Peace Journalism has been developed from research that indicates that all too often news about

conflict has a value bias toward violence. It also includes practical methods for correcting this bias by producing journalism in both the mainstream and alternative media; and working with journalists, media professionals, audiences and organisations in conflict. The concept was proposed by Johan Galtung Other terms for this broad definition of peace journalism include conflict solution journalism, conflict sensitive journalism, constructive conflict coverage, and reporting the world. Projects on peace journalism Peace education initiatives on radio and in communal activities facilitated and promoted intercommunity dialogue, trauma-healing sessions, and sensitisation to elements that create conflict (such as illicit arms, cattle rustling and resource competition). This project involved the training of 30 leaders of different women groups, 30 rehabilitated ex-combatants, and 30 opinion leaders from different clans in conflict-resolution and peace-building. In addition, two successful meetings took place involving ex-combatants, government officials and women peace-builders that formed a stakeholder umbrella body known as the Northern Kenya Peace Network. These journalists and activists will work together on peace-building initiatives, healing and peaceful coexistence. The project produced a DVD and is seeking further cooperation with other groups in the region. The Feedback Loop of cause and effect is a useful reference point here for conceptualising the various entry points for peace journalism in the wider phenomenology of news. Peace journalism has been applied in training and dialogue with journalists in a variety of settings. However peace journalism has also been applied in a number of other sectors. These interventions are extremely varied and in addition to the examples noted above, include international NGO work with local partners and networks in areas of conflict, the promotion of communication rights, participatory processes and community-based communication approaches for development, social change and peacebuilding (for example see Current Projects-Communication for Social Change & World Association for Christian Communication programmes and further reading sections below); creation of new people centred peace media outlets and work with organisations who may themselves become sources for peace journalism. Government and inter-governmental approaches have also operationalised peace journalism in preventing media manipulation and promoting people centred media in postconflict societies and through the United Nations. Likewise upper level editors and media organisation managers have also included in peace journalism workshops and seminars . Debates and criticisms Peace journalism has encountered a number of debates and criticisms from some scholars and journalists. Should the substance of a criticism not be addressed in the present article, please add it to this section so that it may be noted and if appropriate responded to. Activist news lacking objectivity Some opponents characterise peace journalism as "activist" new writing and production that while being socially engaged to promote peace, is unlike mainstream objective or balanced news coverage that seeks to remain impartial or above the fray.

This raises the important question of how objective and impartial is peace journalism. From a peace journalism perspective the claim we just report the facts must include the facts of how and according to what principals these facts came to meet the reporter, and how the finished coverage came to meet the facts. The Press Institute of Indias conflict reporting guidelines point out: "Factual accuracy in a single story is no substitute for the total truth. A single story, which is factually accurate can nonetheless be misleading". As such peace journalism is generally more objective than war journalism, with its inclusion of implications for international law, positive developments in both elite peacemaking and capacity building, and non-elite perspectives and peacebuilding initiatives. This objectivity, unconstrained by Objectivity Conventions, highlights the truth-orientation of peace journalism: to expose untruths on all sides. In doing so peace journalism aims to de-naturalise meaning by highlighting the creation of war journalism dominated meaning in conflict. Indeed Hall (1997) recommends that the unfixing of meaning: is often a struggle to increase the diversity of things which subjects can be of-the possibility of identities which people have not seen represented beforeyou have to intervene in exactly that powerful exchange between image and its psychic meaningwith which we invest images [and] expose and deconstruct the work of representation which the stereotype is doing. And many peace practitioners note the importance of non-violent confrontation and the equalisation of power before effective negotiation and dialogue between parties can take place. In this same way, through reporting on grassroots and local voices for peace, the power of these voices is increased as they become "reality checkers" for often contradictory statements of elite representatives involved in violence. Through this non-violent ideational confrontation then audiences and parties may be more able to negotiate their own meaning outside of fixed elite narratives. Thus mounting anomalies may expose contradictions, and herald a paradigm shirt as local pro-peace perspectives previously consigned to zone of deviance become legitimate controversy. In a recent example, during the lead up to the Presidential election of 2009 in Afghanistan, the counter-insurgency approach advocated by US commander General McCrystal contains elements of relationship building to a degree that is unusual among military approaches in Afghanistan. In the lead up to the Presidential election in Afghanistan in mid 2009 an unusual example of this relationship sensitive approach to counter-insurgency applied by US troops stationed was in Nawa district, in the Helmand province. However the overwhelming majority of attention that Nawa district has received in 2009, the year that this new strategy was first applied, is on reports of violence there, principally throughout early-to-mid July endured, of that year: during intensified US led military operations. For example in 2009, seven out of ten articles of the Washington Post online tagged under the key word Nawa focus almost exclusively on violence and US combat operations in the region, with similar ratios appearing in online coverage from the Guardian, the Independent, and the New York Times. This contrasts sharply with the success over violent methods that relationship building has had with hearts and minds in Nawa, Afghanistan, but also on a larger scale in Iraq. Researchers also note the importance of relationship building for: vertical and horizontal integration in peacebuilding to

support the sustainability of institutional reform and promoting peace with justice and respect for human rights Peace journalism thereby aims retain the role of observer of in journalism about conflict, instead of functioning like war journalism which intervenes in conflict to increase the influence of violent actors and violent actions. Peace journalism by presenting anomalous local perspectives which contradict violence exacerbating war journalism, it may help to expose these violent groups attempts to fix and naturalise meaning and take advantage of this meaning to promote their violence. Indeed exploration of new types of relationships between Afghan locals and the international community contradicts assertions made at the time with the benefit of war journalism by insurgents and the US government, that the negative effects of foreign occupation could only be ended with violent expulsion, or that 40,000 more combat troops were the most critical component for sustainable peace in Afghanistan. Explaining violence is justifying it This criticism can be represented by neo-conservative proponent Richard Perle , that one must decontextualise terrorany attempt to discuss the roots of terrorism is an attempt to justify it. It simply needs to be fought and destroyed. Whilst this may be a common response to journalism advocating context, it is also an example of many of the social-cognitive inter-group biases noted above, and exemplifies what social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo (of the Stanford Prison Experiments) calls Fundmanetal Attribution Error: the tendency to explain observed behaviour by reference to dispositions, while ignoring or minimizing the impact of situational variables. The notion of human needs driving violence and being significantly effected by violence(borrowed from Conflict Analysis and Peace Research)and insight into the stratified nature of reality (borrowed from Critical Realism), highlight why an explanation of violence is not the same thing as a justification for it. Critical Realism understands reality as existing in a number of levels of strata. Each strata deals with larger and more complex phenomena than that ones below it. These strata might begin from physical mechanisms at the most basic level, followed by chemical mechanisms, then biological, followed by psychological and finally social. Activity at each lower strata contribute to but can never fully explain the new mechanisms that develop in higher strata, in a process called emergence from the upper strata. For example competing theories of sub-atomic structure (perhaps at the physical level) influence but cannot fully explain the outcome of the reaction 2Na+2HCl = 2NaCl + H2 (at the chemical level). Likewise the individual psychologies of a land lord and tenant cannot fully explain their relationship in the social strata which is also influenced by other things that operate at the social stratum including laws and culture. Structural and cultural explanations for violence generally deal with the social strata: that is relationships between people and groups so an explanation of this violence is not the same as ignoring the role of individual choice and psychology: the violence that emerges at the social level is the result of a complex interaction of influences from lower strata (individual choices and psychology) and structures which exist primarily at the social strata (such as laws and culture). So to give cultural or structural explanations of violence is not the same as saying that these social influences override the role the individual choice (which is located in a lower stratum and therefore occurs under different conditions). Take the case of where an individuals anger (brought on from previous trauma)

becomes bitterness which is followed by their own violence, following Elworthy and Rogers (2002) cycle of violence noted above.An individual has still made a choice to deprive the victim of their violence of their human needs (probably safety and security) even though their own human needs have also been violated earlier. The point is not that they must be seen as either a innocent victim or an evil perpetrator. The practical point is prevention of violence and recovering of all those whose needs have been violated. And this approach also does not assume what the best solution is for stopping individual violence the level where an individual makes a choice to act violently (which happens at the psychological level). In some cases punishment or imprisonment may be necessary. However Conflict Analysis and Peace Research do keep in mind that given the failure of the psychological, medical and social sciences (including education) to eliminate the persistent rates of psychotic tendencies in human groups (psychologists estimate that on average 3 percent of any population have psychotic tendencies)a more promising approach may be looking at what social, economic, cultural conditions and what inter-group relations allow for individuals such as Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Stalin and Pol Pot, to realise their desires for mass violence. Conflict Analysis and Peace Research does not primarily focus on understanding the individual psychology of these individuals (at the psychological stratum) but on how these individuals may be prevented from taking up a position in society where they are able to direct inter-communal violence (at the social stratum). And indeed in peace journalism the role of individual agency is given a lot of importance. For example journalists are encouraged to in peace journalism workshops to work peace journalism into the existing media structures. And peace journalism urges journalists to investigate the possibility that even in violent situations there are always voices for peace and to search these voices out when reporting through the Objectivity Conventions might ignore from the outset. Likewise the role of individual choice is not ignored in Conflict Analysis and Peace Research, and leading scholar-practitioner, Jean Peal Lederach notes that: I have not experienced any situation in conflict, no matter how protracted or severe, from Central America to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, where there have not been people who had a vision for peace, emerging often from their own experience of pain, Far too often, however, these same people people are overlooked and disempowered either because they do no represent official power, whether on the side of government of the various militias, or because they are written off as biased and too personally affected by the conflict". Structure versus agency in media change Hanitzsche (2007) argues that the failures of corporate journalism cannot be overcome by an individualistic and voluntaristic conceptualization of news making. To have any impact on the ways news if being made, and the critical discussion thereof, the advocates of peace journalism must address the structural constraints of news productiona peaceful culture is the precondition of peace journalism. Structure is of course a key concern in peace journalism when considering the content pluralism in news that it involves. And a number of projects that apply peace journalism (some of which are outlined above)demonstrate that peace journalism activism is not limited to journalists themselves. Whats more conflict media content analyses are important educational resources for audiences, NGOs and the journalists, being an example of how deficiencies in content can be used to campaign for more structural pluralism. These

varied approaches demonstrate that inroads have been, and are still being made in peace journalism activism in the areas the Hackett (2006) identifies as necessary to address challenges of structure and make peace journalism possible: reforming journalism from within, but also the creation of alternative media organisations, and intervention in the broader fields that journalism find itself: politics and social movements for example. Active versus passive audiences Hanitszche (2007) criticises peace journalism, noting that media users are often fragmented and active audiences instead of a passive massleading to a selective use of supplied products. Likewise Devereux (2003) notes that media audiences may have different expectations of media genres and Turnbull (2002) argues that in media research a serious problem is just to limit and define audiences and therefore relevant media practices. Indeed Hall (1997) notes that the meaning of media messages changes as you move from one person to another, one group to another, one part of society to another. And Lynch (2008) points out, drawing from Hall (1980) that the meanings of media messages are made, at least partly, at the point of reception, in a process influenced chiefly by the socio-economic position of the reader or viewer. As such Hall (1980) notes that in a negotiated or oppositional manner, meaning often: "contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules - it operates with exceptions to the rule. It accords the privileged position to the dominant definitions of events while reserving the right to make a more negotiated application to 'local conditions'". And indeed for peace journalists it is the visibility of 'local conditions' that allows for oppositional and negotiated meaning Lynch (2008)argues that for audiences to produce oppositional or negotiated readings of media messages assumes they have enough directly relevant personal and social experience against which to measure them, And of course this is often not the case with international conflict. Indeed Halls(1980) own example of the negotiation of meaning is the case of an industrial factory worker willing to challenge official justifications in the media for an Industrial Relations Bill which limit his or her right to strike. In fact peace journalism analysis shows that the facts absent in audiences` understanding of conflict can closely mirror those neglected in war journalism. A notable example is Philo and colleagues research into media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict in the UK media. With mainstream media neglecting the Palestinian narrative that Palestinian refugees lost their land and homes when Israel was established, audiences exhibited consistent ignorance about the basic facts of the conflict (for example where the bulk of refugees came from) and tended to perceive Palestinians as starting the violence and therefore Israeli authorities as forced to respond violently to prevent or contain this action which has no possible rationale and therefore no potential non-violent resolution. Indeed five years earlier, when reporting results of the study, Philo (2004) noted that: "This pattern of reporting clearly influenced how some viewers understood the conflictThe gaps in public knowledge closely parallel those in the news. The Palestinian perspective, that they have lost their land and are living under occupation, was effectively absent. It is perhaps not surprising that some viewers believed that they were simply being aggressive and trying to take land from the Israelis". This omission of the Palestinian perspective was so serious that Helen Boaden, Head of News at BBC concluded

in an internal email: we fail to give enough context and history to this highly charged story and that we neglect the Palestinian narrativeIn our response, weve tried to come up with practical ways to remedy our weaknesses. This is an important illustration of the consistent effect of war journalism across general audiences, that: the pattern of misunderstanding almost exactly matchingmissing elements from the story habitually presented in the mainstream media. General media audiences as a group is conceptualised within the Feedback Loop of cause and effect. Different approaches in Conflict Analysis and Peace Research Two peace practitioner/scholars, Jean Paul Lederach and Johan Galtung present two quite different models for conflict resolution and peacebuilding . Lederach (1995) presents an Elictive Model which is aims primarily at discovery, creation, and solidification of models that emerge from the resources present in a particular setting and respond to needs in that context and not impose third party knowledge from trainer to participant . This approach, was applied in a dialogue in 2003 entitled Reporting the Iraq: what went right? What went wrong?. Included were Heads of News from the BBC and CNN, the editor of the Guardian, and several senior reporters who had also been reporting the war from Iraq. Drawing on the resources in the room recommendations for the coverage of conflict included: 1.Do not report a line from an official source without obtaining and citing independent evidence as to its reliability. 2.Acknowledge that the important job of testing arguments is best done if they are juxtaposed with, and weighed against, alternative, countervailing arguments. 3.All newsrooms genuinely interested in offering a service to the public must think long and hard about conduit journalism and, in particular, whether their political correspondents are being used in this way. Galtungs TRANSCEND approach in contrast, focuses on the role a third party to unstick violent conflicts and stimulate creativity. This is done by probing deeply into the nature of parties goals, expanding the spectrum of acceptable solutions, and opening up cognitive space for fresh potentialities not conceived of by conflict parties. "In one-on-one conversation-style dialogues, the task is to stimulate creativity, develop new perspectives, and make the conflict parties 'ready for the table'". Lynch (2008) recounts a notable example of this approach during a peace journalism forum of Middle Eastern Journalists, in Amman, in 1999. Discussions often devolved into national groups blaming the journalists of the other countries for not confronting their governments lack of movement towards peace. Galtung himself challenged the participants to: imagine a future Middle East they wanted to see, and start to think aloud, in cross-national groups, about how they might play a part in bringing it about. A Galtungian perspective, as a foundation for much of peace journalism, insists that the journalist focus on root causes of conflict such as poverty or prior abuse, and not merely focus on events associated with violent political encounters. Through this approach peace journalism could act to disembed seemingly immutable official positions from the greater context of a conflict by exploring background to a conflict, challenging propaganda, and making visible official and local initiatives for peaceful conflict resolution.

These two approaches differ not only in the "how" of Conflict Resolution but the "who". Lederach generally outlines a "middling out" approach where "the level with the greatest potential for establishing an infrastructure than can sustain the peacebuilding process over the long term appears to be the middle range". He argues that grassroots approaches are generally the more fragile since their participants are often concerned with day to day issues of survival,. Upper level approaches assume a high level of integration between elites and grassroots: that peace agreements reached there "are relevant to and capable of practical implementation at the local level Galtung on the other hand argues that upper level leaders often actually feel excluded from facilitated peace processes with the modern focus on grassroots and civil society initiatives That the root of conflict is incompatible goals pursued by parties which result in violent attitudes and behaviours. It follows that "people are more able to discuss a root problem when they sense a solution somewhere. A glimmer of light at the end of a tunnel makes it considerably more easy [sic] to admit that we are in a tunnel". In Galtung's work the most accessible way to influence these goals had been to work with those who officially define them and lead policy: upper level leaders. The importance of accurate and complete Conflict Analysis for a given conflict highlights how these two approaches can be complementary. Practical Conflict Analysis is often aimed at identifying the easiest "peace levers" to pull within a conflict to "unstick" violent inter-group relations. This contrasts with intervening in a conflict with a pre-set idea of how a resolution will be found, and what specific level or group to begin working with. Therefore Conflict Analysis may indicate which "entry points" may offer the most promising chance to transform the relations between parties. And from this it will follow which approach or combination of approaches are likely to work from that entry point (whether it be at the grassroots, mid level or upper level or a combination). This integrative approach is summed up by peace practitioner and researcher Wendy Lambourne: to rely on only one theoretical approach in peace practice risks being culturally blind