Foreign reporting has often been described as geared towards war, crises, and conflicts. This may hold particularly true for media coverage of those countries that are rather marginalized in international news flows and that come to international attention only in times of conflict or natural disasters. When reporting on armed conflict, journalists often need to cooperate with military forces. With regard to recent wars and particularly the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, so-called embedded journalism has been debated as an ethically challenging practice. “Embedded” reporters accompany a particular military unit. While this commonly grants a greater degree of safety to war reporters, it may challenge journalistic independence. However, it is nothing new that war reporters accompany armed forces; the televised immediacy of contemporary wars has, however, put this practice under greater scrutiny.
The question of how autonomous and objective reporters can cover war, especially if their home country is involved as a party to the conflict, or at least has a strategic stake in it, is as old as war reporting itself. Even more than foreign reporting in general, war and conflict coverage has been criticized for following domestic policy lines; focussing on elite actors at the expense of giving voice to ordinary soldiers and civilians on both sides; and pursuing a simplistic conflict narrative emphasizing political and military strategies while neglecting the complex causes and consequences of war. At the same time, war and conflict are typically accompanied by information wars, i.e., the strategic use of communication by the actors involved, which further complicates accurate reporting.
However, some observers have noted changes in more recent conflict reporting, such as a greater emphasis on the micro perspective of the individuals involved rather than the political macro perspective of society as a whole, on the personalities of individual actors rather than on ideology and strategy, as well as on new actors at the expense of the “conventional” focus on governments and the military. It is, however, fair to acknowledge that reporting environments differ between the various wars and conflicts over time and in different regions. War correspondents put themselves in great danger. As war reporting is particularly costly for news media organizations, it is often entrusted to specialized parachutist freelancers who report from the frontline for several media outlets at the same time. However, these freelancers often face specific vulnerabilities. Local fixers and stringers play a crucial role in reporting war and conflict, and often take enormous risks, such as being treated as “traitors” for their affiliation with international reporters.
To address the shortcomings of war and conflict reporting, concepts such as peace journalism or conflict sensitive journalism promote stances that emphasize dialogic, rather than violence-focused and victory-oriented, reporting, giving journalists an active role in conflict resolution. It is important to note, though, that these approaches refer not only to reporting about war and armed conflict, but to reporting on conflict-laden issues as such.
