Covering conflict journalists for peace

By Ryan Rosauro
Published in PJR Reports, November-December 2011

The media were at it again, drumbeating war.

Biased, sensational and contextually inaccurate reporting of the bloody encounter in Al-Barka, Basilan between Philippine Army troops and Moro rebels last Oct. 18, and succeeding incidents, stoked the flames of what many journalists—especially those who fancy themselves as macho war reporters—excitedly awaited: more firefights between government troops and Moro rebels.

Veteran journalist Ed Lingao described the reportage on the events in Basilan, and subsequently in Zamboanga Sibugay, as a case of “media going into war.”

It was the perfect time for it. Peace negotiations between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) were then at a major impasse over the political settlement needed to end over four decades of Moro rebellion.

All the media had to do to foment further conflict was to play on anti-Muslim prejudice, sensationalize the violence, and make it appear that government troops were fighting a brutal foe whose capacity for atrocities knew no limits.

Fomenting war

How the Philippine media behaved last October was not new; it was reflective of a lingering pattern of war-slanted, sensationalized reportage about the Mindanao conflict.

The first major battle between government and the MILF occurred in March 2000, culminating in the fall of Camp Abubakar Assidique four months later. The media played a significant role in provoking that battle.

I  was just six months into my job as a local reporter during the bombing of M/V Our Lady of Mediatrix ferry on Feb. 25, 2000 in Ozamiz City that killed 39 people.

Three weeks after, while probers were still validating initial findings on who were responsible for the bombing and what were their likely motives, Philippine Army troops were already being deployed in the hinterlands of Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte supposedly to serve legal summonses on the suspects.

This excuse for massive troop deployments near MILF strongholds was passed off as truth by the media, so that by the time the Ozamiz City Prosecutor’s Office belied claims that it had issued any summons, the fighting was already underway.

An adventure—and some questions

I must admit that as a young journalist, the prospect of covering a war excited me.

During the occupation of Kauswagan town in March 2000, I hitched a ride on an owner-type jeep of a government intelligence operative in order to get near the frontlines, armed with a notebook, a pen, and a point-and-shoot camera.

About a kilometer away from what the intelligence operative said was the standoff line between the rebels and government soldiers, we ran into a stream of evacuees fleeing their coastal village where MILF forces had massed in preparation for a calculated exit amid a Philippine Army effort to flush them out of the town center.

The wary and frightened look of the evacuees, especially the children, struck me hard. Right there, I remembered that I have college classmates from Kauswagan. I felt uneasy thinking that while I was there for an adventure, they could be frantically trying to escape, caught in a life-and-death situation which was not of their choosing.

I asked myself why, instead of merely covering events, the media, given its vast influence, could not prevent similar situations from happening by deepening their coverage?

Grappling with that question led me to more questions: What should be my role, or more exactly, my chosen profession’s role in war and conflict situations? And is it not contrary to objectivity if journalists were also peace advocates ?

Changing the mindset

Today, my approach to covering conflict stories has been shaped by the efforts of veteran journalists to evolve a new mindset when reporting about Mindanao, where a movement has developed among journalists to practice a journalism that promotes peace, which does not stereotype the island as a war zone, and instead reports the other realities apart from the Moro and communist insurgencies like Mindanao’s vast potentials for tourism.

The “peace journalism” movement in Mindanao seeks to correct the narrow focus on violence arising from and related to the conflict, the “body-bag” reporting fixated on the number of combatants killed and battlefield exploits and actions.

The focus on battles and casualties has the tendency to tag people as heroes and villains, and leads to public demands for similar reports that ignore the need to provide information that will enable the public to understand the roots of conflict and therefore to find the solutions to it. This type of reportage makes violence, and nothing else, the staple of media reports.

The violence focus limits reportage to events. There is no story if there is no violent incident. But conflict is a phenomenon that develops from a series of incidents, and is shaped within a specific context. This is best uncovered by process-oriented reportage.

Since 2000, reporting on the conflict in Mindanao has been helped by efforts to have journalists better understand the history of Mindanao, thus correcting many misconceptions that color journalistic judgment, like the question of whether Moros are Filipinos.

In a focused-group discussion among 30 mid-level journalists throughout the country that I was privileged to facilitate in 2009, at least 20 asserted that it was wrong for the Moros not to consider themselves Filipinos because they are subjects of the Philippine state. Those journalists had already prejudged and dismissed the validity of the Moro’s aspiration for self-determination on the basis of their distinct identity.

Better reporting of the conflict is the result of the journalist’s familiarity with and understanding of the workings of conflict management mechanisms established by government and the MILF to lessen armed clashes among their respective ground troops. These include ceasefire coordination and joint law enforcement which was the issue in the Oct. 18 Al-Barka encounter.

The challenge to peace journalism

When the “peace journalism” movement gained momentum in 2000, no civil society groups were pushing for peaceful options to resolve the Moro question, unlike today, when, apart from the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the MILF, there are more sources of information.

The war-slanted reportage of the Al-Barka and related incidents revealed that peace journalism still has a long way to go in Mindanao.

Because the movement was glued together by the collective longing of preventing another war in our own backyard, it is not incidental that Mindanao journalists are very sensitive to and critical of any war-drumbeating in the media.

This is not to say that Mindanao journalists are blameless, or that all non-Mindanao journalists are into war-mongering.

Whether based in or outside Mindanao, journalists must be responsibie enough not to further inflame conflict situations. The tenets of professional journalism do not compel us to become peace advocates. However, its core value of serving the human good demands that we inform our viewers, listeners and readers that violence should be the last of their options when dealing with conflict.

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Philippine Daily Inquirer correspondent Ryan Rosauro has been covering conflict areas in Southern Philippines since 1999