Those who promote the
negative image of the “enemy” may often reinforce it with rhetoric about the
righteousness of themselves; the attempt is to muster up support and nurture
the belief that what is to be done is in the positive and beneficial interest
of everyone. Often, the principles used to demonize the other, is not used to
judge the self, leading to accusations of double standards and hypocrisy.
Next the statesmen
will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and
every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will
diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus
he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for
the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger,
1916, Ch.9
The list of tactics
used in propaganda listed further above is also expressed in a similar way by
Johann Galtung, a professor of Peace Studies and summarized here by Danny
Schechter:
[Professor] Galtung
laid out 12 points of concern where journalism often goes wrong when dealing
with violence. Each implicitly suggests more explicit remedies.
1.
Decontextualizing violence: focusing
on the irrational without looking at the reasons for unresolved conflicts and
polarization.
2.
Dualism: reducing the number
of parties in a conflict to two, when often more are involved. Stories that
just focus on internal developments often ignore such outside or “external”
forces as foreign governments and transnational companies.
3.
Manicheanism: portraying one side
as good and demonizing the other as “evil.”
4.
Armageddon: presenting violence
as inevitable, omitting alternatives.
5.
Focusing on individual acts of violence while
avoiding structural causes, like poverty, government neglect and
military or police repression.
6.
Confusion: focusing only on
the conflict arena (i.e., the battlefield or location of violent incidents) but
not on the forces and factors that influence the violence.
7.
Excluding and omitting the bereaved, thus
never explaining why there are acts of revenge and spirals of violence.
8.
Failure to explore the causes of escalation
and the impact of media coverage itself.
9.
Failure to explore the goals of outside
interventionists, especially big powers.
10.
Failure to explore peace proposals and offer
images of peaceful outcomes.
11.
Confusing cease-fires and negotiations with
actual peace.
12. Omitting reconciliation: conflicts tend to reemerge if attention is not paid to efforts to heal
fractured societies. When news about attempts to resolve conflicts are absent,
fatalism is reinforced. That can help engender even more violence, when people
have no images or information about possible peaceful outcomes and the promise
of healing.
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