High Road, Low Road

Imagine a blackout on everything we associate with medical practice, never to be reported in the media. Disease, however, is 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 or stress. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. It is like a 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, is the victor.

That kind of journalism would be disease-oriented, and the journalist could refer to himself as a 'disease journalist' or 'disease correspondent'. He would be firmly rooted in the tradition of midwifing negative events affecting elites into news. His concern would not be to highlight how diseases might be overcome, except by means as violent as the disease itself (e.g. 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 that fatalistic tradition. There is also a clear tradition of health journalism (the Health and Science page in the International Herald Tribune, for instance). But there is not yet a corresponding tradition of 'peace journalism', whereas 'war and violence journalism' seem to be in good standing.^/1/ Exactly what lies behind the concept of 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 even confuse the two, talking about 'conflict' when they mean 'violence'.

The low road, dominant in the media, sees a conflict as a battle, as a sports arena or gladiator circus. The parties, usually reduced to two, are combatants in a struggle to impose their goals. The reporting model is that of a military command: who advances, who capitulates short of their goals; losses are counted in terms of numbers killed or wounded and material damage. The zero-sum perspective draws upon sports reporting where "winning is not everything, it is the only thing." The same perspective is applied to negotiations as verbal battles: who outsmarts the other, 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, a challenge such as 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, transforming the conflict creatively so that the opportunities take the upper hand - without violence.

There is no argument that violence should not be reported. But the first victim in a war is not truth - truth is only the second victim. The first victim is, of course, peace. Good reporting - low- or high-road - should obviously be truthful. 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 paper/ station/ channel, the low road invites untruthfulness, as witnessed in the Gulf, Somalian and Bosnian wars.

Here is a short list of key questions for peace correspondents, to guide their reportage:

1. What is the conflict about? Who are the parties and what are their real goals, including the parties beyond the immediate arena of violence?
2. What are the deeper roots of the conflict, structural and cultural, including the history of both?
3. What visions exist about outcomes other than one party imposing itself on the other - what particularly creative, new ideas? Can such ideas be sufficiently powerful to prevent violence?
4. If violence occurs, what about invisible effects such as trauma and hatred, and the desires for revenge and more glory?
5. Who is working to prevent violence, what are their visions of conflict outcomes, their methods and how can they be supported?
6. Who is initiating genuine reconstruction, reconciliation and resolution, and who is only reaping benefits like reconstruction contracts?

With more reporting of this kind, the conflict in and over Northern Ireland would have entered a more peaceful phase long ago. Focus on IRA/RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) violence only hid the conflict and nourished more violence. Focus on nonviolent outcomes, empathy with all parties and creativity is more likely to bring peace. The table opposite is an effort to fill both concepts with operational content ^/2/:

Good reporting on conflict is not a compromise, a little from the left-hand column, a little from the right. Rather, it favours peace journalism and opposes war journalism. If a society sees a need for war reporting, better leave it to the ministries of (dis)information, defence (war) or foreign affairs. Do not corrupt the media by giving the task to them, by either having them take it on voluntarily or by forcing them into the kind of journalism which the Pentagon did in the Gulf War, where the military literally called the shots.^/3/

We tend to focus on wars between states, but the advice for peace journalism applies also to violence between other groups - to rape and wife battering, mistreatment of children, racial or class conflict - where violence is reported and blame usually fixed on one side.

The war focus in war journalism will polarise and escalate, calling for hatred and more violence to avenge and stop 'them', in line with a neo-fascist theory of war termination: let them fight and kill each other till they get 'ready for the negotiating table'.^/4/ The broader category is 'peace enforcement' - peace by warlike means.

Peace journalism tries to depolarise 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 it can be remains to be seen. But changing the discourse within which something is conceived, spoken of and acted upon is a powerful approach.^/5/ Peace journalism stands for truth as opposed to propaganda and lies, but is not 'investigative journalism' in the sense of uncovering lies only on 'our' side. Truth 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 attaches only 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'.^/6/ The task of peace journalism is serious, professional reporting, making these processes more transparent. The task of peace advocacy is better left to peaceworkers.

Peace journalism does essentially what journalists do anyway, 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; the need to work quickly and hence to be a good administrator of one's own time - all of that remains the same.

But new types of knowledge would be needed, such as identifying the conflict formation, the parties, their goals and the issues, without falling 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 the heart. The problem is not necessarily where it shows up; that holds for the body as well as the conflict, for a 'race riot' and a case of mistreatment of children as well as for inter-nation and inter-state conflicts. To know where to look requires practice, learning from more experienced colleagues and from the past. What would peace reporting in earlier wars 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 comes up with a peace plan: an intergovernmental organisation, 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, stimulate dialogue, refrain from signaling any agreement or disagreement and 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 aimed more at the plan than at the person or group behind it:

Covering peace proposals

1. What was the method behind the plan? Dialogue with parties and, in that case, with all the parties? 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 realised, 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 what both can do?
7. Does the plan foresee an ongoing conflict-resolution process or 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?

How could a monitoring process be initiated? Peace journalism, like anything else, should be evaluated, including quality (with prizes, of course), quantity (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 accepts it (e.g. women/young people/the middle class?); who rejects it (e.g. men/the middle-aged/the lower or upper class?).

For good peace work empathy, creativity and nonviolence are needed. Exactly the same is required of the peace journalist - and that includes dialogue with war journalists.^/7/

Johan Galtung is Professor of Peace Studies at Granada, Ritsumeikan, Tromsoe, and Witten/Herdecke Universities and Director of TRANSCEND, a global peace and development network. He adapted this article from a chapter in his forthcoming book, A Theory of Peace: Overcoming Direct Violence.

NOTES

1. To explore this analogy consider the typical finding from a UCLA study about TV violence as reported in the Washington Post, February 6, 1996, "Study Finds Real Harm in TV Violence":
   • "Perpetrators of violent acts on TV go unpunished 73% of the time"; "when violence is presented without punishment, viewers are more likely to learn the lesson that violence is successful."
   • Most violent portrayals fail to show the consequences of a violent act: "no harm to the victims" (47%); "no pain" (58%).
   • Few programs (only 4%) emphasise nonviolent alternatives to solving problems. Translated into illness/health reporting this means:
   • nothing is done about a disease 73% of the time;
   • disease does no harm (47%), leaves no pain (58%);
   • there is no alternative to disease, such as prevention (96%).
   Centuries ago this was an adequate description of attitudes to illness/health: little was done, disease was bad luck. That has fortunately changed, but violence in the media has continued unabated; see Thomas E. Radecki, "Violent Behavior Images Diet of Media Violence," Social Alternatives, May 1987, pp. 8-21
   (back to text).
2. Lest the reader think that this is only arm-chair theorising from some university, permit me to add that 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 programmes. I remember very well the thrill of interviewing persons such as the Dalai Lama and Fidel Castro, but how much more meaningful interviews with more 'common' people were in understanding what was going on. (back to text).
3. This is described very clearly by the leading specialist on war reporting, Philip Knightley, in his The First Casualty, New York, London: Harcourt Brace, 1975 ('truth' is his first casualty). Also see Mira Behan's excellent Kriegstrommeln: Medien, Krieg und Politik, Muenchen, DTV, 1996, on the war reporting from Yugoslavia. In that case the role of the public relations agencies (particularly Hill & Knowlton and Ruder Finn) seems to have been so massive, and filters to sort out PR virtual reality from real reality so few, that it is difficult to assess the situation without knowing what the PR firms transmitted. For an earlier period, Reporting World War II, American Journalism, Parts I (1938-1944), II (1944-1946), Library of America, 1995 is an excellent source. War is described as "organised insanity," as "madness"; attacks are not "surgical"; civilians are not "collaterals" (that kind of sanitised Newspeak is the predicament of our generation). Still, the focus is on war, not peace. (back to text).
4. Anybody advocating anything like that might ask whether they themselves would be willing to be killed, sacrificed for the sake of somebody getting to the 'table', some kind of altar. In that case the faith in the 'table' as peace instrument must be as high as the patriotism of yesteryear. (back to text).
5. See Johan Galtung and Richard Vincent, U.S. Glasnost': Missing Political Themes in U.S. Media Discourse, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press (forthcoming March 1999). (back to text).
6. A good example would be many years of disarmament and cooperation in reconstructing Nicaragua, by the Centro de Estudios Sociales, (Apartado 1747, Managua, Nicaragua). (back to text).
7. Many, reporting war or peace or both, are "Journalists Who Risk Death," International Herald Tribune, August 5, 1997, by Anthony Lewis: "In the last 10 years, 173 Latin American reporters, photographers, columnists and editors have been murdered. . . They were just doing their ordinary job: trying to publish the truth." Risk should unite all kinds of journalists. For an excellent introduction for any kind of journalist to the intricacies of conflict, see Richard E. Rubenstein et al., Frameworks for Interpreting Conflict: A Handbook for Journalists, Fairfax: Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, 1994. The present author's Peace By Peaceful Means, London, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 1996, Part II is about conflict analysis and resolution. For the reality of war reporting, see Wilhelm Kempf, Gulf War Revisited: A Comparative Study of the Gulf War Coverage in American and European Media, Konstanz: Projektgruppe Friedensforschung, September 1996, and by the same author, Media Coverage of Third-Party Initiatives - A Case of Peace Journalism? Projektgruppe Friedensforschung, Conference on Peace Journalism, Konstanz, June 13-15, 1997. From that same conference, also see the excellent paper by Heikki Luostarnen and Rune Ottosen, "Challenges for Journalism in Restricted Conflicts After the Second World War," also with a checklist of what to look out for. (back to text)

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