WISCOMP invites applications for a South Asian Peacebuilding Workshop titled Enriching Democratic Practice in South Asia:
Possibilities from the Field of Peacebuilding on the 30 – 31 of October, 2010 in New Delhi. Click here for details.

Peace Jounalism

Peace Journalism is a new approach to reporting conflict that is a fairer, broader and more accurate way of framing stories. It does not advocate being biased to one side of the conflict. Leading peace journalists, Annabel McGoldrick and Jake Lynch point out that while peace journalism entails that reporters and editors make choices – of not just what stories to report but also how to report them, this does not mean journalists must forego objectivity or turn a blind eye to violence. Rather they must place the violence into context, framing a story to not only emphasize the bloodshed but also to explain the reasons for its cause, shed light on the invisible effects of conflict, and encourage an understanding of the issues behind the hostility. Instead of focusing merely on flashpoints of overt violence in a conflict, media reportage must highlight the need, and efforts being made, to build peace in a conflict-affected region. With the workshop on peace journalism, WISCOMP’s initiatives on Peace Journalism seek to engage with approaches to conflict reportage in the media — focusing on Jammu and Kashmir. Acknowledging that media can powerfully shape discourses around conflict, it seeks to explore alternative frameworks that can contribute to promoting peace and transforming conflict in the region.

First Peace Journalism Workshop, 2007

A two-day WISCOMP workshop from March 30 – 31, 2007 was conceptualized to help translate the principles of peace journalism into concrete tools for action, especially in the context of media reportage on Jammu and Kashmir.

With this workshop, WISCOMP initiated a new project, seeking to engage with approaches to conflict reportage in the media — focusing on Jammu and Kashmir. Acknowledging that media can powerfully shape discourses around conflict, the project sought to explore alternative media frameworks that could contribute to promoting peace in the region.

Facilitating interaction between media students and journalists from Jammu and Kashmir, and Pakistan, the workshop aimed at developing a new media lexicon for regions affected by protracted conflict. Some of the resource persons at the workshop included Head of News of Radio Kashmir, Bashir Malik; Islamabad-based journalist and researcher; Zafarullah Khan; Karachi-based journalist Ishtiaq Ali Mehkri; faculty members from universities in Jammu and Kashmir – Nasir Mirza, Nitish Arora and Tarique Masoodi; Nidhi Razdan from NDTV and former television journalist Alpana Kishore, among various other journalists from mainstream English national dailies.

Second Peace Journalism Workshop, 2007

The second workshop was held in Srinagar on July 21-22, 2007 and sought to enable participants to look at the application of the principles of Peace Journalism within the spaces and constraints of the modern-day media. It was structured as a reflective exercise to facilitate a critical engagement with the theoretical learnings from the first workshop. It comprised the core group of participants who attended the first workshop, as well as a new batch of students. The core group led the deliberations, in the form of “peer facilitation”, in terms of bringing forward their learnings from the first workshop and integrating them to the practical exercises at the follow-up.

Third Peace Journalism Workshop, 2009

The third workshop titled ‘The Election Spectacle through the Peace Lens: Tensions and Possibilities’ was held on March 19-20, 2009 in New Delhi. This workshop broadly focused on the media analysis of the democratic electoral processes in Jammu and Kashmir. The electoral process provided the frame of engagement, through which the normative imperatives of peace journalism were put to test, in a context of dramatic confrontations and contestations. An attempt was made to delve deeper into the theoretical questions by engaging with the political circumstances in which that the J&K elections were held. Spread over two days, the workshop sought to provide an enabling space to earlier participants and some new entrants to the field to assess the breakthroughs, constraints and challenges faced by the media in Jammu and Kashmir particularly in the context of the Amarnath disturbance. Furthermore it provided a space to explore newer ideas to shape a constructive role for the media (both electronic and print) in processes of peacebuilding in the region.