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The Peace Journalism Option 3 By Jake Lynch for Conflict and Peace Forums   PART 2 2. PRACTICAL EXAMPLES Explaining violence, framing conflicts Much reporting in and from Indonesia still bears the imprint of the ‘New Order’ orthodoxy of the Suharto years, part of which was the official ideology of ‘panca silah’, or unity-in-diversity. One consequence was for reports of violence to be suppressed. It meant that unpalatable facts about conflicts between Indonesia’s peoples were never faced. Typical are remarks by President Abdurrahman Wahid, shortly after taking office in 1999 and quoted in the Jakarta Post in one of its reports on the violence in Maluku province and its capital, Ambon. “Abdurrahman reiterated his belief that ordinary people in Maluku do not harbour hatred against each other despite their different faiths and ethnic backgrounds. He claimed they were merely victims of the work of irresponsible parties wishing to disrupt the country’s...

By Miroslav Hadzic, Ph.d.,President, Centre for Civil-Military relationsBelgrade timotic@eunet.yu  Lecture given at a joint conference by Institute of Defence, University of Skopje andPfP Consortium Working Group on Crisis Management in SEE Conference“Ten Years After: Democratisation and Security Challenges in SEE” 27-29 October, Ohrid, Macedonia I would like to offer you my personal perception of the critical points of the security of Serbia and the FR Yugoslavia. That should , I hope, make the image of the security challenges in SEE more complete. Convinced that additional explanations would burden this respected gathering, I am free to offer a brief list of these points in the form of theses. The new risk-map of Serbia and the FR Yugoslavia is drawn up byinter-active action of the two basic groups of factors: – first, by the final concentration of the basic causes of the war collapse of the second Yugoslavia into its eastern remnant,...

The Peace Journalism Option 3 By Jake Lynch for Conflict and Peace Forums   Conflict and Peace ForumsTaplow Court, Taplow, Bucks, SL6 0ER, United KingdomPhone +44.1628.591 233 / 239 Fax +44.1628.773 055www.conflictandpeace.org email info@conflictandpeace.org Table of Contents 1. Introduction Conflict Coverage A new approach Perspective: the fact and the truth 2. Practical Examples Explaining conflict, framing violence Conflict or meta-conflict? Media responsibility Practical reporting decisions Britain and Ireland From “apportioning blame” to conflict analysis in South Africa Worthy / unworthy victimhood Consequences Beyond ‘victim journalism’ and ‘how do you feel’? 3. Reporting of the ‘Kosovo Crisis’ ‘The Serbs’ – aggregation and dis-aggregation Disaggregation Assumotions revisited The KLA and the media 4. Journalism and market forces The rise of ethical purchasing and investment Two tentative conclusions 5. Appendix: Middle East The view in international media References About the author & publisher 1. INTRODUCTION Journalists have become accustomed to vying with estate agents and...

The Peace Journalism Option 3 By Jake Lynch for Conflict and Peace Forums   PART 4 4. JOURNALISM AND MARKET FORCES The content of news is shaped by three main influences. One comes from the limits set down by the state, in the form of laws, censorship and access to information. The second is a ‘civic society’ element: journalists are exponents and guardians of values which belong both to everyone and to no-one. These have evolved in implicit dialogue with audiences and the public at large, and develop a little further whenever journalists meet to discuss the ethics and principles of their work – especially if they do so in consultation with professionals from other fields as in the conferences Conflict and Peace Forums have organised over the past few years. But the factor which has been the focus of most critical endeavour in Western societies is the influence of market...

Some of the UK’s first analyses of the Kosovo conflictfrom a peace journalism perspective REPORT 1“TRANSCENDING ASSUMPTIONS“ Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia enjoyed almost universal editorial support among mainstream British newspapers. The passage of time made it possible to gauge more of the consequences and led to some reassessments, including a nagging suspicion summed up by BBC World Affairs editor John Simpson: “I think we were suckered.” What assumptions were built into news reporting before and during the bombing, how did these help to construct a framework of understanding which made it seem to make sense, and how could it have been different? An award-winning correspondent with a major US TV network put her finger on one widespread assumption at the London launch of The First Casualty, the new edition of Phillip Knightley‚s classic history of war reporting which contains an important chapter on Kosovo. She recalled a period in the Autumn...

Setting the Stage: Understanding Security Recent events have shown the failure of traditional approaches to security and security guarantees. Conventional conceptions of security, focussing upon the security of the ‘State’ and freedom from the threat or use of force, have proved inadequate to address the diverse range of challenges faced by the world community at the dawn of the 21st Century. From environmental devastation– resulting in wide-spread flooding, deforestation, and depletion of the ozone layer–to limitations upon the human rights and freedoms of individuals and communities and the rising number of intra-state wars, new security issues are constantly arising. Though what is actually considered a ‘security’ issue varies widely depending upon the approach and perspective taken, the fact that the concept of security used during the era of the Cold War is no longer suf ficient for the world of today cannot reasonably be denied. While many of the factors...

I have the unpleasant obligation to make you acquainted with the social situation of the citizens in Serbia, but it is not such a difficult task. Firstly, the data are accessible from International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, Red Cross of Serbia, UNHCR, OCHA, UNESCO and NGOs from our country. By crossing of data bases, we got the relevant facts. Secondly, we know the real state because we live in Serbia and we feel that burden. The special problem is that the situation is becoming worse every day and that the known data has to be changed with the new one. It only shows the quick fall of standard of the citizens, among who are refugees in Serbia, too, and therefore we can speak about the real decline of one country which takes everything with itself like in a whirlpool. The parameters of the level of minimum of...

In failing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the US Senate played partisan politics with an issue of utmost importance to the security of the US and the world. In observing the debates in the Senate on this issue, I was once again left with the impression that our Senators do not fully understand and do not particularly care that the rest of the world pays attention to what they say and do. Much of the world looks to the United States for leadership, but there is little to be found these days in the highest offices of our government. In 1995 I attended the Review and Extension Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It was and remains clearly in the interests of the United States and all other countries in the world to prevent further proliferation of nuclear weapons. At that Treaty Conference...