To Örebro University

War and conflict journalism is today facing worse problems than ever because of a context that lacks clear contours, but involves greater uncertainty and risks than in previous eras, and challenges the theoretical and analytical perspectives that have existed since at least a century - if not ever since the 17th century. It is even uncertain whether the distinction between war and peace is meaningful to apply to the security problems facing the international community in the present. And then, previous research on war and peace journalism might be almost obsolete?

The historical changes that lie behind are mainly about globalization, the international dominance of the neo-liberal economy and the emergence of a threat-society that may develop into a hate-society. In the area of security policy, the implications have, as Mary Kaldor has shown, been the retreat of the geopolitical security-culture in favor of hybrids between the competing security-cultures, i.e. new wars, liberal peace and the war on terrorism. International law with its conceptual and institutional base in geopolitics is no longer maintained, neither fully respected by any side in the war on terrorism. The distinction civil - military has lost in importance and, instead of territorial conflicts, the conflicts are now about controlling populations, according to Kaldor's important analysis.

USA’s and her allies’ “war on terrorism” has resulted in “the deadliest and most diversified expression of the global uncertainty of today” (Kaldor 2018) as a hybrid together with new wars and geopolitics. The destabilization of the Middle East region in illegal wars and regime change in countries like Iraq and Libya has in all practical terms created failed states and a failed region.  The on-going battle for hegemony and interference by Russia and Western countries in Syria has created flows of refugee and caused a threat not only to the stability in the Middle East, but in Africa, Central Asia and in Europe as well. The media seems unable to deal with such complex issues in a comprehensive and critical manner.

For journalism, these fundamental changes pose huge challenges and dangers. Not only intellectual and cognitive difficulties arise in the wake of the hybrid culture's metamorphoses. Without the protection of international law, media and journalists are inevitably, and in fact irrespective of their own intentions, part of the warfare. Journalism is martialized at the same time as the conflicts are mediatized. When domination does not focus on territories but on bio-political control of the populations, journalists end up in the centre of the battle, as the contested terrain is the general public’s perceptions, positions and actions in the conflicts.

The new wars is a challange for journalism and the chapter reports studies of media coverage of wars from the Gulf War 1990-91 until the Syrian war 2011-. Focus is on the lack of proper attention to the legal aspects of the warfare in relation to international public law. In the conclusions general lessons for improving the sustainability of war journalism are presented.

The chapter identifies some general trends in war journalism since the Gulf War 1990 til the Syrian War 2011 and relate them to the theory of a Threat Society in late-modernity. That war journalism has become an increasingly dangerous profession is one of these trajectories.

The peace journalism (PJ) field now has an appreciable amount of published material to show for its first decade of serious operation, in research, teaching and training alike. It amounts to a serious project to reform professional education programmes in journalism. But so far, the proposed remedies are more individual projects than coordinated and organized reforms; they are scattered geographically and do not have a global scope. This article discusses the need for a joint approach together with universities, colleges, training institutes and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and inter-governmental organizations, if PJ is to contribute to establishing journalism as an important factor in international norm-setting and to raise the profession’s ethical standards with regard to violent conflicts. To enable this, further conceptual development is also necessary. A combination of Johan Galtung’s PJ approach, with insights from critical discourse analysis (CDA), offers a way of managing the demand for contextual reflexivity that has been raised in the debate about PJ. CDA offers an opportunity to address war and peace issues in a more comprehensive manner, integrating analysis of the propaganda discourses during peacetime, underestimated by Galtung in his model.

In this book, the authors discuss media coverage of major conflicts, from the Gulf War in 1990/91 to the NATO military operations in Libya in 2011 and the civil war in Syria. Through in-depth analysis of Norwegian and Swedish media coverage of the Kosovo conflict in 1999, the Afghanistan War from 2001, the Iraq War from 2003 as well as more recent conflicts, the authors claim that legal issues are poorly covered in the running news coverage of major conflicts. Underreporting of legal issues is especially problematic in relation to new forms of warfare involving extra-judicial killing by drones of targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. While historically Sweden and Norway have had different security policy orientations, the tendency is toward the two countries becoming more closely oriented through Nordic defense cooperation and participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Libya. The authors criticize mainstream media for under-communicating what security risks this support for the regime change strategies pursued by the US/NATO in the so-called ‘global war on terror’ implies for the Nordic countries. The book further discusses the challenges war and conflict reporting face when confronted with major security leaks through WikiLeaks and the classified information revealed by Edward Snowden. Theoretically, the findings are related to the theories of threat society, new wars and risk-transfer warfare as well as to Johan Galtung’s theory of war and peace journalism. Analyses are inspired by critical discourse analysis as elaborated in Norman Fairclough’s and Ruth Wodak’s works.

The chapter analyzes several cases of NATO/US military attacks on journalists and media in new wars from the Kosovo conflict 1999 and onwards and presents an attempt to explain these crimes against international public laws. The explanation relates both to the theory of dual state and critical discourse analysis of war propaganda based on humanitarian rethoric and discourses of compassion.