Nonkilling Media Edited by Joám Evans Pim Co-published by Center for Global Nonkilling Honolulu and Omaha December 2013 CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 You are free to share, copy, distribute and transmit this work* Under the following conditions: Attribution. You must attribute this work in the manner specified by the author/licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform or build upon this work. * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. * Any of the above conditions can be waived if you gain permission from the copyright holders. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the Authors’ moral and legal rights. Parts of this volume have been released under GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 as part of Wikiversity’s School of Nonkilling Studies (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/School:Nonkilling_studies). The Center for Global Nonkilling does not necessarily endorse the views expressed by the authors. Also available for free download at: http://www.nonkilling.org © The Authors, 2013 © Center for Global Nonkilling, 2013 (this edition) First Edition: December 2013 ISBN-13 978-0-9839862-3-2 ISBN-10 0-9839862-3-1 ______________________________________________________ Cataloging in Publication Data (CIP) Nonkilling Media / Edited by Joám Evans Pim. ISBN 978-0-9839862-3-2 1. Nonkilling 2. Peace. 3. Nonviolence. I. Title. II. Evans Pim, Joám, ed.. CDU - 172.4 : 327.36 ______________________________________________________ A catalogue record is also available from the Library of Congress. Center for Global Nonkilling 3653 Tantalus Drive Becker Hall Suite G25 Honolulu, HawaiΣi 96822-5033 2500 California Plaza United States of America Omaha, Nebraska 68178 USA Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] http://www.nonkilling.org www.creighton.edu/ccas/asianworldcenter “The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking” John Kenneth Galbraith Contents Foreword 11 Beverly Deepe Keever Introduction When the messenger is the killer… 23 Joám Evans Pim Chapter One Nonkilling Media: A Normative Framework 35 Philip Lee Chapter Two The Media’s Untapped Potential 55 Virgil Hawkins Chapter Three Covering Killings 77 Xu Xiaoge Chapter Four Public Discourses for Nonkilling Societies 93 Eloísa Nos Aldás Chapter Five Catastrophe and Progress in Nonkilling Futures 121 John A. Sweeney Chapter Six Envisioning Nonkilling Futures in Film 153 Karen Hurley 8 Nonkilling Media Chapter Seven Nonkilling Media from a Gender Perspective 173 María José Gámez Fuentes Chapter Eight Counternarratives to the intelligentsia 191 Tom H. Hastings Chapter Nine Contemporary Peaceful Societies 219 Bruce Bonta Foreword Foreword Beverly Deepe Keever University of HawaiÙi The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility. Those who control the media are accountable for its consequences. … Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. Presiding Judge Navanethem Pillay, warning three media executives found guilty of genocide by the In- ternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, 2003. This book amasses for the first time anywhere the roles and responsi- bilities of the media for establishing and securing a nonkilling world. The ten authors assembled and introduced by Joám Evans Pim for the Center for Global Nonkilling cull a wide array of academic and community sources to assess the state of today’s global media and to offer recommen- dations for achieving a nonkilling world. That nonkilling world has been described by Glenn D. Paige in his semi- nal book as one characterized by the absence of killing of humans, threats to kill, conditions conducive to or justifications for killing and of “no condi- tions of society dependent on threat or use of killing force for maintenance or change” (Paige, 2009: 21). This first-ever book comes at a most propitious moment in history. It is a moment of profound shiftsa term I use to describe an unmooring from the past amidst momentous technological changes headed in a which-way direction that may imperil the planet and its population. It is in a direction in which “the future does not exist,” according to Pro- fessor Jim Dator’s First Law of the Future, as recounted by John Sweeney in Chapter 5. In short, the future is waiting to be shaped or may be happening right now. Will it shift toward more killing or toward nonkilling? Partly determining the shaping of the future lies in the hands of the me- dia in reflecting and responding to these five monumental, even if slow- moving, shifts: 11 12 Nonkilling Media - the shift away from supports for killing or threats of killing, - the shift away from paying the costs of killing or threats of killing, - the shift toward more fact-finding about conditions causing killing, - the shift toward a nonkilling society and world, - the shift in media technologies. The shift away from supports for killing or threats of killing is visibly under- way. Daily at this writing citizens globally are repulsed by the killings of people within Syria by their own government or its armed opponents, as distributed worldwide by the media, while simultaneously experiencing fears of nuclear happenings that could destroy much of the planet and its population. In the United States random shootings of pupils in schools have even prompted some parents to buy bulletproof backpacks for their little ones. Yet covering killings has become increasingly significant because the speed, reach and impact of the media have become more pronounced than ever before. For the first time perhaps, journalists themselves have become targets. As Associated Press’ Middle East Regional Photo Editor Manoocher Deghati explains: “When you cover conflict, it’s really dangerous, but being a target is a different thing. Because we know inside Syria, the pro- government militia are looking for journalists.” At the other end of the spectrum, killings have been done purely for propaganda purposes. As Marine David J. Morris explains, a four-man U.S. Marine Corps sniper team was spotted and executed on a rooftop in down- town Ramadi, Iraq. Then, he continues, “Video footage of the executions was running on several local Arab television networks before the Marines could even mount a patrol to investigate.” In short, as Jason Burke, a British expert in terrorist groups, elaborates, “The terrorists have become producers and film directors and video cam- eras have become their most potent weapon.” The global media are on notice that messages inciting killing might be con- sidered war crimes, as the italicized quote at the beginning of this text under- scores. In this landmark decision by the International Criminal Tribunal, three media executives were convicted of genocide for inciting people to partici- pate in the wave of killing in 1994 that swept across Rwanda; about 800,000 were killed. The Tribunal found that a popular radio station and a newspaper were used by the media executives to inflame hatred against the country’s Tutsi minority plus their sympathizers and to encourage massacres. The Tribunal’s decision “marks the first time since the Nuremberg trials after World War II that anyone has been convicted of responsibility for Foreword 13 mass murder through the control of the media,” Dworkin writes. The ver- dict on Rwanda “is likely to stand as a decisive precedent in determining that media organizations can be held accountable for the crimes that they direct their listeners and readers to carry out.” Similarly, scholar Alison DesForges told the Washington Post that the Tribunal’s decision is ex- tremely important “because it does recognize that media can be used to kill.” (Dworkin, 2003; visit <http:www.crimesofwar.org>). The shift away from the economics of killing or threats of killing is already hitting governments’ budgets and taxpayers’ pocketbooks. Facing a multi- trillion-dollar national debt, stubborn unemployment, under-funded public schools and infrastructure, the U.S. government has slashed monies for its military establishment and is withdrawing its troops now killing and being killed in Afghanistan. In the Middle East, Europe, Brazil, and elsewhere protestors risk being killed or killing others by taking to the streets, smashing windows and fighting law enforcers as they demand better economic and social conditions. Instead of expending these pent-up violent reactions, however, protestors might well benefit from studying the effectiveness of Gandhi’s nonviolence. Thanks to the electrifying revelations of renowned leaker Edward Snowden, protes- tors and other dissidentsand citizens and governments everywhereare now alerted that all of their electronic media messages are being spied on by the U.S. government, often with help from its allies. Willingly, unwillingly or unwittingly, the media often serve as a vast surveil- lance network useful to governments and commercial enterprises and perhaps even to criminals. And this prospect may increase as drone journalism and other media outlets gain momentum. To offer individuals counter-surveillance protections, cutting-edge designers are creating “stealth-ware” that block un- wanted photo-taking or aerial tracking (Worthham, New York Times, 2013). In other cases, some media