The Conflict Resolving Media

Conflict attracts the media as intensively as magnate attracts metal, but the way these conflicts are usually reported often exacerbates rather than resolve them. In Nigeria, certain assumptions seem to guide media practice and these include:-

A general negative perception of conflict by the media .This is manifested in the extent to which negative views, prejudice, biases, stereotype and inferences become part of news reporting.

The notion that bad news makes the news. This could be seen on the pages of newspapers, magazines, Headlines of news on radio and television, where natural and manmade disasters are reported on a daily basis. They tend to create and focus on issues  of high public interest  such as  the dramatic  escalation and de- escalation phases of conflict , unusually violent incident, and other event  considered newsworthy. They thrive on this for commercial purposes because bad news attract the audiences and these audiences are the commodity they sell to their advertisers. The more the audiences, the fatter the profit.

The media structure does not always make conflict resolution easy. Media ownership poses a lot of conflict in structuring massages for example , state owned media will always support and favour government interests and position. This imbalance in reporting creates a significant opportunity for the commercial media to invade and compete for the airwave. The state owned media tend to provide News, Education and Entertainment  within the confines of government policies, whereas the  commercial media  focus  on maximizing profit by trying  to attract the largest  audiences and as a result have  more  program which  are often entertainment oriented.

Journalists and news reporter, see themselves as mere observers whose role is only to report events in a conflict situation.  Majid Tehranian, in his  article in  communication and  conflict  wrote that ‘’in media coverage, journalist have been found to dichotomize, demonize and dramatize conflict .Instead of  the contexts  of conflict , they tend  to focus on the episodic  and fragmentary accounts of the most dramatic moment  such as  the positions, irreconcilable  differences between parties, inflammatory statement and violent or threatening acts , largely leaving out the preceding causes and antecedent consequences’’

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With all these assumptions in mind, Centre for Crisis Prevention & Peace Advocacy (CCPPA) organised a one –day pilot workshop on conflict resolving media for media reporters in Kaduna, to create awareness and sensitize the media on the need to adopt the problem solving approach to news  reporting and  to share skills for effective conflict  management. As part of the awareness creation, the participants at the workshop were exposed to a more  positive way of  perceiving conflict and explored their role as mediators, since the word  media  was derived from the word mediation which  means ‘’act as a go between or peace maker’’. It is hightime the media redirect their focus from fact delivering to problem solving. Good reporting and news analysis should look beyond stated positions towards the interest and need of parties involved. According to Johannes Botes in his  article in media  development  of April 1996,with the  general  levels  of fears and  frustration rising  throughout the  world there  is the need for  a market for  stories featuring  successful  problem solving and conflict resolution.

Problem solving reporting assists disputants and conflict resolvers to get to the root  of  the problems  causing the conflict and tells us what a conflict is really about .Reporters can call attention to dangers of escalation , and to opportunities  for  settlement that  the parties may not  have  recognized.

A reporter in whatever  conflict  situation  he is covering, be it a divorce case, or a simple dispute, his  task  should  not be to help one side or other  to win , neither  to  provoke  nor  hinder outside  intervention or assist to arrange  a settlement but, should be to tell the  truth about  conflict  so that  other  people  may  decide  how  to deal with it. This will enhance consumers interest in media  reporting  and  analysis. They can also  become  part  of  an early  warning  system  that identifies  the  underground tremors  of an impending conflict thus  permitting early responses to it. Botes, further wrote that  the public ‘s  interest in ‘’How To…….remains unabated. How  to build  families  that  stay  together ,schools that  teach , neighbourhoods that  prosper, and  government  institutions that  serve are subjects that should find a ready market among the anxious consumer of news. Conflict sells but so does conflict resolution.