|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 15 June 2003 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Media and conflict reporting : How journalists become accomplices by Preethi Sirimanne - Von Den Driesch The credibility of a conflict report depends very much on the quality of its presentation. Professional journalists take much care to investigate, analyse and uncover truth and understand conflict before presenting a report. However, not all reporters or journalists belong to this category. More than often the global audience fails to understand the conflicts taking place in other parts of the world. This is due to the fact that journalists become accomplices in conflict reporting. Media experts and conflict analysis say that conflict reporting has to be challenged and must undergo radical changes. Discussed among the experts are questions like "What are the tactics in propaganda used by conflict parties? Are journalists becoming accomplices or mediators in reporting on conflicts? What was not shown? Did the pictures which can speak a thousand words portray the truth? Were the journalists instrumentalized by a conflict party? Did the journalists pre-select whom to interview, and whom not to interview, which kind of visuals to show or which facts to include and which not?" Media experts claim that journalists fail to analyse the complexities of the social, political and historical background of the country when they report on conflict issues. The reason, they say, is that many journalists from the West do not understand the circumstances in foreign countries. Consequently they are unable to explain the nature of a conflict in the context of why and how. Apart from that, journalists do not realize that their too selective and myopic news about a conflict can have devastating consequences for that particular country. A report can hardly be called fair and balanced when journalists tend to bring stories illustrating the miseries of wars or conflicts in pictures - dead bodies, injured persons, destroyed houses and buildings, weeping women and children - to dramatize the conflict issue and ultimately categorizing the conflict parties into two groups of villains and victims. More often journalists use emotive and victimizing words, such as genocide, massacre, tragedy, decimated population, devastated areas, defenceless people etc., in their reports without making any research for instance to find out if the killed persons were defenceless or involved in a battle. Conflict parties are very eager to influence the journalists to say their part of the story, hoping to gain public attention and sympathy from abroad. There are no innocent parties in a conflict. Every journalist knows this. Almost every word used in conflict propaganda has its own significance and aim. It is no secret that the conflict parties use words as tools for propaganda purposes. Some of the techniques used by propagandists are glittering generalities and name-calling symbols, which means labelling people, groups, institutions etc. either in a positive or negative manner. Another method is the use of euphemistic words to pacify the audience in order to make an unpleasant reality more palatable. Media analyst Dr. Kai Hafez from Germany portrays the psychological aspects in the personality of journalists. He says: "Media coverage of conflicts is in many cases limited to national and ethnocentric perspectives instead of representing argumentations from both sides and contributing to conflict resolution. The individual political orientation, perception, stereotypical thinking, theories, ideologies of a journalist does influence the media. How a journalist thinks of his/her profession influences the way he/she presents facts, interprets the world, writes or acts. Since socialization usually takes place within a specific national and cultural environment, attitudes can be unbalanced, ethnocentric, full of religious bias or even racist." Furthermore, Dr. Hafez sees invisible forces behind the conflicts that influence the media: "In my opinion, religious conflicts do not exist in their pure form. They can be traced back to vested interests which construct an ideological superstructure out of religious and ethnical antagonisms. The problem is the ideologization. The main task of the journalists is to reach the basis of the conflict, to name the performers, then intentions and strategies. Otherwise media will be caught up in a self-fulfilling prophecy." accomplices How journalists become accomplices can be demonstrated by a film broadcast in Germany last year by the TV channel SWR. The report in question was titled: "Tigers, Mines, Palmbeaches - Sri Lanka. Hope for peace. A film sponsored by the "Missionwork Missio" and the "Institut Missio" in Germany. The film coverage was an exclusive report about the Tamils and the LTTE propaganda. Parties interviewed in the film were mainly Catholic priests. important facts in connection to the conflict - ethnic cleansing in the North, child conscription, killing of political leaders by LTTE - were carefully avoided in the film. The reports failed to a scrutinize strong allegations made by a Catholic priest who accused the Sri Lankan army of deliberately bombing a church and killing 131 people who went there for protection. No related facts to this incident were produced nor did the reporter contact anyone who could respond to this allegation. Instead of uncovering truth, giving greater clarity to the issue and exposing hidden agendas, prominence was given to the Catholic church as a peace organ, though the church representatives interviewed in the film were partial in the conflict. This was certified by the priests themselves who said: "We are with the Tigers.... We fight for our rights... They have destroyed everything our society, our culture, our houses, everything is gone. Our people are living in a miserable state. It is a terrifying situation. The Singhalese army is doing all this". Can a journalist recommend the Catholic Church to function as a peace organ when the interviewed priests repeatedly refuse to call the government institutions by their respective names (such connotations are often used in the LTTE propaganda) and speak only of the problems of one party? "The very definition of self and the other is the root cause of ethnic and religious conflicts", says a media expert. The villain role in the film was directed at the Sri Lanka Army: "40,000 Singhalese soldiers are occupying the Tamil area.... The army had not hesitated to destroy Catholic Churches. Most of the churches and Hindu temples are bombed.... Houses and buildings destroyed... You can see former barracks of the Singhalese army. It is said that the people were assaulted here and women had been raped because they were suspected as supporters of Tamil Tigers... Our people are shot at while fishing. Local tourists are visiting with full packed buses. They are taking advantage of the liberalized trade restrictions. Among them are many Singhalese. Because of the press censorship many Singhalese are unaware of the blood bath executed by the military army against the North and the East of the island". As far as the Tamils are concerned, it is a declaration of war against their own land... Many Tamils feel that the government suppresses them... They feel they are persecuted in their own land... Tamils are deprived of giving official posts and have to undergo difficulties entering universities.... Most of the women are victims of the war. The Singhalese army has killed their men.... This woman's brother was murdered. She had seen how their brother's heart and liver was ripped off from his body. This was horror... They threaten us with pistols. We are shot at while we are fishing." The reporter's subjectivity and her ignorance of Sri Lankas cultural and historical background were obvious. There was no mention of the Muslims. Not a single person from the Sri Lankan army in government was interviewed. The Sri Lankan armed forces were repeatedly called Singhalese army. The question is, if journalists can refer to the Israel army as Zionist or the Indian army as Hindu? Additionally the reporter gave an overwhelming attention to the LTTE symbolism: The LTTE flag was shown on full screen many times and much effort was taken by the reporter to explain the cult of martyrdom of the Tamils. What was the motive? Though the report in the German TV was undoubtedly a bad example of conflict reporting, it was a hard task to induce the representatives of the TV channel to scrutinize the issue. The TV director of SWR rejected every criticism made against the film. It was only after a demonstration was made to the higher TV council, in which several members of public, religious governmental and cultural organisations meet quarterly to discuss the role of media, that faults were admitted. political situation The council admitted "that the senders own demand for programmatic and journalistic quality was hardly met.. The film should have analysed the political situation in Sri Lanka more profound and should have reflected critically the conditions under which the film was made. (Which means: under the control of the LTTE)... As result I can inform you, that all participants, from the Editorial Board to the Television, Director and up to the members of the Council, have given the necessary concern to the theme and that for all further activities, which deal with similar complex issues, higher sensitivity will be shown". Journalists who report conflict stories without analysing the background of the issue run into the danger of becoming accomplices, thus deepening the conflicts. Handling the media in a conflict situation needs sensitivity and integrity. Deficits in conflict reporting can hardly be excused. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
