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Engendering Peace Journalism: Keeping Communities Whole

A guide on gender-sensitive peace and conflict reportage

 

Contents

Preface 4
Introduction 6
Chapter 1 Engendering Peace Journalism 9
Chapter 2 Mapping Conflict: A Conflict Analysis Tool 17
Chapter 3 Gender in Conflict Analysis 21
Chapter 4 Tips for Journalists 26
Chapter 5 Self-care Strategies for Journalists 37
References 41
About Isis and Min-WoW 42
Women Making Airwaves for Peace 43

 

Preface

Making a Difference

Reporting From an Engendered Peace Perspective

As a feminist organizationin the field of communication, Isis International-Manila observed with great concern that after 9/11, women experts and gender perspectives on issues of security and peace have become invisible in the media. Furthermore, media’s role as the voice of people has diminished. Security and peace became purely militaristic concerns and are no longer looked at from a social perspective that puts the well-being of the people as a priority.

Isis International-Manila welcomed the suggestion of Min-WoW to collaborate on a project on engendered peace journalism and community radio. Thus, the project, “Women Making Airwaves for Peace,” was conceptualized based on the media experiences of Min-WoW and Isis’ experience on community radio in Asia Pacific. Canada Fund for Local Initiatives provided the necessary financial support to implement the project.

This primer “Engendering Peace Journalism: Keeping Communities Whole” combines the two organizations’ expertise in monitoring and analyzing media from a Southern feminist perspective together with experiences of the women from the three training activities conducted in North-Western Mindanao, Philippines in 2006-2007. Practitioners from both mainstream and community and independent media, women’s and peace NGOs and grassroots organizations attended the training.

We hope that this primer, as well as the other outputs of the project—online training modules for trainers on engendered peace journalism and community radio skills, a CD of radio plugs promoting a Culture of Peace and cultural diversity— will contribute to the emerging discourse on conflict and peace reportage.

Raijeli Drogolagi Nicole
Isis International-Manila
Executive Director

Introduction

Engendering Peace and Conflict Reporting:

Keeping Whole Our Stories, Lives and Communities

This guide embodies our respect and belief in the

premium value of quality journalism among the grassroots. We recognize the potentials, power and influence of community and independent media, not only in shaping societies but also in re-shaping and reconstructing itself in order to serve the public better.

Here is a handy collection of practical advice on how to do more effective reporting, particularly for those who are working on conflict and peace issues. Also included are some practical how-to’s in conflict analysis and insights from a gender perspective. It also guides journalists on how to care for body, mind and spirit.

Its platform is the new and evolving concept of peace journalism/conflict-sensitive journalism coupled with gender-sensitivity. Putting a major stress on gender-sensitivity, we dare to call this endeavor, “engendering peace journalism”.

These alternatives in doing quality community journalism will not only improve our craft and keep our news stories whole, but also make us better journalists and eventually better human beings trying to nurture better communities.

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.

Lina Sagaral Reyes
Mindanaw Women Writers, Inc.
Mindanao, Philippines

Chapter 1

Engendering Peace Journalism

Peace Journalism stories create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict. Peace Journalism uses the tools of conflict analysis and transformation to enable fair and accurate reporting. It provides a route map tracing the connections between the stories they cover and the consequences of their journalism — the ethics of journalistic intervention (Lynch and McGoldrick, 2005).

The genuine Peace Journalism model has an inherent gender perspective.

Engendering means putting emphasis on looking at an event, issue, situation, topic, say a conflict or disaster, with a gender perspective.

Gender analysis/perspective investigates how women and men affect and are affected by events and processes differently

Peace Journalism includes the coverage of peace initiatives, non-violent mass actions and the peace movement but these are not its sole focus. Thus, Peace Journalism is not peace advocacy.

The reporter using the peace journalism lens will still cover armed conflict and violence but in a more in-depth, comprehensive and holistic manner.

Below is an Engendered Peace Journalism matrix adapted from Professor Johann Galtung’s model, which re-frames Peace Journalism from the widely practiced War/Violence Journalism in the 20th and 21st centuries.

War/Violence JournalismEngendered Peace/Conflict Journalism
I. War/Violence-Orientated I. Peace/Conflict Orientated
  • Focuses on conflict arena: 2 parties, 1 goal (win), war, general zero-sum orientation
  • Explores conflict formation x parties, y goals, z issues,  general win-win orientation
  • Focuses on mostly male resource persons—military, head of state, governments, police as source of information
  • Explores how women and men of all parties are affected and included in win-win orientation

  • Closed space, closed time, causes and exits in arena, who threw the first stone
  • Open space, open time, causes and outcomes anywhere, also in history and culture

  • Making wars opaque/secret
  • Making conflicts transparent

  • “Us-them” journalism, propaganda, voice for “us”
  • Giving voice to all parties, empathy, understanding

  • Sees “them” as the problem, focuses on who prevails in war
  • Sees conflict/war as problem, focuses on creativity
  • Reactive: waiting for violence
  • Pro-active: before any violence occurs, focuses on initiatives including those coming from the women
  • Focuses only on the visible effect of violence (killed, wounded and material damage)
  • Focuses on invisible effects of violence (trauma and glory, damage to structure/culture, marginalization of women and children)
  • Portrays women and children as helpless victims (see what “they” did to “our” women and children)
  • Portrays women as active contributors in conflict transformation and peace building
  • Dehumanizes “them”
  • Humanizes all sides
II. Propaganda-Orientated II. Truth-Orientated
  • Exposes “their” untruths
  • Exposes untruths on all sides
  • Helps “our” cover-ups/lies
  • Uncovers all cover-ups
II. Elite-Orientated II. People-Orientated
  • Focuses on “our” suffering; on able-bodied elite males being their mouthpiece
  • Focuses on suffering all over— on women, aged and children; giving voice to the voiceless
  • Gives name of their evil-doers
  • Gives names to all evildoers
  • Focuses on elite peacemakers, mostly men
  • Focuses on people peacemakers, heroes of non- violence, including women
IV. Victory-Orientated IV. Solution-Orientated
  • Peace = victory + ceasefire
  • Peace = non-violence + creativity
  • Conceals peace initiatives, before victory is on hand
  • Highlights peace initiatives, also to prevent more war
  • Focuses on treaty, institution, the controlled society
  • Focuses on structure, culture,the peaceful society
  • Aftermath: leaving for another war, return if the old flares up again
  • Aftermath: resolution,reconstruction, reconciliation (includes women’s needs and participation), peacebuilding

Conflict management generally involves taking action to keep a conflict from escalating further. It usually does not address the deep-rooted issues that maybe at the cause of the conflict originally or attempt to bring about a solution.


Conflict resolution seeks to resolve the incompatibilities of interests and behaviors that constitute the conflict by recognizing and addressing the underlying issues, finding a mutually acceptable process and establishing relatively harmonious relationships and outcomes.


Conflict transformation aims at shifting how individuals and communities perceive and accommodate their differences, away from adversarial (win-lose) approaches toward collaborative (win-win) problem solving. Transforming a conflict is a long-term process that engages a society on multiple levels to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills that empower people to coexist peacefully.


Peacebuilding refers to activities that go beyond crisis intervention or conflict management, such as long-term development that focuses on developing social, governmental and non-governmental (including religious) mechanisms that favor non-violent, constructive means of resolving differences.

 

Chapter 2

Mapping Conflict: A Conflict Analysis Tool

A Conflict Map is a useful analytical instrument for journalists to unravel the conflict, identify who are the stakeholders, and what their different perspectives are. It allows journalists to put themselves in the shoes of the different groups and opens up a whole new avenue of stories for a journalist reporting on conflicts. We use here the conflict map as derived from Lynch and McGoldrick.

Mapping the conflict

Tool 1. Mapping the stakeholders

Tool 2. Mapping the needs and fears

Tool 3. Analyze the map

Sample Map

Conflict and violence are not the same thing. Conflict is not inherently negative, or damaging and can, produce positive outcomes. Violence always results in injury and destruction.


Structural violence
is human suffering that is caused by the exploitative or unjust nature of social, political, legal, cultural and economic structures and institution. Examples include poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination due to race, gender, sexual orientation.


Non-violence 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


Gender in Conflict Analysis

"The media—and media professionals—stand to gain by recognizing that there is a gender dimension to virtually every event, process, institution and/or individual experience covered by the media, including disasters and conflicts. And that, women, including the poor and the illiterate, have information, knowledge and opinions on practically everything. Failure to tap women—including those attempting to resume life after the disaster (tsunami, armed conflict)—as sources and resources can only impoverish media coverage and diminish the understanding of the post-tsunami scenario, as well as many other similar situations (Joseph, 2005)."

The gender-sensitive reporter, who understands how gender relations play out, is more equipped to uncover the underlying roots of the armed conflict and helps find solutions culled from the citizenry.

(Re)Framing stories with a gender lens

 

Journalists may consider the following questions when they write a story:

 

Sex identifies the biological and physical differences between women and men.

Gender identifies the social relation and roles between women and men constructed by society.

Gender roles show division of tasks and responsibilities between men and women as defined and further reinforced by patriarchal customary or religious practices, ethnic or cultural attitudes, class or caste, the formal legal system and institutional arrangements.

Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security

On October 31, 2000, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted Resolution 1325. The resolution marks the first time the Security Council addressed the impact of armed conflict on women, recognized the under-valued and under-utilized contributions of women to conflict prevention, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and peace-building, and stressed the importance of their equal and full participation as active agents in peace and security.

UNSCR 1325 calls for:

l Increased representation of women at all decision

making levels in conflict prevention, management

and resolution;

l Attention to the specific protection needs of women in conflict, including refugees;

l Increased support for women peace builders and

consultation with women’s groups;

l No impunity for war crimes against women,

including gender-based violence;

l Integrate a gender perspective into UN peace

keeping operations and post-conflict processes and in UN reporting and Security Council Missions; and

l Guarantee women’s and girl’s needs during

rehabilitation and protect women’s human rights in

rebuilding civil society.

Chapter 4

Tips for Journalists

How can journalists use the lenses of conflict-

sensitivity and gender-sensitivity in their daily

work? This chapter provides practical tips on engendering Peace Journalism, based on the matrix in Chapter 1. For further tips and explanations, see references listed at the end of this guide.

Peace/Conflict-Orientated

l Include all sides in your reportage. Instead of focusing on the tug-of-war between two warring parties, try to change the shape of the conflict by covering all communities caught in the crossfire.

l Go beyond the demands of the leaders and the elite. Include the demands of the people, women and men.

l Treat the sufferings and fears of all sides as equally newsworthy.

l Men are frequently identified as the stakeholders in relation to their roles (for example, as farmers, carvers, merchants, committee members, warriors), women often are not. Identify relevant subgroups of women based on their roles and interests (for example, fuel collectors, farmers, market sellers, weavers, mothers, students).

l See women as actively changing their situation and not just as suffering victims.

l Women, as a group, are also not homogeneous as stakeholders. They, too, must be dis-aggregated into different groups of individuals.

Truth-Orientated

l Use conflict analysis tools like conflict mapping inorder to learn of ways to re-frame a story.

l Distinguish opinions from facts. If someone expresses something, state her/his name so it will be reflected as her/his opinion and not the reporter’s.

l Be on guard for your own biases and prejudices as a reporter belonging to a party involved in the conflict. For example, a woman reporter must be aware and wary of her biases in a conflict involving genderviolence.

Re-framing is a technique of shifting the perception of a situation or problem to give it a different and/or more constructive interpretation. In mediation and negotiation, this method is used to recast a conflict to break deadlocks and make further progress in attaining a joint resolution.

People-Orientated

Journalists needs to be aware of the impact that trauma has on themselves and on others. This understanding can help the journalist tell a traumatic story knowledgeably and with appropriate sensitivity.

Coverage of crimes against women and minors is often trivialized and sensationalized by the media. In times of war/armed conflict, journalists practicing Engendered Peace Journalism can focus on the invisible effects of violence, especially gender-based violence.

Solution-Orientated

In covering conflicts, particularly armed conflicts and their aftermath:

United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security is binding to all UN member states. The media can play a role in monitoring the implementation of UNSCR 1325:

For more information on UNSCR 1325, visit www.PeaceWomen.org or www.un.org/events/res_1325.pdf.

Participatory Media Approach: Focus on Community Radio

Journalists have the power to select “what to report and how to report it”. This creates an uneven power relationship between the journalist and the story subject. Participatory media approach, such as community radio, allows the people you report about to participate in your story. Discuss the program format or/and the article with them beforehand and overcome the power gap.

Chapter 5

Self-Care Strategies for Journalists

“…We are journalists who do our jobs of reporting news, exposed to story after story, image after image of grief. We hurt, too… Usually we are rewarded by having the opportunity to help. We do our jobs and we do it well and we feel gratified—even blessed. But for many of us, there are new emotional difficulties, and these difficulties can and should be addressed (Frank Ochberg, 2001).

Journalists covering conflict situations face a real danger of emotional stress: they may be vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress disorder (STSD), to compassion fatigue or to survivor guilt. The symptoms of STSD are fear and anxiety, reliving unwanted memories, and a preoccupation with another’s pain. Compassion fatigue sets in as people become emotionally depleted. Journalist suffering from survivor guilt identify too much with their subjects, specially those who have lost loved ones, and sometimes blame themselves for not suffering a similar loss.

People who are regularly exposed to traumatic stress may experience reactions that are adverse to their mental and physical health, such as cynicism, isolation, excessive smoking or drinking, overeating or illicit drug use, anger, anxiety, avoidance, depression, and so forth. What journalists need to remember is that they may have a number of potential stress reactions when they write about stressful or traumatic topics.

Tips

Following are some self-care tips that journalists can use as suggested by The Dart Center for Trauma and Journalism:

Physical Well-Being

 

  1. Eat regularly and healthily
  2. Get enough sleep
  3. Get regular medical care for prevention and rest when sick
  4. Exercise: dance, swim, walk, run, play sports, sing, or do some other physical activity that is fun.
  5. Take time off; have a vacation; make time away from telephones, computers and the internet

Psychological Well-Being

 

  1. Make time for self-reflection
  2. Meditate, write a journal or seek counseling,
  3. Notice your inner experiences — listen to your thoughts, judgments, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings
  4. 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.
  5. Be aware of personal limitations. Learn to ask for support and to say no to extra responsibilities.

Emotional Well-Being

  1. Focus on strengthening you self-esteem by giving yourself affirmations, praising yourself.
  2. Surround yourself with comforting people, objects relationships and spaces
  3. Allow yourself to feel the full extent of emotions, crying and laughter, pain and joy.
  4. Express your outrage through creative outlets such as social action, letters, donations, marches and protests.

Spiritual Well-Being

  1. Identify what is meaningful to you and notice its place in your life such as being aware of non-material aspects, spending time with nature, and/or being with your spiritual community.
  2. Be open to the concept of “not knowing” or having all the answers.

References

Committee of Concerned Journalists. www.concernedjournalists.org

Cote, W. and Simpson, R. (2000). Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting about Victims and Trauma. New York: Columbia University Press.

Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. www.dartcenter.org

de la Cruz, P. A. , ed., (2004). Women in the News: An Isis Gender Equality Toolkit. Philippines: Isis International-Manila.

Joseph, A. (2005). Gender, Media and Tsunamis. India Together, February 2005. http://www.indiatogether.org/2005/feb/ajo-genmedia.htm

Dagapioso, M.F., Lasaca , M. C., Miglioretto, B., Objaan, P. and Reyes, L.S.,(2007). Women Making Air Waves for Peace: Training Modules by Mindanaw Women Writers, Inc. and Isis International-Manila, www.isiswomen.org

Lloyd, F. and Ross, H. (2005). Gender, Conflict and Journalism: A handbook for South Asia. Kathmandu: UNESCO and Nepal Press Institute.

Lynch, J. and McGoldrick, A. (2005). Peace Journalism. London: Hawthorn Press.

InterPress News Service, (2000). Revised IPS Gender and Development Glossary. Rome: IPS .

Ochberg, F.(2001) “When Helping Hurts,” www.giftfromwithin.org/html/helping.html

Search for Common Ground, www.sfcg.org

Isis International-Manila is a feminist NGO committed to creating spaces within information and communications structures and systems, that promote the many voices of women, particularly those from the South. Isis believes women’s access and capacity to participate in generating and disseminating their own knowledge and experiences through various mediums of communication can lead to transformation of society. Isis is likewise committed to challenge inequities, stereotypes and cultural and political homogenization furthered by globalized media that hamper the realization of a more just, sustainable and humane world.

Mindanaw Women Writers, Inc. (Min-WoW) is a group of writers who work in media, academe or are community-based. Min-WoW’s priorities include nurturing the writers’ well-being, safety, craft and rights.

It trains its members and other interested community-based groups in narrative non-fiction, peace journalism, creative documentation, and new media.

Women Making Airwaves for Peace

A joint project of Min-WoW and Isis International-Manila using community radio and engendered peace journalism as tools for peacebuilding

The project consists of:

All products of the project are downloadable at www.isiswomen.org

Isis Project Team: Raijeli Nicole (Project Coordinator); Aileen Familara (Project Manager), Bianca Miglioretto (Resource Person/Trainer), Marion Cabrera (Module Developer), Pretchie Obja-an (Trainer), Janice Lopez (Editorial Support)

Min-WoW Project Team: Lina Sagaral Reyes (Project Coordinator); Project Associates: Ma. Chona Lasaca, Terry Betonio, Ederlinda Fernandez, Imma Rae Dagapioso, Lowida Alcalde, Nena Undag, Sorhaila Latip-Yusoph, Elvie Manaytay, Amanah B. Lao, Felleen Donggay, Becky de Asis, Tess Superioridad, Jojie Jasmin Cabasan, Ellen Red, Helen Grace Uy. Resource Person/Trainer: Maisie Faith Dagapioso

Notes

Published by Isis International-Manila and Mindanaw Women Writers (Min-WoW), October 2007

This publication is an output of Women Making Airwaves for Peace: Using Community Radio & Engendered Peace Journalism as a Tool for Peace Building.

 

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