth world country, again less interesting).  The tragic death of Diana and Dodi the night of 31 August 1997 will be the archetypal example for years to come, overshadowing even the Kennedy assassination 22 November 1963, possibly because Kennedy was more institutional and Diana more personal (not only because better media coverage all over).

By far most events are not “ideal”, but can be ranked on a scale from 0 to 4 depending on how may of these four criteria are fulfilled.  0-4 is something external, the frame for the event, and the lower the ranking of the event, the more enormous the internal content has to be. For elites in elite countries even some little gossip will do; for common people in a common country the event has to be an enormity like a major earthquake killing the thousands.  And thus we get the image, produced by the external frame, not by the internal content, of the first world as a quiet place, laced with some court gossip and the third world always replete with social and natural catastrophes.

How do the low and high roads, war journalism and peace journalism fit into this model of factors influencing news production?  By and large they tend to favor war journalism. Peace journalism starts with a major handicap: while  violence is obviously negative, peace is positive, hence boring, trivial, not to be reported. But beyond that external frame the internal content would direct the reporting in the sense that the frame serves to reconstruct what happens, making it more fit for war than for peace journalism (and further removed from reality).

More concretely, if common countries have to compensate for their “common-ness” by producing something negative, and elite persons in elite countries enter news even if what they produce is positive, then the ideal construction of a conflict would be:

• something negative, violence, happens in common countries;
• something positive, peace, is brought to them by the patient and costly intervention by elite persons and elite countries.

And that seems to be the construction of Israel-Palestine, the Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Somalia.  Rwanda and Congo were different, they somehow fended for themselves; and went under-reported.[ix]

The conclusion will have to be that the general bias in news communication only partly tips the balance in favor of war journalism.  Peace journalism could also be very personal in reporting the dreams and daily work of the kin of people and organizations that end up getting peace prizes for work that changes the world (like the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for work against land mines, and Alternative Nobel Peace Prize for work against nuclear weapons).  But it is not negative enough, and very often done by less famous people.  Thus, when the Pugwash movement got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 it was referred to as “unknown”, obviously by people with war journalism mind-sets.       If the first order news factor is as filter for the flow of events: then the second, deeper, order would be to redefine the events to fit the frame so that the conflict can be reported. In a reinterpreted world dissonant events would go unreported:

• peace initiatives taken by common people in common countries: not even noticed, by definition unlikely and inconsequential.
• peace initiatives taken by elites in common countries: how can something positive come out of such people, they have to be of a Havel or Mandela magnitude to break the barrier,
• peace initiatives taken by common people in elite countries, such as NGOs: to some extent reported when in line with elites,
• war initiatives (like giving or selling arms, training locals for war) taken by elites in elite countries: not reported, by definition unlikely since these countries are so peaceful).

This theory of dissonance relative to the news filter generated construction of reality also explains the missing news mentioned above.  No theory of political bias, even control, is needed to explain this pattern of highly biased war reporting.

Or, put differently: news filter theory and political bias theory, steering be Freund/Feind-bilder,  would lead to the same media image of reality.  This may also be taken to mean that the news filter factors have grown out of political attitudes and behavior, or, more interestingly, that news images function as primary political socialization.  One might also settle for the trite formulation of “codependent origination”, interdependence.

Two hypotheses: for media to sell, or be read-heard-viewed,

1. the external frame has to be mind-set compatible;
2. the internal content is frame-compatible.

The second hypothesis is in Table 2: the frame decides the content to the point that the story is written in advance. The first hypothesis tries to anchor this in reader-listener-viewer psychology.  That people in general, the famous “masses” in the terrible expression “mass media”, should be more interested in persons than in structure and more in elite than the common sounds plausible.  But how about the negativism of media?

Standard argument: it sells.  But of course it sells: it may even contain a warning to oneself, watch out lest this could happen to me!  One car accident tells more than N,000 impeccable kilometers, if the damage is deep and broad.  Moreover, even better than gazing at elites in the sky is to watch them fall.

But that is no proof of disinterest in positive news, except if we assume that negative-positive is a dichotomy so that acceptance of one automatically implies rejection of the other.  If “negative” and “positive” both are seen as dimensions then we get four types of news: the negative, the positive, the ambivalent and the bland, neither one nor the other.  Maybe the interest is in the first three and not in the fourth, the bland?

At this point a gender difference may enter, with men more interested in the negative (eg., violence, and the male hunter-warrior has to be on guard) and women more in the positive (eg., romance, and the female gatherer-reproducer is stirred). Under the sway of patriarchy male tastes would prevail, and women would feel more alienated by the newscasts, “only bad news”.  This sounds plausible, but calls for empirical explorations.

That women should be more interested in peace news than in war news tallies well with the assumption of women as the better peace workers/peace carriers.  If women more than men believe in horizontal networking for the care of other humans then that is more similar to modern peace work by people, NGOs etc. than to the traditional male faith in vertical organizations like states for the glory of princes, their successors and principles.

But is it really true that men would be disinterested in the news offered by peace journalism?  The political left-right axis would play a role if we assume the political right to believe more in “right or wrong, my country” values.  But that would only exclude a limited fraction, and even they may be interested.  In short, the hypothesis is at best to be doubted, at worst simply false.  Moreover, if sports creates elites out of the winners, how about peace creating new type heroes?  Who is more admired, Rabin or Netanyahu, Mandela, Gandhi or Nehru?  As the examples indicate, they can come from non-big countries.

But peace journalism requires more work in space and time, political geography and history. Good journalists would love it, the mediocre would stay in a hotel picking up violence gossip. And after some time they would have their networks in the peace community, not only in the security/intelligence community.

3. Peace Journalism: Who Shall Do It?

Any journalist can do the Table 1 left hand column work, just as anyone can do the right hand column job.  Left hand column may require more psychological courage and the right hand column more physical courage, right now, but the differences are small.

One problem is the mind-set of the editors, like the proverbial night editor composing war journalism headlines for peace journalism content.  One answer is to start with schools of journalism, and the editors will in due time peter out.  But the owners will stay and may not like what is going on.

A more promising approach would probably combine intensive summer courses for the highly motivated with cooperation with media organizations (newspapers, radio stations, TV channels, news agencies) that themselves are motivated.  They see the handwriting on the wall and are in need of no persuasion. Courses organized for the whole staff would produce results quickly.  One successful media organization will have impact on others.  There will be more peace/conflict transformation news and less war/victory news.  A clever newspaper may even introduce a special weekly or fortnightly page on the “World Conflict Situation”: how are conflicts moving, if at all?  If they have finance and sports pages, written by specialists, why not also pages on something even more important?

One reason why all of this is going to succeed is the high number of peace prizes defining individuals and groups through their peace work in the same way as medals and decorations made heroes out of soldiers defining their war work.  The world is changing and so is the military, from war tasks to defense tasks and from defense tasks to peace tasks, all that in one century.

At this point a plug could be made for gender as a crucial dimension in answering the who question.  Most of the violence, well above 90%, in the world is done by men; the victims probably being more than 50% women.  This also applies to collective violence in the form of war. The vested interest for women to change the situation is obvious; just as there is a vested interest for males in preserving the status quo: wars offer opportunities to display courage and gaining honor, and also for upward social mobility.  This is perversely expressed in war reporters in bullet-proof vests portraying the cruelty of war by having the courage to b there, without compassion.

But there are also other reasons why women may be better at peace journalism, in no way saying that the burden of this civilizing mission should fall on women alone.  Peace is more holistic than war; women may be more sensitive to a broader range of variables than men (expressed in a tendency for women to use more adjectives?).  Peace is a complex process, not linear, demanding a style of reporting reflecting  multitudes of small dramas rather than one big dominant narrative.  War is more linear, toward “victory” for one side or a stalemate.  War may render itself better to male writing, linear, logical in the sense of letting conclusions flow from the premisses presented in the beginning of an article.  Female writing may be more circular, trying to keep in mind many more aspects than one overriding dramatic Leitmotif.  As matter of fact, the way journalism has developed (Table 2!) it may be custom-tailored to male rather than female styles.  And if males are more attracted to hardware and women to human beings, then we may be entitled to expect an explosion in peace reporting – from women.

4. Peace Journalism: How to Do It?

Essentially by doing what journalists do anyhow, keeping in mind a maximum number of items from the left hand column.  The eye for the essential, the devotion both to facts and to hope, the need to be a good writer, to work quickly and hence to be a good administrator of own time; all of that remains the same.

But new types of knowledge would be needed.  Examples:

As mentioned above, an indispensable beginning is to identify the conflict formation, the parties, their goals and the issues, and not fall into the trap of believing that the key actors are where the action (violence, war) is.  In medicine no physician would make the mistake of seeing a swollen ankle as an “ankle disease”, s/he would be on the watch for possible disturbances in the cardio-vascular system, and direct the attention to the heart. The problem is not necessarily where it shows up, that holds for the body as well as for the conflict, for a “race riot” and a case of mistreatment of children as well as for inter-nation and inter-state conflicts.  But to know where to look some knowledge is indispensable even if learning from more experienced colleagues also goes a far way.

So does negative learning from the past, exploring peace reporting in Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Gulf War, the Indochina Wars, World War II. What would peace reporting have looked like?

How can the drama of working for peace, the struggle to see the violence and the festering conflict as the problem, and from there to arrive at conflict transformation, be reported in such a way that it becomes exciting news?  How is excessive moralism avoided keeping in mind the basic point: reduce human suffering, increase human happiness?   Not easy.  But not impossible.

An example: reporting on peace proposals.  Somebody has come up with a plan: an intergovernmental organization, NGO, government, some other conflict party, an individual.  The task of the peace journalist is to identify such initiatives, give them voice, highlight positive points, stimulating dialogue, not signaling any agreement or disagreement, add the plan to the peace culture of the conflict provided it stands for peace by peaceful means. But the task is also to ask difficult questions, pointing out possible deficits.  Here is a short checklist aiming more at the plan than at the person or group behind it:

1. What was the method behind the plan? Dialogue with parties, and in that case with all the parties?  Some trial negotiation?  Analogy with other conflicts?  Intuition?
2. To what extent is the plan acceptable to all parties? If not, what can be done about it?
3. To what extent is the plan, if realized, self-sustainable? If not, what can be done about it?
4. Is the plan based on autonomous action by the conflict parties, or does it depend on outsiders?
5. To what extent is there a process in the plan, about who shall do what, how, when and where, or is it only outcome?
6. To what extent is the plan based on what only elites can do, what only people can do, or on what both can do?
7. Does the plan foresee an ongoing conflict resolution or is the idea a single-shot agreement?
8. Is peace/conflict transformation education for people, for elites or for both, built into the plan?
9. If there has been violence, to what extent does the plan contain elements of reconciliation?
10. If there has been violence, to what extent does the plan contain elements of rehabilitation/reconstruction?
11. If the plan doesn’t work, is the plan reversible?
12. Even if the plan does work for this conflict, does it create new conflicts or problems? Is it a good deal?

In other words: do not take peace & conflict work lightly!

5. Conclusion: When and Where?

Given the urgency the task is much overdue, but better late than never.  And, as conflict is a part of the human condition, and violence may be the outcome anywhere in the world when the parties see no way out, the place to start is everywhere.

Very soon this will lead to more advanced problems, like:

What would a code of peace journalism look like?  A war journalist is basically operating under the rules imposed by his military command, his work being guided by norms of patriotism.  To whom or what does the peace journalist owe his/her allegiance?  To “peace”?  Maybe too abstract.  To present and future victims of violence/war?  Better, but what does that mean?  How about keeping secrets?  Some peace operations, like military operations may depend on timing, and even if the long term goals, the what and why, are clear and out in the open, the who, how, when and where of a major nonviolent campaign may have to count on a surprise effect.

How could a monitoring process be initiated?  Peace journalism, like anything else, should be evaluated.  There are several levels, such as the quality of peace reporting (with prizes, of course), the quantity of peace reporting (what percentage of the media are carrying material of that kind), and the extent to which this reaches the reader/listener/viewer. The hypothesis that the public is disinterested could be tested and differentiated: who accept (women? young people? middle class?), who reject (men? middle aged? lower/upper class?).

For good peace work empathy, creativity and nonviolence are needed.  Exactly the same is required of the peace journalist. And that includes dialogues with war journalists.

Starting with the first two victims of a war, peace and truth, we then add the next two victims: people and solution.

Both categories are given content reading the Table  vertically.  And the position taken here is not that good reporting on conflict is some kind of compromise, a little from the left hand column, a little from the right.  The position taken is in favor of peace journalism, and against war journalism.  There is a challenge in the term “peace journalism” and that is entirely intended.  If a society sees a need for war reporting the way it is described here, then better leave it to the ministries of (dis)information, of defense (war), of foreign affairs, etc.  Do not corrupt the media by giving the task to them, having them take it on voluntarily, or forcing them into that kind of journalism like the Pentagon did in the Gulf war, following the English model from the Falkland/Malvinas war.[x]

As a normative model the Table clearly favors the left hand column.  But as a model descriptive of what actually happens in the world today some comments have to be added.  Most media are in-between.  When a war peaks, like in the Gulf and Yugoslavia, the war journalism column is clearly activated.  But before and after there are often some hesitant, amateurish moves into the left hand column, as against the professionalism, and courage! of the seasoned war correspondent doing his propaganda for war.

A note: we tend to focus on wars between states.  But what is said here also applies also to violence between other groups, to rape and wife battering, mistreatment of children, race and national strife, class conflict.  The violence is reported and the blame is usually fixed clearly on one side.  In fact, all the advice for peace journalism applies to all these cases.

The war focus in war journalism will polarize and escalate, calling for hatred and more violence to avenge and stop “them”.  This is in line with a neo-fascist theory of war termination: let them fight and kill each other till they get “ready for the table”.[xi]   The broader category is “peace enforcement”, peace by warlike means.  For some it matters that peace comes about “the old way”, forcing the other party to submit to one’s own will and superior force, saving own status in the world hierarchy, the status of the war machine, and the status of war itself as an institution (and war journalism as a form of journalism).  The old content may dress up in new clothes still for some time.

Peace journalism tries to depolarize by showing the black and white of all sides, and to de-escalate by highlighting peace and conflict resolution as much as violence.  How successful has to be seen. But changing the discourse within which something is thought, spoken of and acted upon is a very powerful approach.[xii]

Peace journalism stands for truth as opposed to propaganda and lies, “truthful journalism” being, as mentioned, one aspect of peace journalism. It is not “investigative journalism” in the sense of only uncovering lies on “our” side.  The truth aspect in peace journalism holds for all sides, just like exploration of the conflict formation and giving voice (glasnost’) to all.   Peace journalism is a “journalism of attachment” to all actual and potential victims; war journalism only attaches to “our” side.  The task is to report truthfully both war and peace, shaming the adage that “peace must be working, there is nothing in the media”.[xiii] The task of peace journalism is serious, professional reporting, making these processes more transparent. The task of peace advocacy is better left to peace workers.

NOTES:

[i].  An example would be the excellent Health (and Science) page in the International Herald Tribune.

[ii].  Lest the journalist reader comes up with facile remark that this is only theory constructed in some office permit me to add I worked three years part time as a journalist for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, 1960-62 and in 1965, producing a number of radio and TV programs.  I remember very well the thrill of interviewing the Dalai Lama, Fidel Castro etc., and how much more meaningful interviews with more common people were in understanding what went on.

[iii].  This is described very clearly by the leading specialist on war reporting, Philip Knightley.

[iv].  Anybody advocating anything like that might ask whether they themselves would be willing to be killed for the sake of the “table”.  In that case the faith in the “table” as peace instrument must be as high as the patriotism of yesteryear.

[v].  See Johan Galtung and Richard Vincent, U.S. GLASNOST’ Missing Political Themes in U.S. Media Discourse, Cresskill NJ: Hampton Press, forthcoming (with the publisher).  This is th basic theme of the whole book.

[vi].  A good example would be many years of disarmament and cooperation in reconstructing the country in Nicaragua.

[vii].  See Joe Camplisson and Michael Hall, Hidden Frontiers, Addressing Deep-rooted Violent Conflict in Northern Ireland and Moldova, Belfast: Island Publications, 1996.

[viii].  See Johan Galtung and Richard Vincent, Global Glasnost (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1992), chapter 2, summarizing research by the present author on news flows, first published in 1961.

[ix].  For an excellent article in depth, see Philip Gourevitch, “Letter from the Congo: Continental Shift”, The New Yorker, August 4 1997, pp. 42-55 and compare that with the frame-ridden news reporting.

[x].  This is described very clearly by the leading specialist on war reporting, Philip Knightley.

[xi].  Anybody advocating anything like that might ask whether they themselves would be willing to be killed for the sake of the “table”.  In that case the faith in the “table” as peace instrument must be as high as the patriotism of yesteryear.

[xii].  See Johan Galtung and Richard Vincent, U.S. GLASNOST’ Missing Political Themes in U.S. Media Discourse, Cresskill NJ: Hampton Press, forthcoming (with the publisher).  This is th basic theme of the whole book.

[xiii].  A good example would be many years of disarmament and cooperation in reconstructing the country in Nicaragua.

[xiv].  See Joe Camplisson and Michael Hall, Hidden Frontiers, Addressing Deep-rooted Violent Conflict in Northern Ireland and Moldova, Belfast: Island Publications, 1996.

[xv].  See Johan Galtung and Richard Vincent, Global Glasnost (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1992), chapter 2, summarizing research by the present author on news flows, first published in 1961.

[xvi].  For an excellent article in depth, see Philip Gourevitch, “Letter from the Congo: Continental Shift”, The New Yorker, August 4 1997, pp. 42-55 and compare that with the frame-ridden news reporting.

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Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. Prof. Galtung has published 1670 articles and book chapters, over 450 Editorials for TRANSCEND Media Service, and 167 books on peace and related issues, of which 41 have been translated into 35 languages, for a total of 135 book translations, including ‘50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,’ published by the TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 2 Jan 2017.

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