[By Liu Rui/Global Times]
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[By Liu Rui/Global Times] |
If the media's role is simply to report the newsworthy stories, what if such stories breed hatred between nations or fuel divides of a society? Many years ago at a seminar at Peking University, I talked to a US reporter about the social responsibility of journalists. She said, "It is not my job to promote peace. My job is to report the truth. It is the job of the foreign ministry to make peace."
But looking at the ongoing wars around the world, I would argue that journalists do have a social responsibility for promoting peace and love among peoples of different cultures and ideologies.
In the last two decades, I have attended numerous international conferences. Speakers and participants at these conferences are always talking about peace and dialogue. No one calls for war and conflict.
At the conferences, our voices are rational and peaceful. But when we look at the newspapers and listen to our sound bites in the press, the conferences seem filled with biased stories, comments and even hate speech. Those peace-loving dialogues and viewpoints at the international conferences were not reported in the press. In the media reality today, it is always "you or me," not "you and me."
The media is a big player in inciting hatred, riots, wars, and separatist movements by demonizing certain groups of people.
Bad journalism forces people to war by selected reporting and even made-up news. Bad journalism causes mistrust and suspicion between different peoples by relying upon unreliable sources and reporting incomplete and biased stories. "Everyone is biased. You cannot blame the media alone," a friend told me, defending the media.