Off to DC
Heading to Washington tomorrow to attend American Council on Education Internationalization Collaborative (I'm on the advisory council), and to meet with officials at the U.S. Institute of Peace. I'm very hopeful that our new Center for Global Peace Journalism can find some areas of possible collaboration with USIP, which has a robust peace media program.

Students improve, update Peace Journalism rubric

One of the trickiest things about PJ is content analysis. How can you tell if a story or an image (still or video) is adhering to the tenants of peace journalism? One way is by applying the rubric below. This is a revised tool that was expanded and enhanced by my excellent peace journalism students at Park University. Any feedback on this rubric would be most welcome.

Peace Journalism Content Analysis Rubric
Written/spoken reports
1=Never 2=Sometimes 3=Often

Language
Inflammatory/emotional language used
Victimizing language used
Demonizing/name calling language used

Writing/reporting
Opinions treated as facts
Historical wrongs mentioned
Writer's opinion/position is clear (one sided)
Only "one side" interviewed/quoted
Story spreads official propaganda
Info/quotes taken out of context

Event
Suffering/"criminal acts" by only one side shown
Covers mostly violence, not underlying issues

Parties
Blame assigned to one party

Solutions
Peace proposals ignored or dismissed
Story dwells on differences; shuns similarities

SCALE:
Peace Journalism=14-19 points
Some characteristics of both peace and war journalism=20-29
War Journalism-30 or more

Visuals--video and photo
1=Never 2=Sometimes 3=Often

General topic is suffering
General topic is destruction
Subject—Military officials; Government officials
Image is culturally insensitive/mocking
Subjects are primarily military/political leaders
Subject is held in contempt by photographer
Editing: Video is raw/unedited; or still is edited
to change meaning of the original photo
Images taken out of context/don't reflect reality

SCALE:
Peace Journalism=8-10 points
Some characteristics of both peace and war journalism=11-15
War Journalism-16 or more