"Heisenberg uncertainty principle" in journalism

[Doug Millison]

Excerpt from an article well worth reading to gain
more insight into the ways that news organizations
cover violence and impose their own ideologies:

http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/coveringviolence.shtml

12 Points Of Concern
Galtung laid out 12 points of concern where journalism
often goes wrong when dealing with violence. Each
implicitly suggests more explicit remedies. 


l. Decontextualizing violence:  focusing on the
irrational without looking at the reasons for
unresolved conflicts and polarization. 

2. Dualism:  reducing the number of parties in a
conflict to two, when often more are involved. Stories
that just focus on internal developments often ignore
such outside or "external" forces as foreign
governments and transnational companies. 

3. Manicheanism:  portraying one side as good and
demonizing the other as "evil." 

4. Armageddon:  presenting violence as inevitable,
omitting alternatives. 

5. Focusing on individual acts of violence while
avoiding structural causes, like poverty, government
neglect and military or police repression. 

6. Confusion:  focusing only on the conflict arena
(i.e., the battlefield or location of violent
incidents) but not on the forces and factors that
influence the violence. 

7. Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus never
explaining why there are acts of revenge and spirals
of violence. 

8. Failure to explore the causes of escalation and the
impact of media coverage itself. 

9. Failure to explore the goals of outside
interventionists, especially big powers. 

l0. Failure to explore peace proposals and offer
images of peaceful outcomes. 

11. Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with actual
peace. 

12. Omitting reconciliation:  conflicts tend to
reemerge if attention is not paid to efforts to heal
fractured societies. When news about attempts to
resolve conflicts are absent, fatalism is reinforced.
That can help engender even more violence, when people
have no images or information about possible peaceful
outcomes and the promise of healing.



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