Media literacy seminar launches into sea of necessity
As American winds down the road toward the election, it's become abundantly clear, if it wasn't already, that social and traditional media are being weaponized by political operatives and malevolent foreign actors against the American people.

How can we fight back? I think one of the best ways is through media literacy. 

Media literacy is the thrust behind a project I'm spearheading this fall. Sponsored by a Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund Rapid Response award from the U.S. Department of State, the project is titled, “Media Literacy for Students: Lessons from Covid-19.”

It kicked off yesterday with a Zoom conference for Center Middle and Center High School students from Kansas City, and college students from Johnson County Community College (Overland Park, KS) and Park University (Parkville, MO).

Co-presenters Lewis Diuguid (journalist/multicultural education trainer), Allan Leonard (Fact Check Northern Ireland), and I presented the attendees with an introduction to mis, dis, and mal-information and an overview of mis/disinformation in media reports about Covid-19 and the recent civil rights protests. We armed the students with information about how to sniff out fake news (e.g. consider the source, the target audience, double-check info, examine the writer’s motivations, etc.); how to conduct their own fact checking; and how to implement their own basic content analysis study to detect media biases. The students did an excellent job coming up with coding lists designed to discern differences, for example, in reports about hydroxycholroquine (a Covid “cure” promoted by Donald Trump) on Fox News vs. CNN.

The project will continue this fall as students produce a media-literacy themed magazine and podcast. Stay tuned for details.

How People Are Impacted by Violent Media

How People Are Impacted by Violent Media
I was honored to speak at the +Peace “Peacebuilding Action Week” on Monday, 14 Sept. The +Peace team assigned me an interesting topic: How People are Impacted by Violent News.” 

I begin with a quick overview of the ubiquitiousness of violence in news media, which has been well documented by numerous researchers. I put my own spin on the topic, and added a new source of violence (and its accompanying fear) in the media: campaign commercials, and especially those from the Trump campaign. I showed one commercial featuring an older women menaced by a burglar intended to deliver an “unsafe in Biden’s America” message. 

The meat of my presentation, following a break-out discussion asking participants to analyze media images, was on peace journalism, and how it can offer an antidote to the traditional violent narratives that I discussed earlier in my presentation. Specifically as it relates to violence, I offered nine suggestions for applying PJ to reducing violence and sensationalism: 

• Provide context; report trends
• Make crime coverage less episodic 

• Don’t sensationalize 

• Bloody images necessary? 

• Don’t glorify the crime 

• Use neutral language, not: slaughter, bloody, massacre, martyr 

• Call out fear-mongering politicians
• No notoriety for shooters/manifestos 

• Report about solutions 

+Peace’s Peacebuilding Action Week continues Wednesday-Friday this week. “Peace in our homes and communities” is the theme today, followed by “Peace in our Cities Thursday,” and “Peace in our World” Friday. You can register and find out more at https://pluspeace.org/peacebuilding-action-week-2020 . 

 This was my first and, I hope, not my last engagement with +Peace, which “is activating a global movement of people that are invested in building a culture of peace - grounded in our peacebuilding realities & the hope of our collective futures,” according to its website.

Events spotlight media-social justice, safely covering protests
While the world may have almost come to a stop, peace journalism hasn’t, as evidenced by the two events I spoke at this week. 

The first, on Wednesday, was a Zoom presentation to kick off the annual Greater Kansas City Peacebuilding Conference. I discussed “Media Narratives: Impeding Social Justice.” I led off with a discussion about the divergent partisan narratives of the Black Lives Matter protests (see chart), and went on to explain how this coverage has impeded social justice by inaccurately tarring protesters with a “violent” label and “stigmatizing protesters as deviant and depicting protests as violent.”  Also, such coverage is episodic, and doesn’t generate “substantive information about the event’s background or the grievances or agendas of the movement behind the protest.” (See-- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1940161219853517 .) 

Several of the audience questions dealt with how to better inform oneself. This led me, inevitably, into endorsing media literacy. I urged the audience to break out of their ideological news bubbles, and to seek out news that contradicts their worldview. In a nutshell, liberals should watch Hannity and read the Wall St. Journal, and conservatives should read the Washington Post and watch Rachel Maddow. 

The next event in the Greater Kansas City Peacebuilding Conference is a discussion by journalist/activist Lewis Diuguid titled, “Disinformation, Civil Rights Protests, and Social Justice” at 1pm CST on September 21, the international day of peace. To register or read more about the conference, see https://www.jccc.edu/conferences/peacebuilding/ . 

KC BLM protests, by Carlos Moreno-KCUR

My second event on Thursday, sponsored by the International Relations Council, was a Zoom forum on the safety of journalists. I began by giving a brief overview of challenges to reporters posed by both Covid 19 and covering the Black Lives Matter protests. Then, I was joined by KCUR multimedia journalists Carlos Moreno, who detailed his experiences covering the BLM protests in Kansas City.  I talked about threats to press freedom around the world related to Covid, then presented about the arrests and harassment journalists have faced covering the BLM protests. Moreno shared his photos of the protests taken in Kansas City, along with his general impression about his safety. He said that both protesters and police treated him well, and that with the exception of one small incident, he never felt threatened.

We also discussed the Committee to Protect Journalists tips on safely covering protests that include wearing protective gear and utilizing situational awareness. 

 

 

For responsible election coverage, local news can lead the way
As the smoke clears from the political conventions and the nation lurches toward Nov. 3, all eyes will be on the media and the way it covers the race for the White House and congress.

Some of those eyes will be turned to bitterly partisan media that plays to its base. If you’re enamored with Sean Hannity on Fox or Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, the odds that you’re still persuadable in terms of your presidential choice are extremely low.  

That said, there is still an opportunity for media in the middle of the political spectrum (ABC, CBS, NPR) and especially local media to report the election in a responsible, bipartisan way that informs and empowers viewers rather than polarizing and angering them.

Local media are especially well-positioned to inform skeptical voters. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 45% of Americans trust reporting by local news organizations “a great deal” or “quite a lot,” compared with 31% for national news organizations. In fact, 54% of respondents said local media did an excellent or good job of “making sure people in your local area have the knowledge they need to be informed about public affairs.” 

Local media, then, can leverage this trust to produce electoral reporting that presents reports that tell audiences what to think about, rather than what to think, in a non-partisan, balanced, and objective way. In a perusal of KC television news websites on Aug, 31, there are locally produced news stories that fit this criteria, like several from Fox 4 KC (“Two Kansas doctors but differing Covid 19 takes in Senate race”; 2020 Voter guide focuses on issues of importance for Kansas kids”; “National get out the vote campaigns cause confusion locally”). On KCTV’s website, there are a few Covid stories, but no stories directly related to the election. (However, there is lots of crime coverage). On KSHB’s site, there is an Election 2020 navigation bar at the top. On the elections page, there is a handy guide that categorized election news by subject (economy, race relations, coronavirus, etc.) There are also local stories on the Kansas senate race, and voter confusion in Johnson County. On the KMBC website, under local news, there were a few Covid stories, but no election-related news.

Exemplary, responsible local broadcast coverage can be found on KCUR 90.3fm and at KCUR.org. Recent “Up to Date” talk show segments have included reports on voting with the Missouri secretary of state, interviews with area RNC and DNC delegates, and ongoing coverage of Black Lives Matter and its impact on local and national politics. Under the local news tab on KCUR.org, there is an Election 2020 header that has useful information on how to vote absentee or in advance, and a “meet the candidates” story on those running for a Missouri state senate seat.

While there is a lot of good information out there, both local and national media can better serve the public by downplaying the ubiquitous and ultimately unproductive flood of stories about which candidate is ahead in the latest poll. A study of the 2016 presidential campaign by the Harvard Shorenstein Center found that, in five major newspapers, “almost half of each candidate’s coverage focused on the horse race (43% for Hillary Clinton and 42% for Donald Trump), much more than was devoted to their policy stands (9% for Clinton and 12% for Trump).” 

Horse race coverage, according to Harvard University researcher and professor Dr. Thomas Patterson, is linked to an uninformed electorate as well as distrust in politicians and media outlets. In addition, such coverage shortchanges female candidates who rely on policy positions to build credibility, and third party candidates who aren’t seen as legitimate. (Link)

Finally, recognizing the increasing political polarization, the responsible journalist would give a voice to the politically voiceless—in this case, the moderates and compromisers, instead of exclusively spotlighting the extreme, divisive voices on either end of the political spectrum.

So while we can’t expect much to change on cable TV, local media particularly can play an important role in producing a more thoughtful, and less emotional and reflexively partisan, electorate.

Zoom seminar reaches, energizes 255 Sudanese journalists
I’ve given perhaps a hundred peace journalism seminars and workshops in 27 countries around the world. The seminar I presented for Sudanese journalists last week, sponsored by the U.S. Embassy and U.S. State Dept., was perhaps the most interesting, and definitely the most unique.

First, the three day workshop was presented entirely via Zoom. Secondly, the seminar set a record for the largest single peace journalism seminar with 255 participants from 15 of the 18 regions of Sudan. The participant-journalists were mostly gathered at universities. And third, despite the size and virtual nature of the seminar, the participants were unusually eager to share their viewpoints and experiences.

The first day of the seminar featured an introduction to peace journalism. I led a discussion about what responsible journalism should do, and should look like, in Sudan. Several participants discussed the importance of freedom of the press as a prerequisite to improving journalism, and hoped that the 2019 revolution will pave the way for expanded press freedoms. There is still substantial improvement needed in this area, however. Human Rights Watch and others have reported on recent efforts by the army to threaten and muzzle critical journalists using the same anti-freedom laws wielded by the previous autocratic Sudanese regime. 

Several other journalists mentioned the important role journalism should play in “celebrating diversity” and rejecting traditional “us vs. them” narratives, one of the cornerstones of peace journalism.  Others still emphasized the importance of being unbiased, and that this is especially important in reporting about other ethnic groups.

The most interesting question of the day was whether it is okay for journalists to exaggerate a story if this exaggeration would create greater awareness of a vitally important issue. My response invoked “the boy who cried wolf.” What happens, I asked, when there is a story of great importance? Will the public think we’re exaggerating it? Every time we exaggerate and sensationalize, we lose our credibility, I noted.

On day two, we discussed social media and its central role in the revolution. One participant said that using social media, “People promoting the revolution were guiding the narrative…They were aware of what was happening in real spaces. They conveyed the information. Traditional journalism was limited by the security apparatus and couldn’t participate as fully as they would have liked.”

We also discussed the central role of media in reconciliation processes. Journalists from Gedarif University said in the chat room, “The media has a vanguard role in resolving conflicts and ethnic and racial differences by proposing continuous awareness programs to leave differences and look to the future of the specific region to achieve security and peace through coexistence and acceptance of the other, as well as producing interactive programs for the local community on conflicts and disagreements that divide society.”

There were also many interesting interactions during the third and final day of the seminar.

We discussed coverage of the conflict in Darfur. One participant said that the coverage was completely biased, and hindered by multiple obstacles. “Journalists tried to highlight events, but were coerced (by authorities) to highlight alternative narratives and forced to show a state narrative,” she said.

“We couldn’t maintain neutrality,” said another journalist. There were ethnic cleavages, but journalists were “not able to cover them adequately.”

In terms of reporting about the civic unrest that led to the overthrow of the Bashir regime in 2019, journalists noted that “official media was very limited and diminished in its capacity…to convey demands of the people.” Others agreed, noting that the State acted “with a fist of iron.” Those who spoke agreed that social media was best able to present the news and the “peaceful nature of the revolution.”

The seminar was made possible by the civilian-led transitional government (CLTG) and the United States Embassy, which share a “ number one priority to establish peace” in Sudan, according to Public Affairs Officer Keith Hughes. Since Covid -19 made my travel impossible, the decision was made to hold the seminars virtually. Further, holding the seminar required the State Dept. and CLTG to convince Zoom executives to life the block on Sudanese IP addresses using Zoom.

It is my plan to make a face to face visit to Sudan to continue our discussions about peace journalism sometime in 2021—inshallah, as they say in Arabic.