Today, Johan Galtung gave a lecture here on "peace journalism". Interesting, provoking, and engaging.
Galtung claimed that nothing much has changed since 1961, when he and Ruge published the famous 12 news criteria, and that the result of this still is a skewed world image. Journalists aren't able to think outside of what he names the "DMA" syndrome. Dualism, "we are good, the other side is evil" (that's the M, I don't remember the actual word it stands for), and Armaggedon, i.e. violence is justified. The Old Testament way of thinking, he argued.
Galtungs alternative is Peace journalism, focusing on the actual conflict of interests, including all the parts, not just two, preferably discussing possible solutions.
On the 911 terrorist attacks he made a few good points. The act was carried out by 19 Arabs. Why then kill Afghans (3700 civilians at last counting)? The 19 could quite possibly have planned and carried through the whole act alone! And why have so few pondered upon the meaning of the target buildings: militarism and capitalism? Does that not provide clues to the reasons for the horrible acts, he asked.
Galtung disbelieves media, as they are either in the pockets of big capitalist owners or nation states. Instead, he puts his trust in the Net. A good example, he said, is Antiwar. That site is one of the many constituting an interesting Web trend; a magazine made of a collection of links to articles of their choosing elsewhere.
Peace journalism is promoted by Transcend (link below).
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