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Guidelines for Journalists covering ethnic conflict ¹
by Bruce J. Allen, Steven Wilkinson

The following guidelines were excerpted from a handbook prepared by Dr. Bruce J. Allyn, program director of the Conflict Management Group (CMG), and Steven Wilkinson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Political Science, for the project on "Ethnic Conflict Management in the Former Soviet Union." The project is sponsored by CMG and the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, and other partners in the former Soviet Union. Journalists from a dozen countries contributed to the project. The project is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

1 Cover Each Side of the Conflict At a conference in March 1992, Mikhail Komissar, president of Interfax news agency, spoke about the challenges facing his staff in seeking to provide accurate and balanced coverage of all sides in a conflict.

I can offer many examples when one of the warring sides tried to serve their own interests by feeding disinformation into mass media, knowing that our information reaches a world-wide audience. There have been many very complicated cases when it was difficult to clarify what was going on because the disinformation was prepared very professionally and fed into our agency very professionally. Often it comes from government officials. Sometimes the president's press secretary offers you a complete lie. You feel that something is wrong, you check it out, find out that it was a lie - but it came from the president's press secretary. Journalists face the problem of what to do with this kind of information. We know that if we publish the information in the form we received it, it will provoke new bloodshed, new conflict. Moreover, the other side often puts pressure on us. They say to us, "Do you want to cause more bloodshed?" Imagine the situation: Journalists understand that publishing such information may lead to bloodshed, but if we do not, we might as well cover the weather reports. What should we do?

As we have noted, it is often difficult to get a clear picture of what we term the truth, the facts, the "objective situation." Because these are often an ambiguous notion, the journalist should present, or at least refer to, the different perceptions and explain why he or she is more persuaded by one interpretation than another.

Mikhail Komissar's rule of thumb for Interfax's reporting on military movements was widely supported by other journalists.

If Azeri officials tell us that Armenian troops are moving into their territory with tanks, that a battle is being waged with hundreds of casualties, we have a rule: Never publish this information without double-checking it. We call the CIS armed force and Armenian sources, and we try to balance out our information, presenting two or three sides. Even if we do not have specific information, we still say, for instance, "The Armenian side denounced this claim," so that our readers understand that the information of the Azeri side is not necessarily the ultimate truth.

And for those media organizations without the resources of CNN or Interfax, without the money to hire more cameramen, there is always the opportunity to use the telephone to contact ordinary people from all the affected areas, as well as non-partisan specialists on the conflict who can put the events in context.

2 Present People as Individuals, Not as Representatives of Groups

The comparative study of ethnic conflict shows us that the perception of other groups as solid, threatening entitles, and of one's own group as weak, persecuted, and diffuse, plays an important role in preparing ethnic populations for conflict. If members of an ethnic group believe they are threatened, they will be much more prepared to believe rumors and to take pre-emptive violent action to "kill them before they kill us." Most ethnic violence is justified in defensive, not offensive terms, and journalists have an important opportunity to play a role in breaking down this sense to threat.

There is a danger that the need to cover both "sides" in a conflict might unwittingly help to strengthen damaging perceptions of solid ethnic groups.

The wish to cover both points of view may encourage journalists to seek out "group representatives," such as individual politicians or self-appointed "ethnic leaders," whose comments can be used to represent the feelings and point of views of "the group." Reporters often subconsciously make the actions of specific individuals represent those of the ethnic group, by using phrases such as "The lngush want this," "the Ossetians want that," "the Azeris were attacked by the Armenians." The stereotypes such reports encourage are extremely damaging.

At the local level, before conflict becomes widespread, the perception of other groups as solid and threatening is often conveyed through reports on crimes. To do so encourages the perception that certain communities have criminal propensities, or are bent on taking political or economic control of the country.

Breaking down perceptions of groups as solid entities requires that journalists be very careful in their presentation of the facts. The key is for journalists not to assume that an individual politician or subset of an ethnic group represents the wishes and interests of the ethnic group as a whole. As Stovan Cerovic has argued:

You should always make the distinction between people and regimes... It's a matter of life and death. You're trying to win people over, stop them from following the nationalist hate mongers who offer them "protection," not frighten them by making them feel they're held personally responsible for bad acts by members of the other group. So make sure you limit responsibility when assigning the blame for an atrocity. Remember that individuals committed these acts, not the whole group. If you don't then many people will say, "I am a Serb. I don't like Milosevic, but he is president of Serbia and all the other groups are against us because they think we support his actions. Therefore we have to support Milosevic because only he can protect us from the other groups."

3 Provide Context, Not Just Coverage of Events

Ethnic conflicts often emerge against the background of complex historical grievances with widely differing interpretations of group identity and the legitimacy of claims to territory. In Nagor-no-Karabakh, Armenians and Azeris hold very different views of the past histories of both groups with each other and with the Russians and the Turks, as well as over the rights and wrongs of Stalin's 1923 decision to place Karabakh within the boundaries of the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic. In reporting on this conflict, as on any other, it is essential for the journalist to report on the wider historical context behind what may seem to outsiders to be inexplicable events of violent savagery.

It is important to clarify what we mean by context. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger's book, The Invention of Tradition, reminds us that most ethnic histories are comparatively recent in origin and that different views of the past are put forward by different individuals within a group to justify their present political, social, or economic agenda. Therefore there will be many different "historical contexts" available from which a journalist might choose. Wherever possible a journalist should recognize in his articles that these different historical understanding exist (and are driving the conflict) and that very often key tenets of group ideology may be only recent in origin.

For example, in ex-Yugoslavia the attempts of Franjo Tudjman and other Croats in the late 1980s to rewrite the history of the region during the Second World War and portray the Croats as having suffered as much as the Serbs was a major factor behind the declarations of autonomy by the Serb minorities within Croatia.

But many journalists in the West ignored the impact of this recent historical revisionism by Croats and maintained that the conflicts between Croats and Serbs were the product solely of "age-old antagonism."

It often seems inexplicable to members of one group, or to foreign observers, that members of another group seem to hold such "mistaken" views about the rights and wrongs of a conflict. This belief that a certain community cannot think rationally is especially dangerous because it encourages the false belief that ethnic conflicts themselves are irrational, primeval, and hence unavoidable. Stovan Cerovic has recommended that only by exposing all sides to the media interpretations that support the positions of the other side can any real understanding be achieved. "You'll understand everything if you see what people in Yugoslavia are told by the government reports in TV Belgrade and TV Zegreb."

Journalist should focus on the manipulation of the media by nationalist politicians, rather than on the misguided beliefs held by those who are fed this diet of misinformation.

4 Will Censoring Myself or Others Reduce Ethnic Violence?

Where reporting on instances of ethnic conflict seems likely to inflame passions and provoke even more violence, what should the responsible journalist do? Can self-censorship or government censorship of potentially explosive news ever be justified? Is the only way to avoid conflict to censor out the most inflammatory facts? Supporters of censorship point to the vast literature about the media and violence in the United States and Western Europe. This literature shows that at certain times, reports in the media and especially live reports on television do seem to have sparked acts of violence or intensified acts of violence which were already occurring.

Examples would include reports during the conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Brixton riots in London in 1981, or the riots in the United States in the 1960s.

Indeed, the very presence of the media at protests or political events (for possible future media coverage) often encourages dramatic displays of violence by crowds, unions, political parties, and ethnic group representatives. Most recently in India, the Bharatiya Janata party's demolition of the Ayodhya mosque was directly related to the party's need to have a media success after several disappointing political setbacks. Reports in the media have the power to magnify conflicts by making faraway threats seem near and by connecting one's ethnically different neighbors with an immediate threat to one's community, home, and family. The destruction of a mosque in a remote town in northern India became a wedge dividing Hindus and Muslims in towns and villages throughout the subcontinent. Because they realize that media coverage often has an effect on the level of conflict, supporters of censorship imagine that removing the media reports will reduce the level of conflict.

They are very much mistaken for two reasons. First, the issue is not whether the reporting of the facts about ethnic conflict will sometimes lead to violence. It will. The issue is whether introducing censorship will have even worse effects.

Journalists can only be forces of moderation if they have the trust of their audience, and therefore attempts by governments to censor accurate reports, or attempts by journalists themselves to suppress facts in order to reduce conflict, are misplaced and counterproductive. We know that suppressing news about conflicts only creates a greater public appetite for information. Ithiel de Sola Pool and Wimal Dissanayeke have shown - in the cases of Eastern Europe under communism and Sri Lanka during the 1971 rebellion - the citizens of countries which restrict news about sensitive subjects are more likely to believe alternative news sources such as propagandists and traditional rumor networks. If the responsible news media either chooses not to satisfy the appetite for information about ethnic conflicts, or is prevented from doing so by government, others who are less well intentioned will fill the void.

Second, those who would censor underestimate the extent to which the balance of technology has shifted away from them and in favor of individuals and organizations who wish to put out ethnic propaganda. At least since the Iranian Revolution, when the Ayatollah Khomeini's use of taped sermons and daily faxes helped him overcome censorship and direct the overthrow of the Shah, it has become obvious that censorship of the facts not only has bad results, it does not work.

Richard Francis, the controller of BBC Northern Ireland in the 1970s, is an excellent example of a journalist who understands why censoring facts not only conflicts with free speech but also represents bad public policy. Francis was criticized for a BBC news report which broadcast the information that four Protestants had been shot in East Belfast while at the same time a riot was taking place in West Belfast. Responding to critics who argued he should have delayed the broadcast, Francis correctly argued that "In a town like Belfast, which is like a village, rumor can travel faster even than radio. If we had not announced unequivocally that four Protestants had been shot, the rioting crowds likely would have made it not four but fourteen, not shot but dead, and the not could have been very much worse than it was."

But it is important to recognize that some journalists, acting with best intentions, have chosen to censor both their own reports and those of others.

Andrei Cherkizov, for instance, was appointed to head the Russian government press center in the North Caucasus during the outbreak of mass violence between the Muslim Ingush and the Christian North Ossetians in late 1992.

Hundreds were killed in several days of fighting. Cherkizov, a firm supporter of the role of the investigative reporter in the stages before and after the eruption of major conflict, felt that unrestricted reporting of the violence in Ingushetia and North Ossetia would have caused more deaths than it averted:

There is a price for freedom of speech. That price is bloodshed. Censorship is a violation of all laws. But it saves the lives of people. It helps begin a process. The level of hatred must be lowered a bit before you can get people to sit down at a negotiation table. Then they can talk to each other. Hatred increases not without our participation, not without the influence of journalists. We put one person in Nazran (the capital of Ingushetia) and one in Vladikavkaz (the capital of North Ossetia) and simply said, "Take everything off the media if it has the element of moral extremism." And immediately an Ingush told me how the tone had changed markedly in Ossetian television. It was noticeable the next day. Because of my experience, inside this conflict, all democratic conversations about freedom of speech were finished for me. Freedom of speech - yes, in a normal situation. No question. Freedom of speech in an abnormal situation of extreme violence is excluded. Maybe I am not right. But people are alive because of this position.

5 Focus on Processes, Not Just on Events

It is an unfortunate fact, as William Ury has pointed out, that "It is much more Otelegenic' to cover violence, and it is quite boring to cover negotiation, which is just talking." The media have a tendency to focus on events rather than the processes of negotiation and mediation. Much of the pressure comes from editors who want coverage of the "big event" rather than a less visible process which may be just as important.

Dan Sheider of The Christian Science Monitor, speaking about his experiences covering the political turmoil in South Korea in 1987 and 1988, said that many correspondents received calls from their editors saying, "Well, the AP reported today that there was a demonstration and the people were fighting with the police. Why aren't you covering this? What's going on? We saw it on T.V., pictures of these demonstrations." We say, "This is only happening on this one little spot. The rest of Seoul is completely quiet, other things are going on." And this was OK for me, but for all my colleagues this was almost a daily event of trying to convince your editors that what they were seeing or hearing was not in fact the total reality and was not in fact even a very important part of the reality. Reporters agreed that more time should be given to exploring mediation and negotiation rather than assuming that violent events represent an accurate measure of the state of group relations. There are some examples where media have sought to provide special coverage of the process of ethnic conflict management.

India today has reported on the successful process of trust-building between the police and local authorities and the local religious groups and leading individuals in the city of Bhiwandi. This local negotiation process allowed the community to avoid the violent ethnic riots in which hundreds were killed in Bombay and other Indian cities during the unrest following the destruction of the Ayodhya Mosque in December 1992.

6 Seek to Educate About Ethnic Diversity Many people advocate more education about ethnic diversity as a way to improve understanding and ultimately improve group relations. The news media are clearly a prime way in which such education programs or articles can be disseminated. But a key question often not addressed is what kind of education is appropriate? It is important to stress that in our desire to promote ethnic diversity and understanding, we should not create images of solid ethnic groups and give power to cultural elites who develop an interest in promoting a political agenda based on ethnic particularism.

If the example of ex-Yugoslavia is anything to go by, the creation of national historical institutes (such as Serb or Croat institutes) does not encourage a sense of inter-ethnic understanding as much as fund a vested cultural elite which tries to distinguish the history of its own people from that of other groups. It is these new national intelligentsia which have most to gain from ethnic nationalism.

7 Remind the Audience That Ethnic Problems Are Global and That Conflict Management Is Possible

The process of dissolution in the former Soviet Union (FSU) has seen the emergence of many violent ethnic and nationalist conflicts. Many people in the FSU are confused as to why, when it seemed these conflicts had not existed there for decades, they now seem to be a permanent and dangerous feature of the new states. Emil Payin has suggested that one way to tackle what he sees as a growing "sense of fatalism and apathy" which can allow conflicts to emerge is to insert the problem into the system of historical analogies - to show the people that it is not a unique problem and that we are not first ones to face it. It is important to remind the FSU audience that these new ethnic conflicts exist throughout the world - in Canada, Ireland, Sudan, Malaysia, and the United States. To overcome a sense of fatalism and apathy among the inhabitants of the FSU, the media should focus on the fact that ethnic conflicts have often been effectively managed. The experiences of Switzerland, Senegal, Belgium, and Malaysia show us that ethnic heterogeneity does not have to lead to ethnic conflict. Journalists should not just focus on the ethnic "problem cases," such as ex-Yugoslavia, but should also give the inhabitants of the FSU some grounds for optimism about the future by pointing out that effective political management has allowed countries such as Malaysia (after 1969) to step back from the brink of ethnic conflict. One way to accomplish this is through tapping into the work of the many specialists who address ethnic issues and by making their work accessible to a wider public.

1. From Conflict Management Group, Vol. IV, Issue 22-23, May-June 1994