17 Aug 2024 Media Development 2024-3 Editorial

“Media can provide vital information to people in humanitarian emergencies. It can also do much more to help people cope during emergencies, such as provide psychosocial support, connect people with others, prompt discussion, and motivate people to take actions to improve their lives,” says BBC Media Action.

The same source also claims that, “Media broadcasts are particularly effective at improving people’s psychosocial wellbeing during humanitarian emergencies. They helped people feel more hopeful, largely from feeling connected with others. They helped people realise that they were not alone and that people who could help knew about their situation and needs.”

Reception of mainstream news reporting has suffered from perceived bias, spin, and hidden agendas. Research in 2017 indicated that a significant proportion of the public felt that powerful people use the media to push their own political or economic interests. Such views were most strongly held by those who are young and by those that earn the least.

Since then, with the increasing dominance of social media platforms worldwide and government control of the media in countries like China, Hungary, Iran, Myanmar, and Russia, genuinely independent journalism has struggled to maintain people’s trust even with the assistance of fact-checking and trust-pilots.

In conflict situations, peace journalism and citizen journalism were once strongly advocated as alternatives to traditional mainstream news reporting. “Peace journalism is when editors and reporters make choices – of what stories to report and about how to report them – that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict.”¹

American journalist and freedom of expression advocate Courtney C. Radsch, in her doctoral dissertation (p. 159), defined citizen journalism as “An alternative and activist form of newsgathering and reporting that leverages networked social media and functions outside but in relation to mainstream media institutions, often as a response to shortcomings in the professional journalistic field, and which tends to be driven by different objectives and ideals and rely on alternative sources of legitimacy than mainstream journalism.”

Both concepts find an echo in constructive journalism, the most recent manifestation of another way to conceive more balanced and useful journalistic practices: “Constructive journalism is a response to increasing sensationalism and negativity bias of the news media today. Its main mission is to reinstall trust in the idea that shared facts, shared knowledge and shared discussions are the pillars on which our communities balance – and it centers the democratic function of journalism as a feedback mechanism that helps society self-correct.”²

In many ways, constructive journalism takes reporting back to independent journalism’s core values, which require it to be balanced, fair, and non-sensational. Constructive journalism also promotes democratic conversation by fostering civil discourse. The aim is not to aggravate problems, spark conflict, or take a stance on divisive issues, but to facilitate critical debate about possible solutions so that the issue can be moved forward.

In the context of “Communication in Conflict Situations”, constructive journalism works both to engender greater understanding by those on the outside of the situation, as well as greater trust by those on the inside. With the aim of reducing tensions, paving the way for dialogue, seeking solutions that are equitable and practicable, journalists can play a crucial role in advancing alternative solutions.

But there are obstacles. As Peter Prove notes in his article in this issue of Media Development, “[T]he threats to reporting, exchange of information and ultimately to the truth in the context of the proliferating conflicts around the world are not limited to the physical violence faced by journalists in war zones. The repression of independent journalism by legal action and imprisonment is rising rapidly.”

Reporters Without Borders draws international attention to the fact that attacks on press freedom around the world – including the detention of journalists, suppression of independent media outlets and widespread dissemination of misinformation – are intensifying. And, highlighting the grave situation facing reporters on the ground, a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) notes that more than three-quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2023 died in the Israel-Hamas war.

Despite these grim statistics, as Rousbeh Legatis urges in the Deutsche Welle interview reprinted in this issue, “There are therefore multiple opportunities for the media to play a constructive role in conflict transformation. Through their work, the media can strengthen dialogue processes by introducing and anchoring important issues in national and local discourses. They can help to break up stereotypes of victims and perpetrators and build up the public’s knowledge about political decisions relating to peace deals and the like, thus making potential transformation processes more participatory.”

Constructive communication both within and without conflict situations is vital to truth-telling, building trust, and helping resolve difficult and seemingly intractable challenges to sustainable peace.

Notes

1. Lynch, Jake and Annabel McGoldrick (2005). Peace Journalism. UK: Hawthorn Press, p. 5.

2. https://constructiveinstitute.org/why/