Kenyan unrest illustrates how the media helps to escalate conflict

Publié le 4 février 2008 par hort

http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=25&newsid=113974

Media council should set rules for covering conflicts

PETER MWAURA

1/5/2008
Fair Play

After viewing a K24 Eyewitness News video tape by Jeff Koinange (of CNN fame) on the riots in Kibera, Nairobi, and several newspaper pictures of the post-election violence that began on Sunday, I was struck by one fact: The rioters understood that they must feed the cameras. In those pictures, the rioters were acting out for the cameras. They seemed to know that to further their side of the dispute they had to get the media to become part of them. They understood perfectly that they had to feed the media to keep their cause in the headlines.So when the cameras arrived, the rioters stepped up their war dance, held up their stones and machetes and burning tyres menacingly for the world to see. They were seeking to influence public perceptions of the riots.

And the media empowered them.

I was also struck by the symbiotic relationship between journalists and rioters. I was reminded of the famous CNN video tape of Nigeria’s Niger Delta rebels repeatedly aired on February 7, 2007. Wielding guns, the rebels in black outfits and black ski masks put up a war dance for the benefit of Jeff Koinange and his TV crew. BY COVERING A CONFLICT, JOURNALISTS play out the conflict. They frame, and sometimes inflame, the conflict. They create the reality on which we base our understanding of the conflict.

In some situations, the media even help to escalate and ripen the conflict, even to create new conflicts and flashpoints. There are many instances of this. Perhaps the most illustrative is Charles Taylor’s rebellion in Liberia. Mr Taylor started his rebellion in the 1990s reportedly with $300, some 20 hired thugs and a satellite phone, which he used to call BBC for interviews. After a series of dramatic interviews with BBC’s Focus on Africa, his rebellion came to fruition.

The media also contributed to the escalation and ripening of conflicts in countries such as Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) in the early 1990s, the Soviet Union during its break-up in 1991, Palestine, Israel and South Africa during the apartheid era. In those conflicts, when a TV crew appeared a riot occurred because rioters were acting out for the cameras. In some of those conflict situations, if there had not been cameras there probably would not have been riots. The dynamics of a conflict tend to sweep everything into its net. Journalists are sucked in and become players in the conflict.

During the recent riots in France, where demonstrators went on nightly car burning sprees, journalists were caught in the conflict dynamics. Editors were faced with the dilemma of whether to cover, or cover up, the riots. As one French editor aptly put it: “Do we send journalists because cars are burning, or are cars burning because we send journalists?”

The French public television station “France 3” stopped broadcasting the numbers of torched cars. Other TV stations followed suit. One of France’s leading TV news executives, who censored his broadcasts, said he did not want to encourage extremism. Jean-Claude Dassier, the director general of the news service, LCI, said the prominence given to the rioters on international news networks had been “excessive” and could be fanning the flames of the violence. He said his channel had decided not to show footage of burning cars.

“Journalism is not simply a matter of switching on the cameras and letting them roll. You have to think about what you’re broadcasting,” he said. Most journalists, especially those trained in the Western tradition, however, think conflict is news and news is conflict. They also treat news as a commodity and compete over it.

They say they are gatherers of facts and their role is to provide information, not to create peace. However, in Africa, in such emerging democracies like Kenya, journalism cannot consist of merely reporting facts, especially in inflammable situations. There is an arguable case for peace journalism. The violence that Kenya has experienced was directed against individuals and groups as representatives of larger communities. The violence was displayed, with the help of the media, as public spectacles so as to spread fear among the targeted communities.

I think the Government ban on “live broadcasts”, announced during the height of the riots, was informed by such considerations. GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN ALFRED Mutua explained that the Government “requested the media not to air live Press conferences and call-ins into radio shows because it wants to empower editors to be in control of the information relayed by their media houses”.

He went on to say that in the prevailing environment, some people were using the media to call for violence and to incite members of the public to engage in violence. The Media Council, however, rejected the argument, arguing the ban infringed Press freedom.

But there seems to be a case for the council to re-think the issue of reporting ethnically inspired conflicts, particularly in situations where the conflicts have the potential to escalate and lead to ethnic cleansing or untold destruction of lives and property. The council should consider formulating some guidelines