Human Rights Journalism: Advances in Reporting Distant Humanitarian Interventions by Ibrahim Seaga Shaw (review)

Ibrahim Seaga Shaw's Human Rights Journalism: Advances in Reporting Distant Humanitarian Interventions is an important contribution to the field of critical media and journalism studies of human rights discourses. While the author's claim that "[t]his is the first book to explore, exclusively and critically, the role of the media in the promotion and protection of human rights"¹ is problematic, this book demonstrates effectively the role that powerful international, primarily Western, news producers play in framing the human rights stories that they do decide to report, especially those regarding the non-Western world or refugees from the non-Western world who have moved to the West.

The author, a former editor of the newspaper Expo Times in Sierra Leone who now lives in exile, encourages journalists to take a more comprehensive approach in their reporting which considers structurally what is needed for human rights to be realized instead of the usual scenario where journalists only cover "human wrongs." He argues that "the media and the political elite thrive by routinely invoking direct uncensored violence and not necessarily by promoting peace and human rights through pro-active illumination and by addressing indirect structural and cultural violence."² He explains,

In order to practise human rights journalism, journalists have to accept the responsibility to report all kinds of human rights violations, be these in the form of direct physical violence—such as genocide, arbitrary arrests and detentions, extra-judicial killings, rape, torture, ethnic cleansing and the mistreatment of prisoners—or in the indirect forms of cultural and structural violence—such as hate speech, racism, xenophobia, poverty, famine, corruption, colonialism, slavery, neocolonialism, unfair trade, forced migration, forced labour, human trafficking, marginalisation or the exclusion of minorities. The central argument that cuts across this book is that, if the indirect forms of structural and cultural violence (discussed empirically in Part III) are managed pro-actively by human rights journalism, the direct forms of physical violence (discussed empirically in Part II) would be minimised or altogether prevented.³

According to Shaw, "[h]uman rights journalism prioritises the use of empathy/critical frames, which encourage caring and pro-active interventionist attitudes and approaches to promoting and protecting human rights."⁴

What this reader found most compelling were the case studies in which actual reporting of stories, including those involving Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Indymedia in Seattle, the Africa-EU Summit in Lisbon, and asylum seekers and refugees in Britain, were discussed. Indeed, it is through his use of concrete examples that the author's hypothesis is most forceful. Regarding Sierra Leone, Shaw argues that between 1996 and 2001, "the international community's putative turning its back on Sierra Leone (a move led by Britain—the Empire) was informed more by historical empathy/distance frames than by empathy/critical frames in the mainstream Western media news discourse; and I problematise these frames as human wrongs journalism frames."⁵ As Shaw explains, during the 1991-2002 Civil War in Sierra Leone, an estimated 160,000 people died, and over 2 million people were displaced. Yet Britain, Sierra Leone's former colonial power, did not get involved until 2000, "when it intervened apparently more to safeguard its business interests than out of any genuine humanitarian concern."⁶ He conducted a case study of how four Western journalists covered the situation in Sierra Leone during the period of the war and argues that their coverage in general reinforced the status quo of human wrongs journalism versus practicing the more proactive approach of human rights journalism which would have allowed for greater attention to, and discussion of, systemic problems and solutions.

Shaw also looks at examples of human rights journalism and its positive effects, i.e. Kosovo.

While in the case of Kosovo the media usefully placed a great deal of emphasis on empathy/critical frames over empathy/distance frames to call for a sustained military intervention by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO...