It offers a set of plans, evaluation criteria and practical options to media professionals that can be used to develop critical analysis of war journalism, all derived from, or at least attentive to, proposals on conflict, violence and peace.
In a 2010 book, Reports on Conflicts: New Directions in Peace Journalism, Jake Lynch and Johan Galtung present case studies of media coverage in Korea, Yugoslavia and during the Gulf War.
"The media can be an 'instrument' of conflict resolution when the information they present is reliable, respect human rights, and represent various viewpoints," argues Ross Howard, whose two books, An operational Framework for Media and Peace (2002) and Conflict-Sensitive Journalism ( 2003), have been influential.
The general aim of peace building through peace journalism is therefore to prevent the eruption of violence in conflict, or to transform armed conflict or crisis in the long term into peaceful and constructive forms of dispute resolution.
Contrary to such a stance, peace journalism does not hold a hawkish discourse, not in designating an enemy to kill, or in legitimising conflicts, but in acting upstream to avoid a risk system often resulting from the combination of four factors highlighted by Philippe Hugon (2006; 35):
- Structural: linked to underdevelopment, characterised by the vulnerability and exposure to risk of populations with low resilience due to insufficient availability, market failures, absence of rights and capacities or dysfunctions in the allocation of resources;
- Cyclical, exogenous and endogenous shocks: linked to sudden and unexpected events leading to a strong disturbance of the system and to an unregulated propagation;
- At an institutional and political level: characterised by absences or shortcomings in prevention (monitoring cells, alert systems) and regulation, by instrumentalisation (unemployed young people, religious, politics, or ethnicity);
- Informational: the paroxysmal crisis always responds to a lack of information and to propaganda carried by the political powers and the media.
