Brendan McConnell
March 5, 2013
International Reporting – Final Paper
bmcconn8@uwo.ca
“The Colour of Truth is Grey”:
Objectivity and Accountability in War Reporting
Wars can make a journalist’s career. They can rally national unity, jump-start economies and
feed the ever hungry news cycle.
But of course wars carry with them atrocities, death, suffering and devastation that many
people will never be able to comprehend. Their understanding of the event—however narrow or wellinformed—comes from the news media.
As such, the news media as an obligation and a duty to inform its citizenry about the events and
nuances of a given war so they can know where their country stands both domestically and abroad.
This is not a new concept by any means—the news media has always played a major role for
countries during wartime.
But with increasing scrutiny being placed on the idea of “objectivity” and the competitive news
market valuing timely events over deeper, causality-centric pieces, the reality—the truth—about a war
is becoming a more and more problematic thing to tie down.
The colour of truth is indeed grey.
It is grey in regard to the effects of developmental and food aid, complicated environmental
impacts and social issues. But this is perhaps even truer when one considers war.
The causes and implications of war are always incredibly complicated—it is never just us versus
them, good versus bad. There is political jockeying for position, propaganda, unheard victims, close
secrets, and so on that complicate and understanding of a war.
And, given that most people in a country such as Canada will follow and understand a war
through the eyes of one or multiple news organizations, foreign correspondents have a deep obligation
to make sure they are presenting an accurate picture, however hard this may be.
“While war unleashes devastation and death on people, it delivers ratings and brings life to
television,” says Danny Schechter in his article Peace Journalism 101. This win-lose relationship the
media has with war is one that we all must be acutely aware of.
Take for instance the coverage of the Shock and Awe campaign at the start of the Iraq War.
This operation was launched and executed with the intention of wowing both the Iraqis and the
world alike, to show off the power of the American military—hence the name.
Television networks—with of course limited access on the ground at the time of the attack—
focused on this angle to the story rather than taking a step back and looking deeper into the motivation
and implications of such an attack.
This also—as is the case with most wars—boils the conflict down to what Schechter calls the
“binary fallacy”.
He describes this fallacy as “simplifying armed conflicts into battles between two parties with no
attention to underlying political factors”.
It creates a clear divide between with us or against us, good or bad, when the reality of the
conflict could and often is much more complex—this implies that the truth is black and white when it is
most definitely not.
What flattens the nuances of a war even more is the journalistic process that Annabel
McGoldrick—in her article War Journalism and ‘Objectivity’—calls “war journalism”.
She says war journalism has three defining characteristics—a bias in favour of official sources, a
bias in favour of events over process and a bias in favour of dualism in reporting conflicts.
For a young foreign correspondent, the critique of each of these processes is very important
when it comes to understanding how a war is covered and presented by many news organizations.
A bias in favour of official sources relates to the tendency of reporters to use statements and
actions of high-ranking political and military officials to understand operations and motive during a
conflict.
This is easy—often times they want to get their message across. But, of course, this message is
often tailored the way they want it and, furthermore, will inevitably be framed through the bias of a
one-sided participant in the war.
This report would favour simplicity over nuance, bias over objectivity and event over cause.
Focusing solely on event reporting over causal reporting-- Shock and Awe for example—is a
convention that most news organizations are guilty of in some capacity.
That is the nature of news—if it is not timely and impactful it is rarely reported as much as
something that is.
As such, nuance, background and cause are all frequently sacrificed, particularly in war
reporting, in favour of the sexiest and easiest event or angle. This does not allow for a careful dissection
of the situation and implies that the truth of an event is black and white.
These are all things that young foreign correspondents need to be aware of. If you subscribe to
the ideal that your job is to inform the citizenry to the best of your ability then you must understand
how to go about doing that.
A scary implication of not understanding how this is done is that you run the risk of thinking that
sticking to the above conventions of ‘war journalism’ are enough to provide the full picture.
They are not.
The true implication and nuances of a war are always incredibly complicated and the truth
about them is always grey. It is never a simple black and white, us versus them situation.
A far scarier implication is—as McGoldrick explains—“without some exploration of underlying
causes, violence can be left to appear, by default, as the only response that ‘makes sense’”.
In other words in the violence of a war and reaction to violence with more military force is all
that is reported on—rather than cause—this becomes the norm that readers and correspondents alike
view as the natural response.
War begets more war.
What a young foreign correspondent —and many current ones—must learn is that truth’s
greyness is not something to be feared but something that can be used to your advantage.
If many correspondents believe it is part of their job to keep tabs on a war effort and to inform
its citizenry in hopes that such events will not happen again, it is worth their while to learn how to
report on said events responsibly.
One idea of how to do this is through a technique called “peace journalism”
Jake Lynch in Peace Journalism for Journalists explains that this concept was one that emerged
in the 1970s as a proposed alternative to how the mainstream media covers conflict.
Lynch asserts that peace journalism “offers both a set of practical plans and options for editors
and reporters, and a basis for developing evaluative criteria for the critical analysis of war.”
Among the movement’s assertions about the current mainstream practice of war journalism is
that it offers a simplistic, blow-by-blow account of battles, frames it as a tug-of-war between two
divergent sides, fails to analyze peace talks and elevates Western countries above others.
The alternative—explains Lynch—is to create a media environment wherein foreign
correspondents can “join a critical discussion about the reporting of particular conflicts, with input from
those with visions of peace; and some who are working on the ground to mitigate, alleviate and
transform the conflict in question.”
But how exactly is this done?
It first comes down to the foreign correspondent taking the initiative to step outside of using
only or primarily official sources.
Informing yourself about the background of a country, the cause and nuances of a conflict and
striving to understand political relations and international law and diplomacy as it pertains to said
country and conflict are all essential to being able to dig deeper and discovering what shade of grey it is.
Once this is achieved, a foreign correspondent must strive to find and use sources that are
outside of the political house of cards—to find real people on the ground that are directly associated
with and affected by the conflict.
This allows for more effective, no-strings-attached reporting which can be used to collect
information about the situation behind the events and political rhetoric.
Lastly, the notion of us versus them, good versus evil, needs to be dispelled. This is not to say
that this dichotomy never exists—not many would argue that World War 2 was not a struggle between
good and evil.
What this does mean, however, is that a foreign correspondent must be able to put aside biases
associated with nationality or personal belief and strive to equally uncover motivations, ideals and
beliefs on both sides.
It is simply not good enough to focus on the motives of one side and neglect to do the same for
the other.
What this all means, therefore, is that a foreign correspondent must strive to be fair. This does
not mean give equal weight to all sides, it does not mean put aside your biases and beliefs and it does
not mean neglect to report on events and political statements.
It means be aware that your duty is to uncovering and explaining the nuances of the truth. And
in order to do so, all sides, all people and all movements—whether in favor of peace or war—need to be
acknowledged, explained and analyzed.
This is not to say that is an easy thing to do—it is of course much easier to fall back on
traditional war journalism conventions.
But this runs the risk of presenting the truth as black and white when in reality the truth,
especially in war, is grey.