"Role Plays"

Our century has been characterised by organised group violence on an extraordinary scale. The figures are slippery, but it is safe to say that the human race has seen fit to engage in something like 250 significant armed conflicts in the course of this century, during which over 110 million people have been killed, and many times that number wounded, crippled and mutilated.

The scale of this slaughter is something new in human history. A mere 19 million people died in the 211 major conflicts of the 19th century, and 7 million in the 18th, marked by a paltry 55 significant wars. In fact, there have arguably been as many casualties from mass violence in our century as in the rest of human history combined. We have become so used to these numbers and the human suffering they represent that it is easy to forget how much more social violence we live with than did our ancestors, and how much more deadly it has become. Mass violence on a previously unimaginable scale has become universalised, industrialised and routinised. By now there are 233 politically active communal groups in 93 countries, representing fully one-sixth of humanity, at present engaged in political or military struggles from which more than 20 million refugees are currently in flight.

According to Ted Robert Gurr, who has done among the most ambitious data gathering, every form of ethno-political conflict has increased dramatically since the 1950s: violent communal protests and open rebellion are both four times as prevalent as they were a half-century ago. Social violence, in other words, is now more likely to occur than at any other time in human history, and to be more devastating in its consequences when it does so.

With this in mind, and for realpolitik, humanitarian and moral reasons, it has become necessary to ask what more can be done in the common interest to reduce and prevent such conflict and the suffering that attends it.

Few would disagree with the importance of this general proposition. But when the issue is raised with specific communities, constituencies or professions this unexceptionable proposition not infrequently encounters reservations. Different institutional actors understand their own potential very differently and vary greatly in their willingness to explore how they could contribute to preventing deadly conflict.

This is very much the case with 'the media', a rubric covering institutions and individuals pursuing dramatically different purposes, under a wide variety of technological, political and social conditions, within markedly divergent cultural worlds. The potential to prevent or help terminate conflict varies greatly across this media universe, as does the willingness to investigate what this potential might be. Nevertheless, it is of critical importance that the international community explore the potential of the media to prevent conflict - precisely because, taken together, the diverse mass media technologies, institutions, professionals, norms and practices constitute one of the most powerful forces now shaping the lives of individuals and the fate of peoples and nations. To be sure, media influence is not evenly distributed in space or time and varies with circumstance. But, overall, media influence is increasingly significant. The media constitute a major human resource whose potential to help prevent and moderate social violence begs to be discussed, evaluated and, where appropriate, mobilised.

It is important to recognise that in asking what the media's preventive potential might be, much more than journalism must be on the table. In speaking about 'the media' we have in mind any and all mass media forms distributed to mass audiences by any technology whatsoever. With this in mind, we believe that the international community needs to understand and fully develop the potential of popular music, journalism, soap operas, advertising and public relations, TV and radio dramas and comedies, interactive video dialogues, talk-shows and call-in shows, social marketing, wall posters, matchbooks and the World Wide Web, among other mass media forms and formats. A focus on media content must be supplemented by the development of initiatives designed to explore the institutional dimension of the media by addressing professional codes and guidelines, government and multilateral policies, the interests of media personnel or the economic stakes of their employers and the potential of training programmes, as well as journalist and management exchanges.

With this in mind, the Media & Conflict Program of New York University's Center for War, Peace and the News Media is working to develop a comprehensive media strategy for helping to prevent, manage and resolve ethno-national, religious, racial and other forms of sub-state and international conflict. This Program will engage professionals from advertising, social marketing, public relations and television and radio entertainment programming, among many other fields. Professions such as these offer no prima facie ideological or professional taboos against the kind of media-based preventive activities that we believe the spectre of mass violence necessitates. Indeed, professionals in many such fields have long been associated with efforts to alter social or political behaviour, either through industry associations (the Ad Council in the U.S. sponsors a wide variety of 'public interest' campaigns) or the efforts of professional groups that have been formed to mobilise the intervention potential of soap operas, talk-shows and film (all of which have been the focus of NGO-initiated efforts to disseminate messages on issues such as family planning and teenage drug use).

Having said this, it nevertheless must be admitted that in a number of countries, no single issue has so bedeviled the discussion of 'media & conflict' as the deeply held belief on the part of many journalists that the very idea of media-based preventive action violates the norm of objectivity - whose corollary, disinterestedness with respect to the events being reported, is an essential element of the professional creed.

There are more or less sophisticated variants of this creed, and 'nonpartisanship' or 'fairness' is sometimes substituted for 'objectivity' as the desirable norm. But whenever in recent years events such as the war in Bosnia or the genocidal violence in Rwanda have provoked discussions concerning the role of the media, the conversation-stopper has been the passionate assertion by senior correspondents that such concerns lie beyond the pale of legitimate journalism.

Because this issue so frequently becomes the fulcrum of debate for 'media & conflict' issues in journalism settings, I would like to offer a number of propositions that may help to structure the dialogic process on this subject. In summary form, the following stipulations constitute an attempt to come to terms with 'objectivity', current journalistic paradigms and the prospect of transcending them in the interest of preventing genocide and other forms of deadly conflict:

• It is important to stipulate that objectivity and related norms are fundamental core values in many journalism systems, and that these norms are believed to be inviolable because they are essential to the profession's commitment to discovering and reporting the truth.
• Objectivity is, at the same time, an unobtainable ideal, as both philosophies of science and the postmodern emphasis on the genesis of narratives have made clear. A growing body of evidence points to the fact that there is an irreducible contingency in all accounts of the world (journalism's included) that belies the claim that they can, in fact, report 'the truth'.
• Objectivity is therefore both necessary and impossible. It is a 'vital illusion' - and perhaps even a tragic one. Objectivity is unobtainable, but the effort to achieve it is much of what gives the practice of journalism its social utility and undoubted nobility.
• Despite this nobility, objective journalism may be faulted on the grounds that its epistemological strength as a truth-seeking technique is also the source of a fundamental moral weakness. For it is an article of faith for those who practice objectivity that they can neither intervene in events they are covering nor take responsibility for the consequences of their decision to abstain from doing so. Critics of this point of view make the case that the professional norms of journalism do not trump fundamental human moral obligations. To my knowledge, this argument has not been successfully refuted.
• Debates about 'media & conflict' most often proceed without recognising that much of the world does not practice objectivity-based journalism, nor does it necessarily aspire to do so. While the rejection of objectivity in the name of 'The New World Information Order' or 'development journalism' has often in the past been a smokescreen for rationalising state control, it is nevertheless true that other forms of journalism possess excellent pedigrees and histories of accomplishment. Traditions of literary journalism, which emphasise a strong personal voice, or traditions of engagement, which express belief in the importance of defending the values and ambitions of communities (or even particular political parties or points of view), render the ideal of objectivity often irrelevant or undesirable to journalists operating within other cultures and media systems.
• Such journalists may have a point - or, again, they may not. We don't really know, inasmuch as the journalism profession as a whole has yet to carefully examine the nature of the epistemological foundations of its craft. To do so would be to ask whether objectivity-based journalism is an invention with universal validity, or whether it is a particularistic accomplishment which merely answers to the needs of particular societies or historical moments.
• Having raised this question, however, it must also be stipulated that no matter how particularistic such journalism might be determined to be, under no circumstances is propaganda a valid alternative to objective journalism, no matter how such propaganda may be rationalised.
• Further, in order to examine this question intelligently, we need to keep in mind at least the following two points when it comes to truth and journalism:
  1. Human beings have a great need to understand the truth of things. (It could even be argued that we actually do not appreciate the full extent of what might be called our 'species-need' for the truth.) To put it another way: Truth has survival value for individuals, economies and polities. (Liberal economic theory recognises this fact when it privileges 'information' as the sine qua non of free markets, for example.) Whatever its failures and illusions, objectivity-based journalism has proven to be an effective technique for seeking our species-truth.
  2. However, objectivity may be only that: a particular technique. In fact, objective journalism, which we often represent to ourselves as an enduring value at least as ancient as the 'ancient hatreds' that journalists often write about, is only a half-century old. Whatever value objectivity may have as a means of acting on our universal need for truth, it may be only a particular, time- and culture-bound solution to this species-wide compulsion.
• This should serve to remind us of the obvious point that journalism is a specific social practice that has a history, and that this history is one of unending social invention. Consider that only 100 years ago the interview - which today we would consider the primordial journalistic act - was regarded as an unacceptable invasion of privacy, a mindless waste of good reportorial energy and, by Europeans, a particularly American outrage. What is more, such taken-for-granted journalistic staples as the sports page, science journalism, op-eds, investigative reporting and business journalism are all recent journalistic inventions that answered to the needs of a particular moment. In other words, in discussing 'media & conflict' issues, it is important not to fall prey to an ahistorical essentialism that presumes that today's form of journalism is, or ought to be, tomorrow's.
• Contemporary journalism is in flux. The intensity of the debates over issues such as multiculturalism and public, civic and community journalism signal us that the future of the profession is very much up for grabs. Journalists like Christiane Amanpour are notorious for having spurned objectivity in the interest of humanitarian engagement, and even Ted Koppel has donned the mantle of a conflict resolver more than once on ABC News's "Nightline". The ABC "Evening News" now regularly airs a segment called "Solutions," inconceivable not long ago. The signs of ferment are all around us.
• In the final analysis, objectivity - and indeed journalism itself - is only one of the media tools available to local actors and the international community for conflict resolution purposes. There is ample evidence that objective, fair, accurate and timely journalism is an effective way to help prevent or manage conflicts. But at the same time there are a wide variety of media-based strategies that have nothing whatsoever to do with journalism that may be strikingly effective in their turn. We need to recognise that in intervening in a country in conflict, we need what advertising people call a 'good media mix' in which journalism is but one of the constituent ingredients.

But even as we consider what more might be done at the operational level, it is also incumbent upon us to work on the paradigmatic level. By doing so, we free ourselves of the fetters imposed by journalists' conceptions of what may now be possible to do, and we can consider more aggressive interventions that might require the development of new journalistic paradigms before they can be widely implemented. As I have noted above, journalism is a particular social practice whose principal tenets are both relatively recent and currently in flux; it does not seem likely that the history of this profession will be frozen in its present form. The urgent task of preventing genocidal violence should shape the evolution of journalistic paradigms in ways that will enable the profession to contribute to the prevention and resolution of conflict more effectively.

I say this not as the representative of a humanitarian NGO, a multilateral assistance organisation or as a victim of violence. I speak as a journalist, as someone who honours the profession's values and norms and who understands the way it serves its readers and viewers every day in every corner of the globe. This is a call from within the profession, and I am offering it in the knowledge that it will be considered unacceptable in many quarters where the defence of journalism-as-it-is-practiced is motivated by an essentialist vision of the profession as somehow always remaining in the future what it has already become today. That view, I believe, is profoundly in error on both historical and moral grounds.

Accordingly, we at the Center for War, Peace and the News Media have been asking ourselves if we could turn the usual question about media & conflict around. In lieu of asking, "What is it possible for the media to do to prevent conflict?" we would rather pose the question, "What does conflict resolution theory and practice tell us needs to be done to prevent conflict?" In other words, instead of starting with the media's understanding of their own possibilities, as determined by current paradigms, we have decided to begin by establishing the desiderata for media action based on the work of negotiators, diplomats, 'track two' practitioners and protagonists who have participated in the resolution of conflict or who have studied the process.

This shift of perspective makes it possible first and foremost to address the question of what conflict prevention and management require of the media, putting aside for the moment the question of under what circumstances the media may be able to provide it. This is rather different from other discussions of such issues, which tend to accept at the outset what media professionals judge would be practical or possible according to the standards currently dominant in their fields. As we have argued above, it is these very same paradigms and norms that must be called into question insofar as they now impede the effective response of the world community to mass violence.

In beginning with "what conflict prevention and management require of the media," we recognise that there are diverse and contending approaches to conflict prevention; it is likely that proponents of each will come to very different conclusions regarding the potential of media-based preventive action. Realists, focusing as they do on state actors, will likely find little use for the notion that the media can play any role other than that of facilitating the realisation of state interests. Diplomacy may see in the media little but vehicles for advancing the agendas of particular parties to any negotiation. Alternatively, approaches that can loosely be grouped together under the rubric of 'conflict resolution' typically share a greater interest in the potential contributions of non-state actors and might therefore be expected to provide a body of theory and practice more congenial to the development of media interventions.

When we began to examine conflict resolution theory and practice several years ago, we quickly identified a number of potential 'media roles' in conflict prevention that emerged from this literature and experience. Each one of these roles has an extensive theoretical and practical foundation in the conflict resolution tradition, and each, we felt, opened up possibilities for media activity that could readily be imagined. The point was to identify the conflict-preventing functions that the media can perform, and then to develop media-based activities (as appropriate to diverse conflict circumstances, media technologies and media systems) to fulfil such functions. With this schema in mind, we began to develop an inventory of such roles. In doing so we discovered that the media were in some cases already performing some of these roles as a by-product of what they do for purely journalistic reasons. In such cases, the question then becomes whether the media can more self-consciously and more completely take on the burden of preventing deadly conflict, whether within current paradigms or through the elaboration of new ones over the years to come. Meanwhile, as a small sample of the repertoire of potential journalistic roles, let me offer the following:

Potential Media Roles in the Prevention and Management of Conflict

• Channeling communication between parties: The media not infrequently play this role ad hoc in domestic and international politics; the point would be to heighten the appreciation and systematic performance of this dialogical role in the ethno-political context.
• Educating: Simply changing the information environment in which the parties operate can have a marked impact on the dynamics of conflict; it is particularly useful to promote appreciation of the complex factors impinging on the conflict situation, and to create appreciation of and tolerance for the negotiation process itself.
• Confidence building: Lack of trust between parties is a major factor contributing to conflict. The media can help to reduce suspicion through their reporting of contested issues, and increase trust through reporting of stories that suggest or illustrate that accommodation is possible.
• Counteracting misperceptions: Related to the confidence-building role above, journalists can come to see the misconceptions of the parties as a story in and of itself, and by reporting this story they can encourage the parties to revise such views, moving closer to the prevention or resolution of a conflict in the process.
• Analysing conflict: This differs from conventional conflict reporting in that the media would self-consciously apply analytical frameworks derived from conflict resolution and related fields to systematically enhance the public's understanding of key aspects of the situation, as well as the dynamics of the efforts to manage it.
• Deobjectifying the protagonists for each other: Sophisticated journalism, by revealing people's complexity, can already do this, but the question is whether some of what journalists already do ad hoc can be developed into a systematic repertory which they will be able to employ by virtue of an enhanced conception of journalism influenced by conflict-prevention considerations.
• Identifying the interests underlying the issues: This is standard conflict resolution practice, but it is surprising how infrequently journalists address this question in stories. As media scholar James W. Carey has remarked, U.S. journalism generally foregoes sophisticated analysis of underlying group interests: "Explanation in American journalism is a kind of long-distance mind reading in which the journalist elucidates the motives, intentions, purposes and hidden agendas which guide individuals in their actions."
• Providing an emotional outlet: Conflicts may escalate or explode in part because the parties have no adequate outlets for expression of their grievances. Conflict can be fought out in the media rather than in the streets. Journalists, already prone to report conflict, could better serve their readers and viewers, as well as the cause of preventive diplomacy, by more fully understanding this role and perhaps pursuing it self-consciously.
• Encouraging a balance of power: This helps get parties to the negotiating table. A media report can weaken a stronger party or strengthen a weaker party in the eyes of publics, thereby encouraging parties to negotiate when they otherwise might not have out of concern for the perception of their relative positions.
• Framing and defining the conflict: This is nothing but good journalism practiced on the right occasions. The media can help frame the issues and interests in such a way that they become more susceptible to management. The media can be particularly attentive to the concessions made by the parties, the common ground that exists between them, the solutions they have considered and so on.
• Face saving and consensus building: Similarly, when in the course of negotiations parties take steps toward resolving a conflict, they risk being attacked by more intransigent members of their own constituencies. The media can greatly facilitate the process of compromise by making it possible for negotiators to address their own publics through the media in order to explain their negotiating positions and build support for them.
• Solution building: Conflicts get prevented or managed when the parties table and consider possible solutions to grievances. Journalists can play a role in this process by pressing the parties for their proffered solutions. Although this seems self-evident, many third-party negotiators have noted that parties are often so invested in their grievances that they do not develop or consider options for potential agreement with adversaries. The simple act of eliciting ideas and reporting them could assist the dynamic of the more formal mediation process itself. It should also be noted that the process of formal mediation can fail if there is not a parallel process of what might be called 'social mediation', by which the constituents and publics of the formal negotiating parties are brought into the process and prepared to accept its outcome.

The process by which this could be done would be one of 'social invention' in which the spontaneous, largely uncoordinated but not random activities of diverse actors could create new institutions and behaviours. Journalism itself, in fact, is a product of precisely this process over time, as is the sitcom, soap opera, rap song, the portable radio and the sports page. It would be folly to believe that the history of the media has ended here, and that we do not possess the social imagination to meet the challenge now being posed by the threat of mass social violence to human societies everywhere.

Robert Karl Manoff is Director of the Center for War, Peace and the News Media. This article has been adapted from a paper delivered at The Hirondelle Foundation's conference on the media and conflict earlier this year. An earlier version was printed in Crosslines magazine (March/April 1997).

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