"American Misconceptions of Syria"
Download PDF About the AuthorFeras Aboukhater is a third-year undergraduate student with a biology major and a minor in medicine, health and society at SUNY Stony Brook University. He wrote this research paper for his WRT 102 class in his freshman year. Feras plans to go into medical school when he is done with his undergraduate degree and he aspires to become a cardiologist. ContentsHow Fox News Frames the War in Syria What Living in Safe Parts of Syria Looks Like Balancing Between Conflict and Peace |
Balancing Between Conflict and PeaceReporting on war and peace at the same time in a country that is witnessing a humanitarian crisis doesn’t sound like an easy task to many journalists; however, it can be done successfully by taking the approach of peace journalism. A great example of this is the coverage of the Sri Lanka civil war of 1983 by the English-language dailies Daily Mirror and Daily News and Sunday Observer. Daily Mirror had 76.1% of its stories framed as peace journalism, and the Daily News and Sunday Observer had 59.8% (Lee 372). That proves to us that war can be covered by peace journalism, so why wouldn't it be the case for the Syrian war? When you mention the phrase “peace journalism,” people start to think that this is the type of journalism that wants the general public to think that everything is going great in a country and that there is no war happening whatsoever, and that's a false idea. Peace journalism requires journalists to have a fair and balanced approach when getting information from their sources and prohibits them from ignoring the elements of a conflict (Ersoy). This would encourage those journalists to do more research on the war they are trying to address and shows the multiple perspectives on this war in order to reach the goal of giving the full story to the general public. Regarding the war in Syria, I would say that balancing between war and peace in the type of journalism I am calling for can be achieved by having journalists go to Damascus and make a full report on how people are living a normal life, and then go to Northern Syria in which the war is still going on and speak about that equally. In that case, information would be retrieved from different sources showing different views of people living in Syria and not concealing any part of the full story. However, in our case right now, US media outlets are already reporting about Northern Syria, showing the war perspective, and not reporting about normal life in Damascus and many other cities that are safe. That's where the problem arises, revealing the missing part that should be reported to show the full story to Americans. |