By Frederick Noronha
It’s the kind of book(let) you wouldn’t even look at twice. but dip closely into this tiny, pocket-sixed 46-page book, and you could well be glad that you’ve read it
‘Engendering Peace Journalism: Keeping Communities Whole’ is a booklet that comes in from the Philippines. It calls itself a guide on gender-sensitive peace and conflict reporting. As one could guess, it is targeted by the media.
It comes from the Philippines-based ISIS International-Manila and from Min-WoW. In its brief, five chapters, it makes a case for gender-sensitive reporting and more.
In brief, it’s goal is to offer a “handy collection of practical advice on how to do more effective reporting, particularly for those who are working on conflict and peace issues”.
Peace-journalism and conflict-sensitive journalism, together with gender-sensitive journalism, are keywords here. The goals are manifold — doing better journalism, keeping “our news stories whole”, becoming better journalists, and trying to nurture better communities.
This is a book that should becoming compulsory reading for just about anyone who wants to give that conscientious edge to his or her journalism. If you wonder why our newspapers contain so much of bad news, you could also question why our media focusses on war and violence rather than peace and gender justice.
For sure, our media is war and violence oriented. It focuses on the conflict arena. Media makes it seem as if every conflict has two parties, one goal (to win), and that this is a zero sum game. Actually, what we need is to explore conflict formation, see the diverse parties and goals involved, study the many issues, and see whether a win-win result is at all possible.
War/violence-oriented journalism is male-focussed. Resource persons tend to be the military, head of state, governments, and police as sources of information. In fact, an alternate way of looking could explore how women and men of all parties are affected by the conflict.
Further: should conflict-reporting focus on closed spaces, closed times and who-threw-the-first-stone logic?> Why not have open spaces and times, and set the conflict in the context of history and culture?
By giving us a brief table, the book draws a useful contrast between war-violence journalism and what it calls engendered (gender-sensitive) peace-conflict journalism.
One makes wars opaque and secret; the other makes conflict transparent. One indulges in the ‘us-them’ kind of journalism, while the other gives voice to all parties, with empathy and understanding. One brand sees ‘them’ as the problem, while the other sees conflict and war as the problem and instead chooses to focus on creativity.
Take your choice: should journalist be reactive, and waiting for violence to happen before reporting? Or should it be pro-active and vfocussing on the initiatives, including those coming from women? Should it focus on only the visible effects of violence (killings, the wounded, material damage) or on the invisible effects of violence (trauma and glory, damage to the structure and culture, marginalisation of women and children)?
Strangely, these important issues are seldom thought about. The ‘old school’ mold portrays women and children as helpless victims, when they can be active contributors in conflict-transformation and peace building. One brand dehumanizes ‘them’, while the other humanizes all sides involves.
Rather than attempting to expose ‘their’ untruths and help ‘our’ cover-ups, what this booklet suggests is less propaganda and more truth. “Expose untruths on all sides. Uncover all cover-ups,” it advices, useful advice for any kind of reporting.
Interesting, war-violence reporting ends up as elite-oriented. It focuses on ‘our’ suffering, and makes able-bodied elite males as its mouthpiece. It gives names to ‘their’ evildooers, and also focuses on elite peacemakers, who happen to be mostly men. In contrast, it suggests focussing on the suffering all over — on women, the aged and children, and giving a voice to the voiceless. “Focus on people peacemakers, heroes of non-violence, including women,” it suggests.
For one perspective, peace means a victory + ceasefire. But actually peace = non violence + creativity, it points out. Instead of concealing peace initiatives (specially before victory is on hand), it suggests highlighting peace initiatives to “prevent more war”.
The war-violence journalism tends to focus on treaties, instrutions, and controlled societies. Solution-oriented journalism needs to look at structures, culture and the peaceful society.
For, finally, what is the end result we are aiming for? Leaving for another war, and returning if the old fares are triggered off again? No, say the authors, suggesting that the media should work towards resolution, reconstruction, reconciliation (including women’s needs and participation), peacebuilding.
Chapter 2 of this simple book focuses on mapping conflict, using what it calls a “conflict analysis tool”/ s This involves mapping the stakeholders, mapping the needs and fears, and analyzing the map.
It reminds us:
* Conflict and violence are not the same thing. Conflict is not inherently negative, or damaging. It can produce positive outcomes. Violence alway sresults in injury and destruction.
* Structural violence is human suffering that is caused by the exploitative or unjust nature of social, poltical, legal, cultural and economic structures and institutions. Examples include poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination due to race, gender, sexual orientation.
* Non-violcne stands for something most people engage in everyday — self-assertion, trying to reach goals without violence, without intending to harm or hurt anybody.
Chapter 3 takes us to gender in conflict analysis, while the next has specific tips for journalists. For instance: Go beyond the demands of the leaders and the elites; include the demands of the people, women and men. Treat the sufferings and fears of all sides as equally newsworthy. See women as actively changing their situation and not just as suffering victims.
There are specific and useful tips to make journalism peace-oriented, truth-oriented, people-oriented, and solution-oriented. It reminds us: “Labels like ‘terrorist’, ‘extremist’, ‘fanatic’, or ‘fundamentalist’ are always given by ‘us’ to ‘them’. No one ever uses them to describe herself or himself.”
Besides: adjectives like ‘vicious’, ‘cruel’, ‘brutal’ and ‘barbaric’ are demonizing and describe one party’s view of what the other party has done. Words like ‘devastated’, ‘defenceless’, or ‘tragedy’ only tells us what has been done. These are disempowering words that limit options for change.
This slim booklet made one think; it is very relevant even for a country like India, where communal conflict, gender bias, class-caste wars are a reality even today and the travails of the extremely marginalised are pushed under the carpet by dismissing it as extreme political radicalism.
One of the most useful pages of this tiny booklet was the one offering tips for journalists — on how to take care of their physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual well-being.
These words made a lot of sense to me: “Make time for self-reflection. Meditate, write a journal or seek counselling. Notice your inner experiences — listen to your thoughts, judgements, beliefs, attitudes and feelings. Undertake activities that are unrelated to work, such as reading relaxing literature and watching movies; do something new or in which you are not expert. Be aware of personal limitations. Learn to ask for support and to say no to extra responsibilities [in building psychological well-being].
Lina Sagaral Reyes of the Mindanaw Women Writers, Inc puts it well when she says of this book’s goal: “It is about caring for how we do our work and caring for the words and images in the stories that we write and broadcast. It is about us journalists taking care of our very selves and caring for the people who are at the marrow of our reportage.”
