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Criticism: compromising journalistic integrity
The idea of a social responsible Peace Journalism has, nevertheless, raised significant
criticism in recent years. According to Grundmann (2000: 94), its normative propos-
als raise the misleading impression that the implementation of peace would primarily
be the task of the media – and not the duty of policy making. Furthermore, Grund-
mann has well-founded doubts on the practicability of Galtungs idealized concep-
tion of making news for peace.
The concept of Peace Journalism is also controversially discussed among prac-
titioners. The German WDR-editor Sonia Mikich (2000: 98) pointed out that war
reporting basically follows the same (ethical) principles as journalism in general.
Mikich does not believe that war reporting should be made a “special category”. The
BBC-correspondent David Loyn (2003), who exposed his criticism on openDemoc-
racy.net, argued that the Peace Journalism philosophy would compromise the integ-
rity of journalists and confuse their role as neutral disseminators: “Our task is always
to seek to find out what is going on, not carrying any other baggage. If there is con-
flict resolution we report on it in context. We do not engage in it”. Contrary to his
colleague Jake Lynch, the BBC-journalist advocated more traditional values of
“good journalism” such as fairness, objectivity and balance in reporting. “Once we
step away from pursuing the truth, then we are lost in an area of moral relativism
which threatens the whole business of reporting.” (Loyn 2003)
The assumption that journalists mainly like to report on violent actions and
military operations has repeatedly provoked skepticism as well. Interviews with
noted German foreign correspondents, conducted by Simone Richter (1999: 183),
drew a different picture. The interviewed journalists expressed that their primary
concern was to report the situation and suffering of civilians instead of covering
military operations. Andreas Baum from the German daily Stuttgarter Zeitung re-
flected on his perception of the professional role of journalists by stating:
Being a war correspondent means nothing else than talking to the people behind the
front lines, meeting refugees who move away from the danger zone and tell their
story, their suffering. They tell what they have lost and what they have experienced.
These are the much more important stories, the human stories. It is not about having
one’s nose in the front line and describing which cannon shoots in what direction
and whether or not the front line has moved a few meters forward or backward. I
think, if someone sees his job like this, he doesn’t understand. It is really about hu-
man stories that happen out there. (quoted in Richter 1999: 202-3)
According to Peter Sartorius from the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung war
reporting includes “every facet of a war: the political, the military, the human”
(quoted in Richter 1999: 216). And Erich Rathfelder, who reports for the left-wing
daily Tageszeitung always tried to keep an eye on the situation of the war-affected
civilians: “I stand on the side of the victims. I take side in a war – the side of the
victims.” (quoted in Richter 1999: 250) Ozgune and Terzis (2000) also found a de-
Convention