Media doing harm

Among the fundamental responsibilities of journalists is that of minimizing harm. As an ethical principle it applies to the entire range of issues and subjects journalists are called upon to report, comment on, and interview.

The assumption is that whatever the press reports and comments on almost inevitably has an impact on how the reading, viewing, listening and online public perceives issues as well as the subjects about whom the press writes. A report that stereotypes a group such as Muslims as inherently violent can exacerbate already existing divisions in society. Another which names a child accused of a crime can compromise that child’s future. Implying that by taking his or her life a suicide has vindicated him/herself can invite copy-cat suicides, as can a detailed description of the means used.

Minimizing harm is among the more important principles journalists must keep in mind whatever their beats or subjects. But it is especially relevant in the reporting of conflict. Because whether as citizens, members of religious and ethnic groups, etc., journalists  have their own views, loyalties and even advocacies in the contention among antagonists, they can, consciously or unconsciously,  manifest, echo or advance these views and advocacies in their reporting, resulting in unfair and biased news stories, commentaries and/or analyses. Because conflicts involve deaths and injuries, as well as damage to property, they are often also inherently sensational, and invite sensational treatment which may cause harm to the vulnerable, among them non-combatants like women and children.

The imperative for journalists to minimize harm has been amply demonstrated in the coverage of the conflict in Mindanao, and is once again evident in the coverage of the Zamboanga City crisis.

Among the more obvious lapses of media coverage so far is the overabundance of such details as where the troops of both the Philippine government as well as those of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) are deployed, the location of snipers, and the movement of troops.

Journalism as a discipline of information does value providing detailed accounts of events. But that value is outweighed by the need to avoid providing information that may lead to prolonging a crisis, and therefore contributing to the deaths and injuries that its rapid resolution could have prevented.

The failure to observe the principle of minimizing harm is equally manifest in the tendency to focus on the casualties of both the government and the MNLF side to the virtual exclusion of efforts to end the crisis. Surely the groups on the ground that for years have been striving to bring peace to the areas in Mindanao affected by the decades long conflict between the groups fighting for autonomy and the government have something to say about the current conflict and are doing something about it. But there have been no reports so far on these groups’ views and, equally important, what they’re doing to help end the crisis.

Equally apparent is the absence of contextualization—locating what’s happening as part of the longer story of, as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front calls it, the “Bangsa Moro Problem” that has persisted for over a hundred years. In its place is almost sole reliance on the government argument that the MNLF faction entered Zamboanga City in force to derail the impending peace agreement between the government and the MILF. The accuracy or inaccuracy of that version aside, the absence of context reduces reporting on a conflict that’s part of a larger history to exactly the pattern that has long held in Philippine conflict reporting: the focus on casualties, and, as a consequence, the resulting public misunderstanding, based on one-sided and incomplete reports, of what’s happening which in turn reinforces existing and dangerous stereotypes.

Minimizing harm means exactly what it says: while press reports, commentaries, and analyses can cause harm in terms of exposing individuals and groups to public disapproval, damaged reputations, and condemnation, the greatest care must be taken to see to it that the bases for these consequences are accurate, fair, and, to the extent that it is possible, complete.