Peace Journalism

Peace journalism, according to its advocates, is a way to report on conflict without increasing the conflict itself. This sounds simple, but its application would surely change the nature of journalism because of a reporter’s orientation to conflict as news. Therefore, perhaps the easiest way to understand peace journalism is to examine it in opposition to the prevailing ways of covering war and conflict. (Some authors even refer to typical journalism as “war” journalism because of the journalistic practice of framing conflict in terms of trying to discover who is winning and who is losing.) A criticism of peace journalism is that it expects journalists not only to take sides but also to advocate for peaceful resolutions of conflicts.

The ideas promoted by peace journalism’s advocates ...