Explore Our Work > Projects > Media: reporting human rights issues
Status: Published
Media: reporting human rights issues (2002)
Introduction
How do journalists select and cover human rights stories? How can one avoid bias or distortion of human rights information? Addressing these questions, this report examines the news and reporting process and its relations with human rights organisations. It assesses the difficulties of communicating complex human rights issues accurately and suggests ways in which coverage of human rights could be improved.
Research team
Biographical affiliation was accurate when research took place.
Research director
Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Research Director, ICHRP, 1998-2004. For more information on this project, please contact Fairouz El Tom, Research and Publications Officer, ICHRP.
Lead researcher
Roger Kaplan. Research and original writing of this report were undertaken by between July 2000 and June 2001. At the time of the project Roger Kaplan was a freelance journalist at the Voice of America, Washington, D.C. He has been an editorial writer for The New York Post and The Detroit News, and the Editorial Director at Freedom House, managing its publications, including Freedom Review, Freedom in the World, and the World Survey of Economic Freedom. Mr Kaplan has also served as Associate Editor for the Reader’s Digest in New York and Paris, and as Programme Officer at the Smith Richardson Foundation. He has written feature articles and reports for The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Harvard Business Review, This World, and The National Review. He has also taught at the International Programme of the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Additional writing was conducted by Richard Carver, who was at the time of the project a consultant based in Oxford.
Researchers
Nabil Khatib, Bureau Chief of the Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), Jerusalem office; Director of the Media Institute, Birzeit University, West Bank.
Mirko Macari, journalist, El Sábado, Santiago.
Yamila Milovic, Production Manager, Radio Mir, Sarajevo.
Adrien Sindayigaya, Producer, Studio Ijambo, Bujumbura.
Advisors
Margaret Cook, Director, Public Affairs, Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC); Senior Political Consultant, National Nine Television Network, Australia.
Roy Gutman, Director, Crimes of War Project, American University, Washington D.C.; 1993 Pulitzer Prize winner for International Reporting.
Kwame Karikari, Director, School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana; Founder and Executive Director, Media Foundation for West Africa, Accra.
Jean-Paul Marthoz, European Communications Director, Human Rights Watch.
Aidan White, General Secretary, International Federation of Journalists.
Documents
Report
Summary
Working papers
The Impact of the Economic Sanctions on Iraq as a Human Rights Issue in the Arab and International Media
•
en
The Media and Human Rights in Burundi
•
en
The Media and Human Rights in Kosovo
•
en
The Media and Human Rights: Progress Report by the Project’s Lead Researcher
•
en
The Media’s Presentation of Universal Jurisdiction in the Context of the Pinochet Case
•
en
Waif working papers
Accuracy and Consistency: Establishing National Human Rights Institutions as Trusted Sources of Information
•
en
Funders
Links
Alternative Information Network
Asian Media Information and Communication Centre
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Independent Media Center (IMC)
Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ)
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX)
International Journalists' Network
Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)
The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA)
The Center for Public Integrity
Bibliography
Amnesty International. “‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings? — Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force” . London: Amnesty International, June 7, 2000.
Arnett, Peter. “Goodbye World — Why Foreign News is Vanishing from America’s Newspapers”, American Journalism Review, November 1998, pp. 50-67.
Asian Media Information and Communication Centre. Media and Human Rights in Asia. Singapore: AMIC, 2000.
Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press, 1983 and 1997 editions.
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation — Understanding New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.
Boyer, Peter J. “The People’s Network”, The New Yorker, August 3, 1998, pp. 28-33.
Brown, DeNeen L. “Journalists Feel Shackled by New Owner”, The International Herald Tribune, January 31, 2002, p. 2.
Burnheim, Sally. The Right to Communicate — The Internet in Africa. London: Article 19, 1999.
Carey, Jane W. Communication as Culture — Essays on Media and Society. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Carver, Richard. “Themes and Trends in African Broadcasting”, in Who Rules the Airwaves — Broadcasting in Africa. London: Article 19 and Index on Censorship, 1995.
——— Who Rules the Airwaves — Broadcasting in Africa. London: Article 19 and Index on Censorship, 1995.
Casmir, Fred, ed. Communications in Eastern Europe — The Role of History, Culture, and Media in Contemporary Conflicts. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.
Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. Manufacturing Consent — The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Chrétien, Jean-Pierre et al. Rwanda — Les Médias du Génocide. Paris: Karthala, 1995.
Cohen, Jeff. “Where the Media Went Wrong Covering Kosovo”, Swans (US), July 5, 1999.
Cohen, Stanley. Denial and Acknowledgement: The Impact of Information about Human Rights Violations. Jerusalem: Centre for Human Rights, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995.
Comor, Edward A. “Governance and the ‘Commodisation’ of Information”, Global Governance 4, 2, April-June 1998, pp. 217-233.
Comparative Human Relations Initiative. Beyond Racism — Embracing an Interdependent Future. Atlanta: Southern Education Fund, 2000.
Constant, Alain. “Al Jezira, CNN du Monde Arabe”, Le Monde, October 7, 2001, pp. 4-5.
Curran, James, ed. Media Organisations in Society. London: Arnold, 2000.
Curran, James and Myung-Jin Park. De-Westernising Media Studies. London: Routledge, 2000.
Dowd, Maureen. “Journalists’ New Focus? Their Fascinating Navels”, The International Herald Tribune, July 22, 1998, p. 7.
El Nawawy, Mohammed. “Satellite Channel Sets a New Standard in the Arab World”, The Baltimore Sun, July 30, 2001.
Ellis, Stephen. “Fit to Print? — Comparing Standards of News”, Harvard International Review 23, 1, Spring 2001, pp. 56-59.
Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research. The Information Revolution and the Arab World — Its Impact on State and Society. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998.
Fallows, James. Breaking the News — How the Media Undermined American Democracy. New York: Vintage, 1997.
Farah, Douglas. “Death of a Crusading Journalist Puts Pressure on Burkina Faso President”, The Washington Post, June 4, 2000, p. A.23.
Feenberg, Andrew. Questioning Technology. London: Routledge, 1999.
Fisk, Robert. “BBC Staff are Told not to Call Israeli Killings ‘Assassination’”, The Independent, August 4, 2001.
——— “The Biased Reporting that Makes Killing Acceptable”, The Independent, November 14, 2000.
——— “When Journalists Forget that Murder is Murder”, The Independent, August 18, 2001.
Freire, Antonio. El Kike, la Chechi, La Elvira, El Gonzalo y El Malo: La Tevedécada de los Noventa. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Eace, 1999.
Friedman, Thomas L. “An Arab TV Station Nourishes Democracy”, The International Herald Tribune, February 28, 2001, p. 9.
Gerbner, George, Hamid Mowlana and Herbert I. Schiller, eds. Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Control of Media Means for America and the World. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.
Giddens, Anthony. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.
Gill, Stephen. “Globalisation, Democratisation, and the Politics of Indifference”, in James H. Mittelman, ed. Globalisation: Critical Reflections. International Political Economy Yearbook Vol. 9. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996, pp. 205-228.
Gissler, Sig. “Communications/Media”, in Comparative Human Relations Initiative. Beyond Racism — Embracing an Interdependent Future. Atlanta: Southern Education Fund, 2000, pp. 37-38.
Glasgow University Media Group. War and Peace News. London: Open University News, 1985.
Glauber, Bill. “Serbian State Television Back on the Air Hours after Deadly Missile Attack”, The Baltimore Sun, May 16, 1999, p. 21A.
Goff, Peter, ed. The Kosovo News and Propaganda War. Vienna: International Press Institute, 1999.
Goldberg, Bernard. Bias — A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2001.
Goldberg, Carey. “An Innocent Man Goes Free 33 Years After Conviction: F.B.I Misdeeds, and Silence, Are Exposed”, The New York Times, February 2, 2001, p. A12.
Gowing, Nik. “New Challenges and Problems for Information Management in Complex Emergencies: Ominous Lessons from the Great Lakes and Eastern Zaire in Late 1996 and Early 1997”, paper presented at the conference on ‘Dispatches from Disaster Zones: The Reporting of Humanitarian Emergencies’, Wilton Park, West Sussex, United Kingdom, May 27-28, 1998.
Green, Philip. “American Television and Consumer Democracy”, Dissent 45, 2, Spring 1998, pp. 49-57.
Greenfield, Meg. Washington. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Gutman, Roy and David Rieff, eds. Crimes of War — What the Public Should Know. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
Haass, Richard N. and Robert E. Litan. “Globalisation and Its Discontents — Navigating the Dangers of a Tangled World”, Foreign Affairs 77, 3, May/June 1998, pp. 2-6.
Hammond, Philip and Edward Herman, eds. Degraded Capability — The Media and the Kosovo Crisis. London: Pluto Press, 2000.
Harwood, Richard. “In Newsroom Culture, Something is Wrong”, The International Herald Tribune, July 16, 1998.
Held, David. “Democracy and Globalisation”, Global Governance 3, 1997, pp. 251-267.
Herman, Edward. The Myth of the Liberal Media. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.
Hitchens, Christopher. “The Case against Henry Kissinger”, Harper’s Magazine 302, 1809-1810, February 2001, pp. 33-58, and March 2001, pp. 49-74.
Human Rights Watch. Los Límites de la Tolerancia: Libertad de Expresión y Debate Público en Chile. LOM, 1998.
Ignatieff, Michael. The Warrior’s Honour — Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. London: Chatto and Windus, 1998.
Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report. October 2000 (www.kosovocommission.org).
Janeway, Michael. Republic of Denial — Press, Politics and Public Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Johnson, Carla B. Screened Out — How the Media Control Us and What We Can Do About It. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000.
Johnston, Steven. Interface Culture — How New Technology Transforms the Way we Create and Communicate. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997.
Kamalipour, Yahya R. and Hamid Mowlana, eds. Mass Media in the Middle East — A Comprehensive Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994.
Kaplan, Roger, ed. Freedom in the World 1993. New York: Transaction, 1994.
Keane, John. The Media and Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
——— “Democracy and the Media”, International Social Science Journal 129, August 1991, pp. 523-540.
Kellner, Douglas Mackay. Media Culture — Cultural Studies, Identity, and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Khalaf, Roula. “Abrupt End for Tunisian Spring”, The Financial Times, January 13, 2001, p. 5.
Kovach, William and Tom Rosenstiel. Warp Speed — America in the Age of Mixed Media. New York: Century Foundation Press, 1999.
Lambeth, Edmund B. Committed Journalism: An Ethic for the Profession. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
Lemarchand, René. Burundi — Ethnic Conflict and Genocide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
MacAskill, Ewen, Brian Whitaker and Jonathan Steele. “Sands of Time Erode Support for Sanctions”, The Guardian, August 1, 2000, p. 11.
Macquail, Denis. Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest. London: Sage, 1995.
Marthoz, Jean-Paul. Et Maintenant, le Monde en Bref — Politique Etrangère, Journalisme Global et Libertés. Brussels: GRIP, 1999.
Massing, Michael. “The Media’s Own Kosovo Crisis”, The Nation, 268, 16, May 3, 1999, pp. 18-22.
Matshikiza, John. “Framing Africa — How the Western Media Maintains Ancient Prejudices”, Rhodes Journalism Review, 20, August 2001, p. 13.
McChesney, Robert W. Rich Media, Poor Democracy — Communication Politics in Dubious Times. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
McLuhan, Marshall and Bruce R. Powers. The Global Village — Transformations in World Life and Media in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Meštrović, Stjepan G., ed. Genocide after Emotion — The Postemotional Balkan War. London: Routledge, 1996.
Miller, Steve. “NAACP to call for Sanctions on Sudan”, The Washington Times, February 7, 2001.
Moeller, Susan D. Compassion Fatigue — How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Moisy, Claude. “The Foreign News Flow in the Information Age”, discussion paper D-23, Cambridge: The Joan Shorenstein Centre for Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University: Harvard University, November 1996.
Morgan, David. “Mass Media and the Policy Process”, in Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research. The Information Revolution and the Arab World — Its Impact on State and Society. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998, pp. 92-106.
Naughton, John. “With the Rusty Sword of Truth — Television’s Influence and the Systemic Crisis in Serious Journalism”, Times Literary Supplement, July 24, 1998, pp. 16-17.
Nelson, Anne. “The Human Rights Dimension in International Reporting”, Rights News (Columbia University) 1, 23, Spring 2001.
Neogy, Rajat. “Do Magazines Culture?”, Transition 24, 1966, pp. 16-22.
Neuman, Johanna. Lights, Camera, War: Is Media Technology Driving International Politics? New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Nye, Joseph S. Jr. “The Media and Declining Confidence in Government”, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 2, 3, Summer 1997, pp. 4-9.
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. London: Secker and Warburg, 1938.
Peters, John Durham. Speaking Into the Air — A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Pritchard, David, ed. Holding the Media Accountable — Citizens, Ethics and the Law. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Raboy, Marc and Bernard Dagenais. Media, Crisis, and Democracy — Mass Communication and the Disruption of Social Order. London: Sage, 1992.
Rochlin, Gene I. Trapped in the Net — The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerisation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Rothberg, Robert I. and Thomas G. Weiss. From Massacres to Genocide — The Media, Public Policy, and Humanitarian Crises. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 1996.
Rusciano, Frank Louis et al. “The Impact of World Opinion on National Identity”, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 2, 3, Summer 1997, pp. 71-92.
Sadkovich, James J. “The Response of the American Media to Balkan Neo-Nationalisms”, in Stjepan G. Meštrović, ed. Genocide after Emotion — The Postemotional Balkan War. London: Routledge, 1996.
Sahagún, Felipe. “Spanish Journalists in the Last War”, in Peter Goff, ed. The Kosovo News and Propaganda War. Vienna: International Press Institute, 1999, pp. 181-185.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage, 1994.
——— Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. London: Vintage, 1997.
——— “America’s Last Taboo”, New Left Review 6, November-December 2000.
Samuelson, Robert J. “Traditional News Media on the Defensive in America”, The International Herald Tribune, July 10, 1998.
Schiller, Herbert I. “La Communication, Une Affaire d’Etat pour Washington”, Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1997, pp. 20-21.
Scheuer, Jeffrey. The Sound Bite Society — Television and the American Mind. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Schlesinger, Philip. Media, State and Nations — Political Violence and Collective Identities. London: Thousand Oaks, 1994.
Sciolino, Elaine. “The Disasters Multiply and Compassion Falters”, The New York Times, May 12, 1991, p. D3.
Sen, Amartya. Poverty and Famine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Skovmand, Michael and Kim Schrøder, eds. Media Cultures: Reappraising Transnational Media (Communication and Society) . New York. Routledge, 1992.
South African Human Rights Commission. Faultlines — Inquiry into Racism in the Media. Johannesburg: August 2000.
Stone, Jennie. Losing Perspective: Global Affairs on British Terrestrial Television, 1989-1999. London: Third World and Environment Broadcasting Project, January 2000.
Sweeney, Michael S. Secrets of Victory — The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Tait, Richard. “The Conflict in Kosovo — The Lessons for the UK Media”, in Peter Goff, ed., The Kosovo News and Propaganda War. Vienna: International Press Institute, 1999, pp. 38-43.
Twain, Mark. “A Salutation to the Twentieth Century”, The New York Herald, December 30, 1900.
United Nations Children Fund. Child and Maternal Mortality Survey, Preliminary Report. Baghdad: UNICEF, 1999.
United Nations Children Fund and PressWise. The Media and Children’s Rights — A Practical Introduction for Media Professionals. London: PressWise, 1999.
United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. “Statement on Globalisation and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights”, May 11, 1998.
Uribe, Hernán. La Invisible Mordaza: El Mercado Contra la Prensa. Chile: Cuarto Propio, 1999.
Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. “Who Needs the BBC?”. The Atlantic Monthly 287, 3, March 2001, pp. 53-58.
Wheeler, Deborah. “In Praise of the Virtual Life: New Communications Technologies, Human Rights, Development, and the Defence of Middle Eastern Cultural Space”, Monitors — A Journal of Human Rights and Technology 1, 1, Spring 1997.
Whitaker, Brian. “Israel Wins War of Words: The Dangers of Sloppy Journalism”, The Guardian, April 9, 2001.
Wolfsfeld, Gadi. Media and Political Conflict — News from the Middle East. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Wright, Robin. “Bush team Divided on Policy Toward Iraq”, The International Herald Tribune, February 15, 2001, p. 1.
“Finally, a thorough examination of how human rights issues and stories relate to media coverage.
This should prompt all the players involved to rethink their goals and values,
to work more comprehensively towards a positive result.” Riz Khan, journalist, former host of CNN’s “Q&A with Riz Khan”
“Excellent … demonstrates with piercing analysis the need for the human rights movement to better inform and deploy the media in the human rights campaign. The report will for long remain the baseline on which the media and human rights movement judge their collaboration.” Makau Mutua, Director of the Human Rights Center, State University of New York