A Palestinian chicken farmer sits near the ruins of his farm in the northern Gaza Strip. When Israeli army tanks and bulldozers destroyed a Palestinian border police post, they killed his 5,000 chickens, too. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
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Taking a Step toward Promoting Peace
By Danielly Menezes
Like the average American, I have turned to TV news, magazines, and newspapers to obtain information that allows me to keep up with the ongoing events around the world. However, as I take the time to digest the information I am constantly receiving, it becomes obvious that often the media are not used to promote peace.
Jake Lynch: A Voice for Peace
By Emma McGraw
Jake Lynch believes the media should report war in ways that enhance the chance for peace. Starting out as a BBC journalist, Lynch began to pay attention to the coverage of Operation Desert Storm and noticed a concerning trend in the gap between how the conflict was being covered and what was really happening. As a result, he co-founded the Peace Journalism movement with Annabel Goldrick to improve the ways in which journalists write about conflict. After campaigning and writing books about the movement, he now runs the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in Sydney, Australia and continues advocating for peace in journalism.
With the ability to reach millions of people at a single moment, the media have the power to endorse certain ways of seeing the world. More often than not, the media convey sets of negative images, impressions, and stereotypes that influences the way we see and act towards foreign countries and cultures. For example, a recent New York Times article describes the current situation in Gaza by using a headline stating that “Palestinian Rival Says It Is Attacked by Hamas.” Although such statement may contain some truth, this headline conveys nothing but violence and even makes the opinion or claim of one person seem like an established fact while portraying the conflict as consisting of only two parties contesting one goal.
Instead of concealing the other side of the story and ignoring signs of peace initiatives, journalists could use ‘peace journalism’ methods of reporting to present a story without encouraging war. The peace journalism approach provides a new road map tracing the connections between journalists, their sources, the stories they cover and the consequences of their reporting. By providing multiple points of view to a story, finding ways of reporting on the invisible effects and looking at how shared problems and issues are leading to certain consequences, journalists can help promote conflict resolutions and the possibility for peacemaking. Overall, journalists have the opportunity to influence the audience’s perspective of ‘others’ in a positive way while endorsing the hope for a less violent tomorrow.