Global Gaze: Queering International Journalism?
A while back, in the very first Global Gaze column, I mentioned that one of the problems with the global gay rights movement is the lack of coverage of international LGBT issues. What if the more immediate problem, however, is fundamentally with the existing coverage of such international queer issues? This week Global Gaze is going to look critically at (Meta Alert!) the coverage of international gay and lesbian stories and events to determine whether present journalistic practices may actually be hurting the gay rights movement throughout the international community, or, at the very least, if there’s a way to use the media to do more to promote equality and tolerance around the world.
As a grad student and a blogger, I thoroughly enjoy putting together random and seemingly unrelated concepts from various disciplines in order to make brand new, potentially invalid constructs. So indulge me as I play a little bit, please.
The inspiration for this post came from a concept and method I discovered recently which I found fascinating, but had somewhat mixed feelings about. It’s a new way of reporting on conflicts around the world entitled “Peace Journalism.” Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick, two of the theorists credited with developing and promoting Peace Journalism, define it by saying, “When editors and reporters make choices – about what stories to cover, and how to cover them – which create opportunities for society at large to consider and to value non-violent, developmental responses to conflict.” Basically this means that the way journalists report on conflicts has a true impact on those conflicts, and that there is a way of composing a story which encourages readers to look at the conflict in a new way and resolve it without violence.
One of the ways of accomplishing this is by, rather than merely reporting on the facts of a particular event, having the journalist extrapolate on the causes, historical background and context of a conflict so that readers can try to understand the roots of the conflict. The idea here is that with greater understanding will come an increased desire and ability to resolve the conflict, rather than just having consumers of the news say, “Oh well, Country or Ethnic Group X is just crazy and/or irrational and we’re always going to be at war, as there is no other response.” Peace Journalism also focuses on the fact that most conflicts have multiple actors and parties involved, rather than two different sides, which will hopefully help to lessen the tension between two groups. There’s also a push among Peace Journalists to always include, along with historical context, potential peaceful outcomes to the conflict as well, rather than merely reporting the facts of a specific event within a conflict as a snapshot or moment in time.
Despite these arguably lofty aims, Peace Journalism has many critics who have issues with the discipline’s form and function. First of all, there’s the difficulty in pinning down what is and isn’t Peace Journalism and how one goes about practicing it. There have been a few journalists who have explicitly taken up the title of Peace Journalist without being obviously different from their colleagues in style, and those who ostensibly practice this form of reporting, but do not refer to themselves as such. Some say “Peace Journalism” is actually just good journalism, in that thorough reporters include plenty of context in their work. Additionally, there are more philosophical issues at play. Many critics argue that the entire point of journalism is to provide unbiased accounts of events and ideas. When journalism is undertaken with a specific purpose in mind, it becomes little more than propaganda, these critics argue.
So what in the world does this have to do with international gay issues? Well, in my random mind, the first thing I thought of when I heard of Peace Journalism was how it might be adapted to the reporting of gay rights and LGBT issues around the world. Is there a way to report on stories involving sexual minorities around the world which will actually aid in the achievement of equality and tolerance in the international community?
The “queering” of journalism (my made-up and potentially inaccurate term) may actually be best applied to a close cousin, so to speak, of Peace Journalism known as “preventive journalism.” Michael O’Neill once wrote that preventive journalism should “search in advance for the hidden forces of change [and] try to identify the underlying causes of crises before, rather than after, they explode so that an alerted society might have time to protect itself from the ambushes of history,” and this approach is more often used when dealing with social, economic, human rights and other issues.
So, can Peace or preventive journalism be applied to queer issues, and is it necessary? I’ll address the second question first: in my opinion, yes. I’ve seen posts on many gay blogs and in newspapers which provide a very basic blurb about an anti-gay law or homophobic incident in another country with little-to-no context. In the case of the blogs, these often lead to comments which amount to “OMG, Country X is sooooo backwards” or even justified, but ultimately impotent, anger at a certain individual or government. There is no information to get readers thinking in terms of solutions or getting them involved in making change. I think international LGBT issues can certainly be framed in a more productive manner in both the mainstream and queer media.
How to go about this is a much harder question. The title of this post may offer an idea, though: attempt to “queer” journalism. Queering is a term generally used in the context of politics (ie. “queering the state”) and can be viewed as analogous to “gendering,” insofar as the term is used to describe the process of injecting gender into discussions where it would not necessarily come up. Perhaps if the mentions of gay issues and attitudes were included in more of the context of “mainstream” news stories, all readers may understand the circumstances within each country and the awareness raised may help to stop problems related to sexual minorities around the world before they develop. In terms of the medium, it seems like blogs are better equipped for doing this, since the journalistic standards are slightly more flexible within new media, as bloggers are generally allowed to include more of their personal views than traditional journalists are. At the very least, LGBT blogs could begin to take more mainstream news stories and provide some additional context for their readers. It would definitely be a start.
Now that I’ve thrown a bunch of random thoughts and terms at you, what do you think? Do you think the way gay issues are reported on can and should be changed to promote equality and tolerance? Does this go against the supposedly unbiased nature of journalism to begin with? What might a “queering” of the international media look like? Leave your views in the comment below – I’m dying to hear what others think of these issues!
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I think that the discussion here about peace journalism and criticism against it is beneficial, because I think that journalism as a practice is one that is always already operating under some sort of bias, and therefore new media is interesting in that it admits that bias in its form in a way and operates with admitted subjectivity, rather than the objective truth that journalism traditionally seeks to “expose.”
In terms of queering international journalism, I think that equating “queering” with “gendering” is a bit of an oversimplification. I think that queering journalism would entail a calling into question the normative institutions which dictate the discourse under which we report issues, such as violence, in this example, based on a sexual identity or behavior, not limiting the discourse to gendered assumptions, but also paying attention to issues of intersectionality including race, class, and in this example in particular, the social construction of the nation. How do nations structure concepts of morality and institute surveillance and policing of moral boundaries and how do they become embodied through identity categories?
This is a question that would also probably never be asked through a journalistic vehicle because it lacks intelligibility to anyone who has not been mentally masturbating in an academic setting for years. Ha. But regardless, I enjoyed the questions this post posed and wanted to rumenate further on them. I think that blogs and new media are more equipt to do said “queering” though because of their form and declared intention.
[...] I remembered a post I authored in 2009 called “Queering International Journalism?” I wrote this rambling article right after I was introduced to the concept of Peace Journalism, [...]
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