Is Peace Journalism Possible? Three Frameworks for Assessing Structure and Agency in News Media

• Main Author: Robert A. Hackett
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Berlin Regener Publishing House 2006-10-01
• Series: Conflict & Communication Online
• Subjects: Peace journalism; propaganda model; hierarchy of influences; cultural practice; knowledge-production
• Online Access: http://www.cco.regener-online.de/2006_2/pdf/hackett.pdf

As a contribution to an assessment of the prospects for realizing the principles of peace journalism in practice, this article considers three conceptual frameworks for analyzing the relationship between journalism and other relations and institutions of power. Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model usefully highlights some ways that state and capital influence journalism, but it risks being reductionist and functionalist. Shoemaker and Reese's "hierarchy of influences" model helps us to assess pressures for and against peace journalism at each of five levels of factors. But both models risk obscuring the specificity and coherence of journalism as a cultural practice and form of knowledge-production. Pierre Bourdieu's notion of journalism as a field, a relatively autonomous institutional sphere, has the advantage of allowing conceptual space for both the structural influences of and on news media, as well as the potential agency and creativity of journalists. Taken together, the three models help to identify the tasks, challenges and potential strategies for the peace journalism movement.