By Peter Knoope, Associate Fellow ICCT – The Hague.
It so happened that I addressed a meeting on violent extremism in Cape Town, South Africa. One of the other speakers, a journalist, discussed the role of media in terrorism and counter terrorism. It is not my favourite topic. In fact it is a pretty rough and always a tough topic. Simply because counter terrorism is not a duty or the role of the media. The media have a very clear, yet different, assignment and should never be instrumentalised by law enforcement or government, let alone by counter terrorism professionals. The media are there to discover and uncover. It is their role to do research and report on their findings. Following their own agenda. Nobody else’s.
Still some interesting points were made. Interesting enough to make me think twice. One of them is the speed of media these days. `Breaking news´ is the thing of today. You´ll see it floating at the bottom of your TV screen. It is in headlines only. Bumper-sticker-like text messages. The more concise, the better. The faster the better. There seems ever less time or space to analyse, let alone to give profound background to the one liners of the day. The news is brought to us in sound bites. This stems from the competition between media outlets to be the first. It is a competitive environment, the media, where speed has become as important as thorough knowledge. This new and growing trend seems contradictory, or at least at odds, with the assignment of media to discover, analyse, educate, unveil and inform. There is a real risk that fast news and sensational events take the upper hand and that depth of analytical coverage of the news loses out. So during the discussion the term `responsible journalism` was introduced as a concept. Because when you think about it, Journalists do have responsibilities. They are our eyes and ears. When they uncover and expose and place events into context we expect them to be informed and balanced and open minded.
So far so good.
Then some-one in the audience raised his hand and claimed that western journalists and media are biased and are all anti-Muslim. They, the media in the West, connect a religion to violence and killing. They go along in the frame offered to journalists on a platter by the ISIS, AQ, Boko Haram and other violent organisations. There is no responsible journalism in the West and the blame for Charlie Hebdo, and similar incidents, is put on Muslims and their religion. Whenever other (read non-Muslim) perpetrators are responsible for killings or incidents, the religious background is never mentioned. It only happens when the suspect is a Muslim. All this according to the person that asked the question.
In my answer I came to the defence of the press. Because I know from my own experience that most European journalists are trying to be balanced and well informed. I know that many journalists prefer and are trying hard to stay away from the competition, the race to be first, and try to be as balanced as humanly possible. Even now, a couple of days later, I still think that such is generally the case. But the inverse does happen. Media can sometimes be forced to work at a very high speed when judging or quoting without allowing enough time for proper analyses. Let us face it. Judgements are sometimes made in split seconds, quotes are published without a proper check on their relevance or their impact, language is used that may incite or create the wrong picture. And the risk of that happening is increasing when time is limited. When speed is more important than analytical depth and when the race is about `who is first´ and not ´who is most precise, informative and analytical´.
And if the effect of the media race and the need for speed, the competition and modern journalism, if the effect thereof is that people on the other side of the planet get the impression that Western media are anti-Muslim than we have a real challenge. In that case something needs to be fixed. For the very reason that we must prevent to fall into the trap of going along in the frame of ISIS, AQ and Boko Haram, that this is about `us` against `them`. Too much damage has been done to social relationships in many countries by identity politics and `us` versus `them` thinking and talking. Language matters. We all must be precise and responsible when we choose our words. And especially journalists. They are our eyes and ears. We depend on them to be properly informed.
By the end of the day we all agreed on this one thing. Which seems to be that the media should want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. I guess that is what responsible journalism is all about.
Peter Knoope, Associate fellow ICCT – The Hague.
