Covering conflict in Mindanao: Terror and the Press
Covering conflict in Mindanao
Terror and the Press
By Crysta Imperial Rara
MINDANAO SEEMS to be the focus of many foreign-funded development projects nowadays. Whether it’s micro-financing, governance, the peace process, and even press coverage, foreign govern-ments, institutions, and universities seem to have a preference for initiatives that target Muslim Mindanao.
Several seminar-workshops have been sponsored to guide journalists covering the conflict in the South. One such conference, held in early April in Subic and sponsored by the University of Georgia and the US Peace Institute, brought together news editors, producers and reporters, academics, and non-government organizations for brainstorming sessions on conflict reporting in Mindanao.
In March 2005, the Konrad Adenauer Center for Journalism of the Ateneo de Manila University sponsored a seminar on “Religions on the Edge: Issues and Challenges in Reporting about Faiths and Conflict.” In the same month, the British Council sponsored a workshop on Peace Journalism with BBC journalist Jake Lynch and his wife broadcast journalist Annabel McGoldrick.
The three workshop-seminars sought to make journalists aware of the do’s and don’ts in conflict reporting.
Good journalism
In their paper, “Peace Journalism Reader,” Lynch and A. McGoldrick describe peace journalism as the process where “editors and reporters make choices—of what stories to report and about how to report them—that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict.”
On the other side of the spectrum is war journalism, which focuses on the violence and destruction, propaganda and “us-vs.-them” point of view. Peace journalism is supposed to be solution-oriented, with peace being the equivalent of non-violence and creativity. War or violence journalism, in contrast, equates peace with victory (for one group) and ceasefire.
But to Lee Becker and Tudor Vlad, dean and associate dean, respectively, of the University of Georgia, there is no such thing as peace or war journalism. There is only good journalism that takes into account the different sides in a conflict (there are always more than two sides) and delivers information that is balanced, fair, and accurate.
Mindanao has been a hotspot of sorts since the late ’60s when war broke out between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front which supposedly represented the Moros, the original inhabitants of the southern islands. Now a minority in their ancestral land, the Moros fought to regain either autonomy or independence from the nation-state created in 1946. The war has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the exodus of Moros from their lands, and the destruction of property worth billions of pesos. It has also hindered the growth and development of Mindanao and Sulu and drained the coffers of the Manila government.
US President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism has an impact on the war in Mindanao. Although the Philippine government has not labeled Moro rebel groups as “terrorist,” newspaper and TV coverage are awash with references to terrorist bombings, alleged al Qaeda-trained rebels and so-called terrorist networks composed of relatives, and the extended families of the rebels and the Abu Sayyaf.
But what really is “terro-rism?” Who is a “terrorist”?
Defining ‘terror’
In Terrorism: An Introduction, US counter-terrorism expert Brian Jenkins explains that terrorism is the use or threatened use of force designed to bring about political change (White 2002). But many scholars question this definition. The meanings of “terrorism” differ according to social and historical context.
It is too often said that “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.” A political movement, whose members use violence to get media and political attention for their cause, would not agree to a terrorist label. The Irish Republican Army, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Basque group Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the New People’s Army are all fighting to correct perceived injustices. None of these groups consider themselves as “terrorists.” On the contrary, they claim to be victims of state terrorism.
The word “terrorism” was originally used to describe the Reign of Terror in Paris during the French Revolution (1785-1795). During this period, “terrorism referred to the French government’s slaughter of French nobles, their families and sympathizers,” according to J.R. White in Terrorism: An Introduction.
The term “terrorism” later gained notoriety in Europe. It was used to describe the violence committed by radical democrats who terrorized the capitalist class in their quest for social revolution. The term was also used in the Russian revolution, the struggles of the Irish Republican Army, the Zionist movement, the Palestinians’ fight to regain their homeland and even the drug-related violence in Latin America.
US definition
At present, the United States uses the word for Islamic “fundamentalists” or “extremists” who use violence to achieve their goals of establishing a pan-Islamic state and eliminating their perceived enemies. The Sept. 11, 2001 airplane attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon are said to be works of Muslim “terrorists.”
Contradictions in the use of the word persist and this makes it practically impossible to find a standard definition for it. In retaliation for the Twin Towers “terrorist act,” the United Nations sanctioned a US-led invasion of Afghanistan which killed tens of thousands of innocent people and destroyed the land with the use of high-technology weapons and bombs. The reason for the attack was simply to capture Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian multimil-lionaire-turned-“terrorist” residing in Afghanistan.
In March 2003, Anglo-American forces bombed Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Most US media establishments described it as an act to liberate the Iraqis from the clutches of Saddam the dictator. Now that no such weapons have been found and the Iraqis are killing the Anglo-American soldiers in Iraq, these liberated Iraqis are called “terrorists.” By publishing and airing wire stories that adopt this point of view, the Philippine press is subtly showing its support for the US presence in Iraq.
The role of media
Conflict stories sell. Terrorism spells conflict, so media establishments always want terrorist-related stories in their publications and TV and radio programs. The way media cover conflict also has an effect on the conflict itself since the stakeholders monitor such coverage. Media should therefore take a critical look at all the parties involved as well as analyze causes and consequences of the conflict.
“The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing,” wrote journalists and academics Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. Are the Philippine media able to do this when it comes to conflict and terrorism stories?
In 2004, a research paper studied data collected for the March and April 2003 issues of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Rara 2004). According to the findings, 70 out of 81 articles on Mindanao were found to be terror-related. The words “terror,” “terrorism” and “terrorist” appeared 270 times or an average of 3.33 times per article. The words “Muslim” or “Islam” appeared 233 times or an average of 2.88 times per article. In other words, it appears that terror issues necessarily relate to Islam.
On the other hand, stories covering the country’s Christian majority rarely mention the words “Christian” or “Catholic.” The kidnap gangs in Metro Manila are not referred to as “Christian gangs.”
In the study, 43 percent of the sources interviewed were mili-tary and police officials while 23 percent were government authorities. Together, they comprise 66 percent of the news sources for the 81 articles. In 51 percent of the articles, the sole sources were military or police or the government. The victims, their relatives and the other stakeholders were not inter-viewed. And since 86 percent of the articles were terror-related, the media once more set the agenda by telling the public that, “When it comes to Moros, think terror.”
Victory frame
The strategies used to present a victory frame for the military included some of the mechanisms pointed out by Tamar Liebes in his book, Reporting the Arab-Israeli Conflict. These mechanisms include:
•directly quoting the military’s statements with or without attribution;
• focusing on the alleged suspects and the political implications of the event and ignoring military or government failures or lapses; and
• introducing naïve witnesses and sources without interpreting their statements.
The Filipino Muslims, original inhabitants of Mindanao, have migrated to many parts of Luzon and Visayas in search of peace and the chance to earn a living. To the Filipino Christian majority who relate more to former colonizers Spain and the United States, the Filipino Muslims are the “other,” a people of a different culture, history, and religion who identify more with their Malay and Arab brothers.
It comes therefore as no surprise that the Philippine media, which follow Western trends, often adopt the US and European stand on terrorist and conflict-related issues. Philippine media subscribe to Western news agencies like the Associated Press, CNN, Agence France Presse, and Fox News. None take into account the reportage of alternative news outfits like Al Jazeera and the Rome-based Inter Press Service.
Academics and media critics claim neutral institutions like the press or the mass media in democratic countries actually exist to protect the interests of the elite. They may occasionally publish stories on abuses in government or the country’s economic system but there are more stories that show how the corporate capitalist system encourages individual initiative and how it is more providential than exploitative. Owners of media establishments belong, after all, to the dominant and ruling class so it is under-standable that they would protect the interests of their families and friends first. Depicting the military and police in a victory frame shows that everything is in control despite sporadic fighting in the South.
Single-source news
Although there are now conscious efforts to improve coverage on conflict in Mindanao, there is still need for critical thinking in order to distinguish between truth and propaganda. The constant use of the military, police, and government as the single source in a story could make readers think that their version of the truth is the only one. This is one example of war journalism.
Journalists at the Subic workshop on conflict reporting said the situation in Mindanao is special because there is no full-blown war and the coverage is dictated by Manila. They also observed that there are many stories not adequately covered that would help the rest of the country understand the things that are going on in the island. There is the diaspora of Moros toward other places in Mindanao, Sabah, and Luzon to escape the conflict, and the rampant corruption aided and abetted by Manila officials.
Veteran journalist Carol Arguillas, formerly of the Inquirer and founder of MindaNews, says reporters and editors must go beyond the five Ws and H of journalism (who, what, why, when, where, and how) and look into the three Cs—characters, context, and consequences—to arrive at a fair, balanced, accurate, and more in-depth coverage of Mindanao and to correct misconceptions that have been perpetrated by the wrong coverage.
In his book Inventing Reality: The Politics of the Mass Media, M. Parenti wrote: “News distortion is both a product of shared cultural values and deliberate acts of disinformation. Political beliefs do not automatically reproduce and sustain them-selves. They must be (at least partly) consciously propagated. And with time, yesterday’s propaganda becomes today’s ‘shared cultural values and beliefs’.” n
Crysta Imperial Rara teaches journalism at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.
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