journalism with context

From monday this week up until very very late last night i worked as an interpreter on this Training of Trainers for the CoPeJoN - Conflict and Peace Journalists Network. This is the 3rd of their series of Peace and Conflict Journalists training, intended to shape some trainers out of some journalists in Indonesia so that the people from Phillipines didnt have to come down to Indonesia everytime they wanna hava a training.

As a person whos life long dream is to be a journalist specializing in conflict zones, this is a step towards my dream, and i get paid to ^^;


A lot of the materials is highly interesting. I learnt that journalism is as exciting as i thought it would be, yet i find that its un-nerving and complicates beyond my expectations. The participants of this trianing are pretty much hotshot journalists of Indonesia; editor of Jakarta Post, a senior aceh journalist who was once take hostage by GAM in Aceh, a journalist who is a multiple award-winner including nominated a few times for the Pulitzer, and a few other TV journalists. I mean, wow! One day I'd like to be the guy sitting in that trainee's seat, putting on the table my experience and my fat tele-lens SLR camera and discuss about the profounding complications of conflict journalism.. Phew! :)


I learnt that there was a deep ordeal in the face of journalism in conflict. There was this trand they call "traditional journalism" which led to journalistic pieces being non-partial and non neutral, only covering one single aspect of an incident, and problem is most of the angles taken are only exploiting the gore, blood, and violence happening. This is problematic as apparently conflict has many sides to its coin; background, stakeholders, context, etc. Unless all these aspects are explored what you have is a media propaganda.

I sat down had a chat with Carlone, a senior Phillipino journalist who once covered the Mindanao conflict, he said that "journalism is not about showing people blood, its not to judge a conflict, its also never meant to advocate peace. what journalism should be is to cover as many angles as possible from an incident, report it fairly, and provide people the choices so that they can judge a certain problem, and thats how we propagate pressure to the government. we can never cut the people in this process, thats the problem with traditional journalism"..


This is wonderful! I never thought of this before. Its so true, yet so profounding that I never really sat down and thought about it. Have a look at for instance a cover on the news about government evicting people, what you see is the riots, the violence. You never really see in-depth analisys of what happened, why did it have to lead to a physical clash, etc. This is what Conflict Sensitive Journalism is about..

I learnt that conflict is complex, violence is complex. In journalism there's also a triangle, which on the top it has democracy, and on the sides human rights and peace.. these aspects incorporated in a piece of journalism produces quality reporting and voicing the voiceless.. what this creates is a choice for people, the choice to do whatnot.. and to pressure world governments to either change or stick with status quo..


I also learnt throughout the training that there's such a thing called the "2 part geometry" where the tendency of labelling within an article could escalate conflict. There's an analysed piece of journalism from a reporter in Ambon that not only reflects partiality and picking sides, but it squeezes in like 3 different news in one article! Fiasco, eh? The framing of the news is designed so that readers identifies there's a conflict among religions although thats not necessarily the case.. very problematic, aiy?

So i guess there's much to learn for conflict journalism in me side.. How about you guys? You think that the profounding ordeals of conflict journalism is problematic? Or is blood and violence your thang?