Peace Journalism

Overview

“Peace journalism” is a form of reporting in response to increasingly violent reports and newscasts. Peace journalists celebrate and promote actions of peace and seek to reverse or help to correct the harms that they see as being done to society by the continual display of violent images in the mass media. For some scholars, peace journalism is a very broad field, and they have pressed for it to be broken into smaller arenas that address conflict, globalization, and the environment. Other scholars argue that it is difficult or unnecessary to break the field into these subsets and that it is enough to focus on the peaceful aspects of the stories they are reporting. Peace journalism is often spoken of in contrast to war journalism. Peace journalists at times argue that coverage of wars and conflicts perpetuates more wars and conflicts (Lynch, 2014). They instead suggest that journalists need to pay attention to ethical moorings, or foundational ethics such as human rights, that are common across many cultures. They also stress that journalists need to pay particular attention to their audiences and become audience oriented. Audience orientation is not a prescription for individual stories of a specific type, but an ethics of caring that pays attention to the ways that audiences are affected by, and respond to, the media.

While the mass media frequently includes a few articles or short clips of peace journalism, it is violence and conflict that hold viewers’ attention and that sell the most advertisements. As a result, some peace journalists have decided to create their own media platforms, which are designed and filtered to ensure that peaceful content is featured. Some media scholars suggest that this type of journalism will never take hold, or will not appeal to a large enough segment of the public to be profitable. However, scholars such as Pollock (2015) have demonstrated the ways that mass media corporations have adapted their reporting techniques to encourage more peaceful perspectives. Studying the demographics of readers and their attention to human conflict and drama, Pollock found that readers were engaged in human rights reporting in unexpected ways. Previous works had suggested that Western readers would only engage in human rights reports that framed victims of rights violations as being unknowable or living in exotic, far away locations. Yet, Pollock’s analysis of international conflicts, and American readers reception of those reports, shows that readers are much more engaged in the human dynamics than previously expected. This opens space for potential peace journalism on a large scale.

The foundation for peace journalism in the United States can be found in the nineteenth century, when members of utopian communities worked to provide their own media, which celebrated acts of peace and the attempts of individuals to support and promote peaceful alternatives to conflicts (Olasky, 2015). Religious groups also have a long history of backing peace journalism either through providing a location for their publications or by providing training or other structural support for their work. For example, Buddhists have worked historically and in contemporary settings to support peace journalism, or what Gunaratne et al. (2015) term “mindful journalism.” Other examples are found in many religious traditions that encourage peace and non-violent conflict resolution. These publications are sometimes designed to convey religious messages, while others maintain a secular focus on covering international news.

Even the most committed peace journalists agree that there needs to be some reporting of conflict. However, they are very specific about the ways that they think this engagement should occur. Acknowledging the reality that violence occurs, peace journalists advocate “constructive reporting.” In constructive reporting, reporters use problem/solution structures to provide information about the news. This means that they not only report on a conflict, but also on the actions that are already underway to alleviate the situation. In a study of how children receive and respond to the news, Kleemans, de Leeuw, Gerritsen and Buizen (2017) was able to prove that children respond much better to constructive reporting than to purely negative news. The researchers suggest that this difference in responses signals the ways that reporters can report on conflict without doing harm to their audience through the production and encouragement of stress or panic.

Another method of engaging in peace journalism is through the use of restorative narratives—that is, detailed stories about individuals who have faced conflict, battled through a problem, and come out of that situation in good spirits and with a chance to continue living a meaningful life. Restorative narratives can include audio or visual components and can be tailored to fit many different audiences. The critical component to consider when creating this type of media is that conflicts are still included in the discussion. The radical difference is in the attention given to the conflict. Rather than placing the conflict at the center of the story, the journalist gives enough details so that the audience knows what the conflict is about. The journalist turns the audience members’ attention to the ways that the individual or group has overcome the conflict and persevered. Dahmen (2016) describes how this process can work for visual journalism and argues that professional photojournalists should engage in visual restorative journalism as a way to ensure that their work is used to tell complex stories. By capturing and incorporating complex images, visual restorative journalism is one way in which journalists can portray complex events to the audience, rather than simply providing a highlight or quick singular image to accompany a breaking news story that reports on a new form of violence or societal problem.

Further Insights

One of the largest instances of successful peace journalism occurred with the rebuilding of Rwanda after the genocide. In events occurring between April 7 and July 15, 1994 an estimated 500,000 to 1 million Tutsi, almost 70% of the Tutsi living in Rwanda, were killed by the dominant Hutu ethnic group. These killings occurred in cities and villages, often by neighbors killing their neighbors using machetes. The events began soon after a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down as it approached Kigali, the capital of Rwanda on April 6, 1994. Within hours the first Tutsi were killed.

The Rwandan genocide was aggravated and discussed on mass media, and many communications scholars have argued that the encouragement to engage in violence broadcast on the radio had a significant effect on escalating the violence. Yanagizawa-Drott (2014) found that the most violent acts all occurred within range of one radio station, which repeatedly called for citizens to participate in the violence. These radio reports are an example of war journalism that perpetuates itself and encourages more violence. The radio stations that were announcing violence in Rwanda frequently used the argument that the violence had already begun, was expected, and would naturally continue. No attempts at discussing peace were provided, and those participating in the violence were encouraged by this new “normal” state of violence. Peace journalism responds to this by attempting to calm violence and help media consumers focus on positive aspects of their community and lives. Since the violence ended, peace journalism has been encouraged in Rwanda.

McIntyre and Sobel (2018) argue that peace journalism in Rwanda has encouraged community members to focus on the positive changes they have made and the ways they have ensured that a genocide will not occur again. They found that after the genocide, Rwandan journalists began ascribing importance to this form of journalism in ways that they had not previously paid attention to. The evidence of this attention is found in daily news reports, as well as in educational materials that seek to prevent future violence. One of the largest problems after the conflict was how to contend with the fact that so many citizens participated in the genocide. It was not possible to jail all of the offenders, nor for a long time could they even be taken to court. Yet, children still needed to go to school, and social services needed to be restored. The problem for policy makers was how to establish peace among the people, given the circumstances, and how to teach or explain these appalling acts to children. Through peace journalism, texts were created that did discuss the violence, but did so in a way that was mindful of both the audience and the hope that the country would again return to peace. These reports included information about the genocide, and often images of skeletons of those who were killed during the genocide. Yet, they also discussed the lessons learned from the genocide. Consideration was given to the ways in which journalists could help to encourage hope, healing, and community.

Similar efforts have been made around the world in an attempt to convey difficult aspects of history to children in a way that both informs the child of historic violence and gives them hope for the future. From the Holocaust, to the internment of indigenous children in boarding schools, to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, there are many contemporary and historic topics which journalists need to cover. Peace journalism provides a method to ensure that this coverage is provided in the most humane way. At the center of this writing is the desire that the audiences, particularly children who are most sensitive to depictions of violence, are not harmed by the narratives and images included in journalistic accounts and investigations.

Issues

Because peace journalism has been an effective way to rethink wars and conflicts throughout the world, some scholars have asked if peace journalism might also be able to contribute to climate change coverage. These scholars are concerned with the ways that climate change coverage frequently presents worst-case scenarios and highlights natural disasters as illustrative of impending planetary catastrophe. In response to these reports, some audience members feel paralyzed, thinking that there is nothing they can do to change the course of climate change, and experience feelings of helplessness, worry, or panic. The more cynically minded might reason that because the climate is already destroyed, there is no harm in making it slightly worse through continuing pollution or other destructive behaviors. These reactions are similar to those of audiences reading about a war that seems to have no end in sight.

Peace journalists and communications scholars suggest that there might be a better way to report on climatic disasters seen around the world while also encouraging meaningful behavior changes that might lessen the effects of climate change. For example, Hackett (2017) argues that the hallmarks of peace journalism such as ethical moorings and audience orientation could have a radical effect on the ways that reporters approach and respond to climate change stories. One successful example of this type of journalism was examined by Nash (2015), who argues that photojournalists have played a key role in advancing debates about and knowledge of climatic change. Nash’s work focuses on the effects of climate change in the Pacific Ocean, a region that is interesting to many readers but very hard to reach. Focusing on journalistic coverage of the environment that was produced before the Copenhagen summit in 2009, Nash shows how photojournalists were able to create an engaging debate using their images of radical changes to the environment. For example, photojournalists showed rich coral beds that were once red but had been bleached to white due to changes in the ocean’s chemistry. Through these images and accompanying stories, photojournalists were able to draw new attention to climate change and to help interested audience members think about complex changes through a few simple and compelling images. Through the publication of these images and stories, photojournalists were able to radically advance discussion regarding climate change. Nash further argues that the work of these photographers indicate that photojournalism needs to be acknowledged as having a much more important and impactful place in the ways that information is reported to the public and studied by academics.

Bibliography

Dahmen, N. S. (2016). Images of resilience: The case for visual restorative narrative. Visual Communication Quarterly, 23(2), 93–107.

Gunaratne, S. A., Pearson, M., & Senarath, S. (Eds.). (2015). Mindful journalism and news ethics in the digital era: A Buddhist approach. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Hackett, R. A. (2017). Can peace journalism be transposed to climate crisis news? Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa, 23(1), 14–24. Retrieved December 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database TOC Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tnh&AN=124245740&site=ehost-live

Kleemans, M., de Leeuw, R. N., Gerritsen, J., & Buijzen, M. (2017). Children’s responses to negative news: The effects of constructive reporting in newspaper stories for children. Journal of Communication, 67(5), 781–802. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=125929454&site=ehost-live

Lynch, J. (2014). Peace journalism. Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press.

McIntyre, K., & Sobel, M. (2018). Reconstructing Rwanda: How Rwandan reporters use constructive journalism to promote peace. Journalism Studies, 19(14), 2126–2147. Retrieved December 23, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=132160123&site=ehost-live

Ndhlovu, L. (2021, Nov. 19). The importance of peace journalism and how to go about it. International Journalists' Network. ijnet.org/en/story/importance-peace-journalism-and-how-go-about-it

Nash, C. (2015). Atolls in the ocean-canaries in the mine?: Australian journalism contesting climate change impacts in the Pacific. Pacific Journalism Review, 21(1), 79.

Olasky, M. N. (2015). Central ideas in the development of American journalism: A narrative history. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Pollock, J. C. (2017). Journalism and human rights: How demographics drive media coverage. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Rafeeq, A. (2023, Sept. 23). Examining the role of peace journalism in news coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict: A study of Gulf News and Khaleej Times. Cognitive Social Sciences, 9(2), doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2023.2260609

Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2014). Propaganda and conflict: Evidence from the Rwandan genocide. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1947–1994. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=101035899&site=ehost-live