Coverage of the Cambodian Civil War and Genocide: A Peace Journalism Study Examining Select Journalist Accounts of 1970s Cambodia

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Date
2019
Authors
McKenzie, Nicholas
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Abstract
This thesis examines how four select journalists – Elizabeth Becker, Richard Dudman, Sydney Schanberg, and Jon Swain – covered the Cambodian civil war and genocide (1970-1979). Schanberg and Swain were among the few western journalists present in Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975 when the Khmer Rouge captured the city; Becker and Dudman were two of only a handful of journalists permitted entry into Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge reign. These four journalists, therefore, offer unique accounts about events occurring within the secluded country and they wrote some of the most insightful journalistic analyses on Cambodia during this period. The four journalists’ articles are examined via a directed content analysis methodology, which takes its data characterization from the bi-modal peace and war journalism frame. Peace journalism is a relatively recent stream of Peace and Conflict Studies literature that examines how conflict reporting can be presented in a broader, more “truthful” manner, to include those elements that are usually excluded in traditional war reporting (the voice of non-elites, structural violence, etc.) The articles are analysed and discussed with an eye to considering what elements of peace and war journalism are present in these four authors’ writings, and why the presence (or lack of) these elements is significant to their reporting and understanding of what was occurring in Cambodia. This thesis contributes to the growing discussion on peace journalism by emphasising two understudied areas in the literature; how individual journalists fit within the peace journalism framework, and how peace journalism can be applied to situations of extreme violence, such as genocide. Numerous direct quotations from these journalists’ writings are included within the body of the thesis to directly address the lack of journalist voice within the current peace journalism literature. Key findings from this study include: The presence of a number of peace journalism tenets within the authors’ articles from the 1970s; the significance of access and the importance of a journalist having a deep understanding of a region undergoing conflict; and how determined neutrality and non-partisanship does not necessarily equal accuracy in journalistic writings.
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Cambodia, Genocide, Peace Journalism, PACS, Journalism
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