Today’s global dialogue on Peace Journalism began in 1997 with the first Summer School at Taplow Court, where Professor Johan Galtung, a founder of Peace Studies and Peace Research, gave a series of lectures.
Guest speakers from the media industry included Guardian special correspondent Maggie O'Kane; head of Sky News Nick Pollard; Sebastian Cody, creator of After Dark for Channel 4; documentary maker Martyn Gregory and Patrick Younge, then deputy editor of Here and Now on BBC-TV.
Peace Journalism is when editors and reporters make choices - of what stories to report, and how to report them
- which create opportunities for society at large to consider and to value non-violent responses to conflict.
It flourishes, under that or similar names, in countries such as South Africa, Colombia and Indonesia, where journalists, like other professionals, tend to ask themselves what contribution they can make to bringing peace in their society.
Journalism in the west, in particular in English-speaking countries, has a different tradition. That is not to say there is no Peace Journalism. There is some, and it is easy to see how there could be more. Plenty of Peace Journalism could be done, in ways entirely in keeping with the methods of western journalists and the expectations of their readers and audiences.
Find out about the Peace Journalism book
Find out about the video, News from the Holy Land
Peace Journalism uses conflict analysis and transformation to update the concepts of balance, fairness and accuracy in reporting.
The Peace Journalism approach provides a new road map tracing the connections between journalists, their sources, the stories they cover and the consequences of their reporting - the ethics of journalistic intervention.
It applies an awareness of non-violence and creativity to the practical job of everyday reporting.
Full list of articles written about Peace Journalism
The principles of Peace Journalism correspond roughly to the four checklist points put forward in the Reporting the World book.
More on the RtW book
Some journalists, in some places, use them with the conscious aim of making a contribution to peace. But they are also useful pointers to any journalist who just wants to offer better-balanced reporting. To achieve balance, in the examples considered in RtW seminars, we need more coverage that:
These are the checklist points and also the basic principles of Peace Journalism. The case made in Reporting the World is that these would help to offer more balanced coverage, helping readers and audiences to form their own views about the conflicts besetting our world and the best way to respond to them.
RtW directors Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick, along with many others, have provided training and teaching in Peace Journalism to professional journalists and others, in many places around the world. These are just some of the main developments: