Fawcett, Liz (2002).  Why Peace Journalism Isn’t News.  Journalism Studies, 3(2), 213-223.

Two Irish newspapers schooled their writers to report within the framework of peace journalism.  Peace journalism advocates use a conciliation frame rather than a conflict frame to report events.  Fawcett explores how these journalists covered the yearly Orange Order parade in the last 1990s.  She uncovers how rhetorical and narrative structures are employed in writing conflict.  Conflict reporting is reactive and divides everything into dichotomies of us versus them and wins and losses.  Peace journalism is proactive reporting that offers deeper analysis of the cultures and social structures that produce a conflict.  Fawcett finds that although the journalists attempted to write through a peace journalism style, journalistic constraints, such as reliance on official sources, thwarted their lofty goals.

Fawcett’s article is especially important because it offers an alternative to the usual conflict reporting that should in theory, produce articles that may be perceived as less biased than the standard conflict reporting.  “Why Peace Journalism Ian’s News” also defines the concept of framing and explains how certain frames can be destructive to a community.  Although Fawcett finds peace journalism ineffective in this particular circumstance, she offers suggestions for improving news gathering conventions to ensure the framework can be employed in future conflict reporting.

Abstract by Meghan Maskery

Missouri School of Journalism

MA ‘07