Peace Journalism approach needed in protest coverage
As the resistance to the Trump administration
continues, with major protests seemingly every few days, some media outlets, faced with
how to cover the resistance, seem to be lapsing into familiar patterns of
coverage.
A recent mini content analysis of news about the
anti-Trump protests shows most notably a gap among different media in the way
the cover the grievances that underlie the protests.
A Lexis-Nexis search of newspaper articles about the
anti-Trump protests from Jan. 20 to Feb. 20 showed that many stories discussed
the root causes of the protests. Of the first 1000 articles that came up in a
search, 389 discussed racism, 63 sexism, 44 Islamophobia, and 373 xenophobia.
Thus, there were 869 total mentions of these grievances. Fox News coverage was
different. During the same time period, for the first 1000 hits generated by
the search, 157 stories mentioned racism, 16 sexism, 6 Islamophobia, and 125 xenophobia.
The total Fox mentions of these
grievances fueling the protests were 304—much less than half the 869 mentions
in the same number of newspaper stories.
This result, while not surprising, provides yet
another justification for peace journalism, the first tenet of which implores
journalists to examine the causes of conflict, and to lead discussions about
solutions.
Also, media of all stripes seem intent on labeling
the protests and protesters. The newspaper search showed mentions of protesters
as angry (125), violent (137), and
bitter (14). Fox also reinforced the
stereotype of protesters as angry (158), violent (165), and bitter (27).
Peace journalism encourages journalists to reject
such superficial labels that reinforce stereotypes, myths, and misperceptions. Are the
protesters more than just bitter losers, angry that their candidate lost the
election last fall? Are isolated incidences of violence being overplayed and
exaggerated, creating negative misperceptions about 99.9% of the protesters?
Indeed,
peace journalists must provide depth and context, rather than just superficial
and sensational “play by play” of events like protests, which after all are merely
the visible surface manifestations of a roiling sea of underlying discontent.
In
my book Peace Journalism Principles and Practices,
I encourage journalists to report counter-narratives that provide different
perspectives on the protesters. One such example can be found in the Kansas City Star.
The Star’s article (Feb. 16) on
the “Day without Immigrants” protest, for example, centered on Marisol
Cervantes, who crossed a desert to enter the U.S. but now “lives in fear” of
the Trump administration.
In another example, Al.com,
which features articles from three Alabama newspapers, profiles undocumented
immigrant Cesar Mata and his impressions about Trump’s plan to build a border
wall.
If journalists are really interested in rebuilding their wobbly
credibility, a good place to start would be with articles like these that offer
stereotype-busting, contextual counternarratives that go beyond superficial
labels and breathless “play by play” descriptions of protests and protesters.
