The power of the media cannot be denied. It was the activist Malcolm X who put this power into perspective when he so eloquently observed: “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”
It is, therefore, ironic to point out that in human history the media's impact on the escalation of conflict is more widely recognized than the media's impact on peace-building. History is replete with glaring cases where the media has been used to incite people toward violence. For instance: Rwanda's radio Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC) urged listeners to pick up machetes and take to the streets to kill what they called 'the cockroaches.' Broadcasters in the Balkans polarized local communities to the point where violence became an acceptable tool for addressing grievances.
Adolf Hitler used the media to create an entire worldview of hatred for Jews and other minority groups. Among the defendants during the Nuremburg trials after the Second World War was one Julius Streicher who although never held any official position within the Nazi party, was considered to be among the top individuals who bore the greatest responsibility for the holocaust. For close to twenty five years, Streicher as an Editor had “educated” the German people through propaganda which was primarily done through the medium of his newspaper.
Nonetheless, it is not uncommon for people to say that media's impact on peace-building needs to be significant given its influence on conflict. There is no doubt that the influence of the media in the global arena has increasingly been recognized, more so its power to either escalate or contain potential conflicts. Yet, the role of the media in the conflict, as well as its ability to facilitate peace has not been adequately tackled. Its role is compounded by government censorship and domination by interests of owners, companies and corporate entities.
It is not wrong to say that the media plays contradictory but important roles at every stage of their trajectory. Hence, if it can be said that the media contributes in breeding violence and supporting forces that leads to violent conflict, it can also be said that the media has the power to stop violence and influence activities that promote peace in the society. It is a question that needs to be determined by each media house. And, therefore, the important question, what values does each media house stand for?
The challenge of the media in the context of peacebuilding is many. For instance, the media faces an uphill task to exercise the right to freedom of the press in situations of fragile democracies, where politics, poverty, corruption, tribalism, factionalism and identity-based conflicts are prevalent. In such conditions it is imperative that the media itself does not become a victim of psychological warfare (rumors, confusion and division). Most importantly, the need for media houses to overcome a paradigm driven and motivated by economic gains remains one of the primary challenges in its pursuit to be a value based media. This raises the fundamental question on whether conflict-driven media sell more than peace-centered media. It is a question the readers themselves will have to determine.
Notwithstanding the challenges, it has become far more important for the media in today’s troubling context to take a conscious and prudent stand on issues of war and peace. For this, the media needs to evolve out from the traditional understanding of reporting and to become more engaged with people and issues that affect their lives.
A good place to begin this transition is for the media to become more proactive in systematically monitoring the performance of the State and its institutions and reporting activities of the government to establish accountability and transparency on issues of democracy, justice, freedom, structural violence and violations of human rights. The media needs to deliberately enhance and empower public participation to determine themselves on issues of value based self-governance and democracy while consciously educating the public on the natural link between justice, peace, human rights and human security.
In instances of specific conflicts of interest the media can educate the parties about each other's interests, needs, and core values. The media may itself assist in reframing the issues in ways that make the conflict more tractable and in formulating various options to resolving it. Towards this end, the media can help educate the conflicting parties and the public about existing peacebuilding resources and share learning lessons and reflections of other people’s experiences. In creating awareness, critical solidarity and public participation the media can create conditions that will help in achieving balance of power between the parties so that democratic dialogue is possible.
At its heart, a peace lens for the media involves partnering with peoples and communities towards building trust, accountability and by creating safe and public spaces for sharing experiences and truth telling. In doing so, the media can play a role in deflating rumors and propaganda and in particular psychological warfare being used by the different stakeholders.
Essentially it is about cultivating critical consciousness and nurturing values of a shared humanity to enable a bottom-up approach to a justpeace and creatively enabling a paradigm shift for a new imagination where people are no longer the objects, but makers of their own history.
It is for each media organization and media house to make a conscious, free and informed value-based decision on questions of justice, peace and human security. Question is, whether it has the moral courage and political will to take this path.
