Routledge Handbook of Media, Conflict and Security

Piers Robinson, Philip Seib, Romy Frohlich, Piers Robinson, Philip Seib, Romy Frohlich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415712910
• eBook ISBN: 9781317914297
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Social Sciences

This Handbook links the growing body of media and conflict research with the field of security studies.

The academic sub-field of media and conflict has developed and expanded greatly over the past two decades. Operating across a diverse range of academic disciplines, academics are studying the impact the media has on governments pursuing war, responses to humanitarian crises and violent political struggles, and the role of the media as a facilitator of, and a threat to, both peace building and conflict prevention. This handbook seeks to consolidate existing knowledge by linking the body of conflict and media studies with work in security studies.

The handbook is arranged into five parts:

• Theory and Principles.
• Media, the State and War
• Media and Human Security
• Media and Policymaking within the Security State
• New Issues in Security and Conflict and Future Directions

For scholars of security studies, this handbook will provide a key point of reference for state of the art scholarship concerning the media-security nexus; for scholars of communication and media studies, the handbook will provide a comprehensive mapping of the media-conflict field.

PART I

Theory and principles

1
SECRETS AND LIES

On the ethics of conflict coverage

Richard Lance Keeble

Introduction

This chapter will explore a wide range of ethical issues involved in the reporting of conflict. It will argue that too much of the debate over the ethics of conflict coverage is based (either implicitly or explicitly) on conventional notions of professionalism which leads to a prioritising of issues relating to the mainstream media. Drawing from radical critiques of professionalism, it will aim to relocate the debate within the activist, alternative sphere. It will also explore the studies of and theories relating to the national security state to examine the crucial roles of both the alternative/peace media–defined by Atton and Hamilton (2008) as ‘journalism outside mainstream institutions and networks’–in bringing to light the warfare activities of the secret state and that of ‘the necessary mavericks’ within the corporate, mass media.

Professionalism – and its problematics

It is not without significance that William Howard Russell became one of the founders of modern, professional war correspondence – ‘the miserable parent of a luckless tribe’, as he described himself (Knightley 2000: 2)–in his reporting for The Times of the Crimean War of 1854–1856 at a critical moment in the history of the British press. In 1855, the last of the Stamp Acts (which had placed an extra charge on newspapers which effectively served to limit their readership to a wealthy elite) was repealed (Curran and Seaton 1994: 31). And this allowed for the emergence of a mass-selling newspaper industry based largely on advertising. In the process, the unstamped (and hence illegal) trade union-based, republican, revolutionary and highly partisan press– which had previously been far more popular than the elite press– was marginalised. The market had effectively‘censored’ the radical, activist media (Curran and Seaton 1994: 32–48).

Russell’s reporting on the failures of the British military in the Crimean maelstrom was said to have led to the fall of the government of the Earl of Aberdeen in January 1855 – thus adding ‘ammunition’ at this critical moment to the emerging myth of the corporate press as the ‘Fourth Estate’ separate from and critical of the state. Yet The Times played only a minor role: a significant section of the British elite were determined on Aberdeen’s fall,irrespective of any views expressed in the newspaper (Keeble 1997: 193). Moreover, Phillip Knightley argues that while Russell exposed the incompetence of the army in the Crimea he failed to expose and understand the causes (2000: 16). Though he criticised the lot of the ordinary soldier he never attacked the officers ‘to whose social class he belonged himself ’. And Knightley adds (ibid.): ‘Above all, Russell made the mistake, common to many a war correspondent, of considering himself part of the military establishment.’

The latter half of the nineteenth century in both the US and UK also saw the emergence of professionalism – with apolitical corporate journalism (along with other professions such as teaching, law, medicine) and its associated ideologies of objectivity and press freedom being closely integrated into the operations of the bourgeois state (McChesney 2000: 49). Yet Parkin (1979) and Collins (1990) stress the notion of social closure according to which occupations seek to regulate market conditions in their favour by restricting access to a limited group of eligible, mainly middle class professionals. The notion of closure is useful in helping to explain how the ideologies of professionalism – not just in the US and UK but in the 18-nation survey conducted by Thomas Hanitzsch and his colleagues (2011) – serve to exclude alternative, activist, politically partisan media from even the definition of ‘journalism’ (see also Weaver and Willnat 2012). While a number of commentators today see the growing power of non-professional media as a threat to standards (see Eldridge 2000), Althusser (1969) saw professions as part of the ideological state apparatus – crucial to the formation of bourgeois hegemony – while Ivan Illich (1973) described professions as a ‘form of imperialism’ operating in modern societies as repressive mechanisms undermining democracy. This ideology is certainly still so pervasive that it provides the frame around which most of the debate over media ethics in times of conflict operate today (for instance, see Owen and Purdey 2009).

The cynical approach

Within the broader context of the ideology of professionalism, some corporate journalists in the mainstream media still adopt a cynical, amoral approach to the reporting of conflict (Keeble 2009: 5). This was summed up by a national newspaper editor, invited to a London journalism school to give a talk on ethics. ‘Efficks – wot’s that?’ he asked bemused. And so he simply proceeded to tell the gathered throng of students about his life and (highly successful) times in the industry. It is an attitude based on the conviction that ethical issues have little relevance for corporate journalists. There is not enough time for them and journalists have little power to influence them anyway. Profits are at the root of all journalism, so why bother with idealistic fancies such as ethics.

Such cynicism can be linked to a philosophical, existential position propounded by the 19th century German Max Stirner (1806–1856) which regards all human experience as essentially amoral. Ethical egotism takes a cynical view of the altruism behind moral conduct, suggesting that all actions (however much they are clothed in the rhetoric of morality) are essentially motivated by self-interest (see Paterson 1971). A variant on this appeared in the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) who described himself as an ‘immoralist’, arguing in Beyond Good and Evil (1886) that there were no moral facts and that evil made no sense (see Sanders 2003: 23). Also linked to this cynicism are theories relating to the ‘realist’ approach to global affairs according to which elites operate either in accordance with international law or not – depending on the perceived ‘interests of the state’. Drawing on the work of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), realists argue that states are best seen as self-interested and primarily concerned with survival. Journalists’role, then, in the reporting of foreign affairs and conflict, is to understand these dynamics and avoid the empty rhetoric of morality in their reporting.

The patriotic imperative

A completely opposite approach is promoted by journalists who argue that at times of conflict their essential responsibility as professionals is to support the actions of the state – perceived not as ‘immoral’ but ‘good’. Indeed, this patriotic imperative lies at the heart of British journalists’ culture (Norton-Taylor 1991). As Max Hastings, former editor of the London Evening Standard but most famous for being the first journalist to march into Port Stanley at the end of the Falklands War in 1982, commented:

I felt my function was simply to identify totally with the interests and feelings of that force [the task force] … when one was writing one’s copy one thought: beyond telling everybody what the men around me were doing, what can one say that is likely to be most helpful in winning the war?

(Williams 1992: 156–157)

Indeed, the system of pooling (or embedding) reporters with frontline troops (widely adopted by Western militaries since the Vietnam War) has served to reinforce the corporate media’s essential role as propagandists for the state at times of conflict. As The Times media commentator Brian MacArthur reported: ‘Embeds essentially became adjuncts to the forces’ (2003). And predictably, during all the recent, major overt conflicts (Iraq 1991 and 2003, Kosovo 1999, Afghanistan 2001, Libya 2011) the vast bulk of editors, safe in their Fleet Street bunkers, have fervently banged the patriotic drum (Keeble 1997; Chomsky 1999; Hammond 2007a and 2007b; Forte 2012).

The war correspondent as‘eye witness’ hero

A popular rhetorical strategy of mainstream war correspondents is to highlight their professional responsibilities to record accurately what they see. They do not take political stances – they are merely eyewitnesses to historic events. This approach neatly ties into dominant notions about‘objectivity’,‘media freedom’,‘the public interest’ – and the‘Fourth Estate’ which stresses the watchdog role of the professional media providing checks and balances on abuses of power by both government and other professions. Celebrations of the journalist as intrepid battler for truth appear prominently when they are killed, injured or taken hostage while engaged in the often highly dangerous business of reporting from the frontlines. In this spirit, Peter Beaumont and John Sweeney (2000) wrote in their Observer tribute to two colleagues killed covering the fighting in Sierra Leone:‘The best stories are those that afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, the ones that the people of power do not want told.’

Similarly, after The Times correspondent Anthony Loyd and photographer Jack Hill were attacked while reporting the Syrian civil war in May 2014, the newspaper captured many elements of the dominant ideology (with its stress on separating ‘fact’from ‘ propaganda’) when it editorialised:

War reporters are not omniscient. Their information is inevitably partial. Yet they are honour-bound to describe the world as they see it and not according to a set of ideological presuppositions… The Times is not neutral in its editorial views. Informed by the testimony of our reporters, we have no doubt that Assad bears prime responsibility for Syria’s torment. Our reporting takes no side, however, but accuracy. … The ability to distinguish fact from propaganda is what our readers expect. It is through the bravery and professionalism of Loyd, Hill and others that we seek to fulfil that obligation.

(The Times 2014)

The journalism of attachment

The closeness of the corporate media to dominant economic, cultural and ideological forces means that the mainstream largely functions to promote the interests of the military/ industrial/political/entertainment complex (Herman and Chomsky 1994; Der Derian 2001). Yet within advanced capitalist economies, many of them currently suffering acute downturns following the 2008 crisis – which, to a large extent, stemmed from the over-resourcing of US/UK military and imperial adventurism (see Johnson 2010) – the contradictions within corporate media have provided certain spaces for progressive journalism.

Chris Atton (2004: 10) warns against presenting a polarised vision of the mainstream and alternative spheres, positing a‘hegemonic approach’ that‘suggests a complexity of relationships between radical and mainstream that previous binary models have been unable to identify’. Robert Hackett (2007) suggests that it is the ethical responsibility of journalists to reform the mainstream from within. Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model (1994: 2) stresses the role of the corporate media in forming a single propaganda system where‘money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalise dissent and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their message across to the public’. But for Hackett, this model is too deterministic. It thus fails to‘identify the scope and conditions under which newsworkers could exercise the kind of choices called for’ by a more peaceoriented journalism and to acknowledge that individual journalists are‘active and creative agents’ able to combine an involvement in the corporate media with regular contributions to alternative, partisan, campaigning media (Hackett 2007: 93)

Hackett also draws on the‘hierarchy of influences’ model of Shoemaker and Reese (1996) and Bourdieu’s notion of the media as a relatively autonomous institutional sphere (1998) to further theorise the activities of progressive newsworkers within the corporate media to promote the interests of the peace movement. Arguing that both models suggest some degree of agency for newsworkers, Hackett stresses:‘There is, indeed, a necessary role for dedicated journalists to take the lead’ (2007: 93). Progressive journalists of this important hybrid group today might include Tom Bower, Ian Cobain, Barbara Ehrenreich, Susan George, Stephen Grey, Robert Fisk, Seymour Hersh, Phillip Knightley, Paul Lashmar, Richard Norton-Taylor, John Pilger, Arundhati Roy and Jonathan Steele.

At the same time, Hackett acknowledges the severe constraints on progressive journalists operating within the mainstream:‘Ultimately it seems probable that in Western corporate media at least, journalists have neither sufficient incentives nor autonomy vis-à-vis their employers to transform the way news is done without support from powerful external allies’ (ibid.). Oliver Boyd-Barrett (2010) also highlights the propaganda model’s failure to acknowledge journalists’ individual agency, though his focus is more on the penetration of corporate media by covert intelligence and their sympathisers (see Keeble 2015).

Mockery, critique and the limits of acceptable debate

How to further explain and theorise this progressive, ethical‘space’ within the corporate media? Is it useful to understand it as operating within a sort of modern-day court? During the Middle Ages, one of the most important roles at courts throughout Europe (and in India, Persia and China) was occupied by the jester. Often known as‘licensed fools’ their crucial function was to mock and critique their employer. Queen Elizabeth the First (who ruled between 1558 and 1603) was said to have even rebuked one of her fools for not being severe enough in his mockery of her. Fools, clowns and jesters all appear in Shakespeare’s plays: Feste, the jester in Twelfth Night, is even described as‘wise enough to play the fool’ (Otto 2001).

All this tells us a lot about the importance of radical critique, humour and mockery in societies. Rulers know they will always be attacked – but clever are those rulers who control the attacks! The court system did just that. Today, intriguingly, a modern version of the court system operates, and while there is no formal licensing, a subtler – and hence more powerful – unwritten system helps to define the limits of acceptable debate and provides a crucial legitimising function for the‘democratic’ state.

Daniel Hallin, in his seminal analysis of US media coverage of the Vietnam War (1986), identified the various ideological spheres: there is the sphere of consensus around topics on which there is, in general, elite agreement; then there’s the sphere of legitimate controversy, around topics on which there are significant elite disagreements; and finally there’s the sphere of deviance inhabited by issues either marginalised or eliminated from the dominant debate (ibid.: 116–118). In this context, it’s useful to see the work of progressive journalists within the mainstream as falling within the sphere of‘legitimate controversy’.

Significantly, Hallin argues that ideology determines the structuring of the spheres – thus the notion that the US was conducting a criminal invasion of South Vietnam constituted the‘deviant view’ excluded from the dominant media. Yet Hallin may have exagger...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations and acronyms
• Introduction: media, conflict and security
• PART I Theory and principles
• PART II Media, the state and war
• PART III Media and human security
• PART IV Media and policymaking within the security state
• PART V New issues in security and conflict and future directions
• Index