Introduction

Since its invention around the sixteenth century, journalism has been required to do at least three things at the same time, as outlined by McNair (2005): the provision of information required for people to monitor their social environments; a resource for the participation in public life and political debate (what Habermas has called the ‘public sphere’); and a medium of education, enlightenment and entertainment. Much has been added in the centuries that followed but the core principles have remained the same. These have been enhanced by the socio-historical trends of civilising processes discussed in earlier chapters. The expanding reach of journalism is part of the contemporary globalised society, a world marked by expansive communication systems, increased interdependency and human security. The practices and performance should be viewed within these wider societal contexts, which are often contradictory (Cottle et al. 2016). These contexts have produced transnationally constructed flows of communications, which allows for the interaction between civilised and uncivilised spaces. Diasporic media reporting from homelands in conflict is at the heart of this interaction. In the preceding chapter, I examined Somali diasporic media content and highlighted how their everyday reporting transnationalises and re-creates the Somali conflict. This chapter sheds light on the reasoning of journalists and editors who produce this content in ways that re-create the conflict. This is not an exhaustive coverage as it is based on findings from six interviews with diaspora-based Somali journalists and editors. During the course of the study it became obvious that the drivers and motives of diaspora journalists reporting from and about conflict is highly individual and shaped by different lived experiences. This made the process of understanding how their personal experiences, societal and family pressures and professional and financial demands highly complex. The aim of this chapter is to provide some preliminary insight on what some of the broad constraints and motivations in the hope that it will spark further study on this subject.

Overarching Trends

When the Somali state collapsed most of its institutions disintegrated. The professional media infrastructure that existed, albeit mostly state-owned, collapsed with it. The subsequent ungoverned spaces opened up for a multitude of amateur media outlets mostly created for warlord propaganda. As immediate civil war subsided and global technologies became more advanced, Somali diasporic media came into existence and provided a better quality of content, whilst also filling the informational need of the Somali diaspora. But they too are largely a collection of media outlets run by ordinary people transformed into ‘amateur newsies’, instant reporters and opinion columnists (Allan 2009: 24). A lack of formal education, professional skills and training, ethical values and responsibility is common. Their position as journalists is further complicated by their ties to clans and close personal relationships with Somalis in Somalia, since many of them still have family and friends in the homeland. These relations are perhaps the reasons behind some of the lauded reporting that has been done on humanitarian and developmental issues. They are part of the larger Somali diaspora body that have a vested interest in contributing towards a better quality of life for their fellow countrymen and women, growing the economy and the general reconstruction of the country. But taking a closer look into their everyday decision-making processes shows that, albeit unintentionally, the content they produce transports conflict dynamics from the homeland and re-creates them on their platforms. There is therefore a need to examine the structures of operation, social, technological, financial and ideological factors and the transnational milieu within which they operate.

Conflict re-creation becomes a possibility when the sentiments and dynamics forming the root causes of the conflict are reproduced through the media. The Somali conflict is rooted in poverty and unequal access to resources, clannism and international community interventions. When the media re-enacts the silencing of the poor and marginalised sections of society, it reinforces the injustices already established by the conflict.

Equally, when media platforms reproduce existing clan tensions and alliances, they can encourage relationships of conflict-centred connections and disconnections leading to clannism practices that have been part of the Somali conflict’s root causes. The mediated operationalisation of conflict root causes that encourage the enactment of existing conflict dynamics can also lead to the conflict being re-created through the media.

The collapse of the state fractured Somali society and its common bonds of nationhood. In their place came factionalised enmities and conflicts based on traditional but shifting clan alliances. The conflict perpetuated existing social inequalities and unequally shared resources. It also drew a foray of international actors, each with vested interests, engaging and intervening in multifaceted ways, including Western-centric approaches that were often incompatible with existing local politics, social norms and cultures. These various groups have engaged diasporic media to further their political ambitions, clan interests and ideological causes. The diaspora communities are therefore not only receiving information on progress and happenings in their homeland; they are also invited to engage with the dynamics of the conflict. Between 1989 and 2004, 94% of worldwide violent conflicts revolved around inter-group or group-state disputes (Harbom and Wallensteen 2005). As identity groups are at the core of most contemporary conflicts (Demmers 2007), analysing how diaspora groups are invited to participate in conflicts through diasporic media is especially important in modern times.

Diaspora-based journalists are the producers of diasporic media content that re-creates the conflict. They reap the advantages of living in a safe and secure environment without fear of being killed or persecuted as well as benefiting from advanced technological infrastructures (Osman 2015). This is quite the opposite of the situation that their counterparts inside Somalia are facing. The industry has become lucrative and dangerous because of the prevailing political climate and general disregard for the rule of law. They endure persistent poverty and lack of employment and economic opportunities and therefore take higher risks that can often become fatal.

Channel 4 journalist Jamal Osman wrote in his article in The Guardian in October 2012, how 15 Somali journalists have been killed in Somalia in 2012 alone. It is common for journalists to take bribes from competing actors to publish stories that when found out can lead to their death. Jamal writes that journalists, especially those that work for established media outlets, can get paid up to $1000 for a story:

If a politician wants to be interviewed, he or she will just negotiate the bribe money and journalists will publish what the sources demand. Sometimes, political rivals take revenge through the media: when you become the mouthpiece for someone’s enemy, you become a target. And in Somalia it’s easier to kill someone than to complain. (Jamal Osman, The Guardian October 2012)

There appear to be (at least) four structural factors in conflict-centred diasporic media operations that could lead to conflict re-creation :

  1. 1.

    ownership privilege,

  2. 2.

    poor levels of accountability ,

  3. 3.

    conflict-embroiled elites as primary definers, and

  4. 4.

    economic advantages of war reporting.

Ownership Privilege

Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (1988) illustrated the penetrative role of owners in their propaganda model and highlighted how the corporate values and central aims of owners are imbedded within the professional decision-making processes. This can also be found in non-Western media as the Somali media has shown. The Somali journalists interviewed for this study have raised concerns about owners’ input on editorial content and story selection, especially as it relates to owners giving priority to clan-centred and political stories. One journalist, who works for a London-based Somali media outlet, explained the financial benefit behind the prioritising of these kinds of stories:

The importance of news items is determined by the owner. News is important if he states it is important. This means news items that relate to the selection or crowning of a new clan elder, stories covering a clan event or a particular business and political events like a politician hosting a meeting or an event get selected. These stories generate financial income as those that are being covered are willing to pay so we don’t bother with background checks and balance.

The financial lure of these types of stories has also trickled down to the journalists based inside Somalia, which adds to the volume of news reports diaspora journalists receive, creating a daily newsreel that is often dominated by political stories.

The involvement of owners in story selection seems to be a professional burden for some of the journalists who wish to focus on covering stories that serve public interests. One of them, who works for a media outlet in Birmingham, related the difficulty that journalists face every working day with regards to balancing owners’ priorities and their own sense of duty:

The conflict between owners and us is an ongoing battle and this is intensified when the owner does not come from a media background or doesn’t have an understanding of how journalism works. My sense of duty regularly clashes with the owner’s demands because he wants to make editorial judgements that serve political elites rather than the interests of our listeners. He also employs whoever he wants without them being qualified to do the jobs they’re being hired for, which creates clashes between colleagues as well.

Owners giving editorial salience to news stories paid for by political elites are problematic on many fronts but there are two that are particularly troubling in relation to our discussion on conflict re-creation:

  1. 1.

    The political elite in Somali affairs are those that are in some form involved in the current conflict.

  2. 2.

    Prioritising their news ensures their power to shape the narrative and direction of the Somali conflict.

News selection based on representing the political players that have paid the most produces a hierarchy of representative power, one based on the players with the most capital having the biggest voice. In the context of Somali affairs this often translates into the dominant clans being the most represented. This re-creates the existing marginalisation of less powerful clans and re-ignites antagonism between clans on media platforms (Osman 2015). Beyond clan level, there is also a lack of representation of women, the youth and those that are financially less fortunate, mimicking the marginalisation that exist within Somali society, which fuels the conflict.

Poor Levels of Accountability

As the conflict coincided with improved communication technology, the appetite for war reporting has become insatiable. Lasswell noted in 1927 how one British observer commented, after World War I, that ‘war not only creates a supply of news but a demand for it’ (Lasswell 1927: 192, cited in Carruthers 2000: 3). Mass media affords the public a more widely accessible way of witnessing conflict. What has come forth in the interviews is that this mass access to the public is enjoyed with an almost non-existent sense of accountability on the part of the Somali diaspora journalists. This is interesting, as many of them would take a critical approach with regards to how their owners operate but seem to be less inclined to take a similar approach towards themselves. They see it as an opportunity that brings them deeper levels of freedom in comparison to pre-civil war media reporting. This kind of reporting seems to be exercised especially when feelings of non-representation at government level start to surface as one Birmingham-based producer explains:

I don’t like how my people aren’t represented in the Somali government. I hardly see anyone that I can relate to. So I have no problems highlighting their problems. I feel pressure from my clansmen too to underline that we aren’t represented which often informs the way I do some of the reports.

In addition to the lack of representation, poor levels of accountability seem also to be fed by financial uncertainty. Many journalists have related how they aren’t guaranteed a regular income from their employers and often must find ways to mitigate insufficient salaries, which may loosen their approach towards ethical reporting. Those that come from the major clans use that as a safety net, which most of the time ensures owners do not leave them in the lurch. It is a different story for journalists from minority clans:

Reporters from marginalised clans suffer a great deal because we don’t come from powerful clans we can rely on. Employers will ask us to do some work and then refuse to pay. These employers are relying on the fact that our clans are a minority and therefore don’t have much leverage that can cause them any harm. We have to find other means of income, be it covering certain political events or interviewing public figures willing to pay.

The issue of accountability in the context of diaspora-based Somali journalists , as can be seen, is a complex matter that shows the clan-based survival mechanisms journalists have developed to cover the news of a conflict-ridden homeland. But we also see the fragility of those mechanisms when one comes from clans that fall outside the power bloc. We see how journalists and owners sometimes exercise the same logic to seek financial income. What these instances have in common is how journalistic accountability can be pushed to the side to accommodate working and surviving in a conflict-centred media environment.

Conflict-Embroiled Elites as Primary Definers

Hall et al. (1978) highlighted the importance of how professional rules give rise to the practice of ensuring that the media is grounded in objective reporting and, where possible, authoritative statements are obtained from accredited sources. This culture sets a precedence of constantly turning to representatives of major social and political institutions because of the authority and institutional power their position grants them. The late Stuart Hall and his colleagues point out the irony of these very rules, which aim to preserve the impartiality of the media, and which grew out of desires for greater professional neutrality. In practice, these rules serve powerfully to orientate the media in the ‘definitions of social reality’, which their ‘accredited sources’—the institutional spokesmen —provide (Hall et al. 1978: 57). The practical pressure of working against the clock and the professional demands of impartiality and objectivity combine to create a systematically structured over-accessing granted to those in power and elite positions, thereby reproducing symbolically the existing structure of power in society’s institutional order.

The result of this structured preference given in the media to the opinions of the powerful is that these ‘spokesmen ’ become the primary definers of topics (Hall et al. 1978: 58). Lance Bennett (1990) builds on this premise and illustrates how mass media news professionals tend to ‘index’ the range of voices and viewpoints in both news and editorials according to the range of views expressed in mainstream government debate about a given topic (Bennett 1990: 106). This working hypothesis implies that ‘other’ (i.e., non-official) voices filling out the potential universe of news sources are included in news stories and editorials when those voices express opinions already emerging in official circles. Thus, the media becomes what Bennett refers to as ‘keepers of official records’. In the context of Somalia, although there is growing evidence of non-powerful groups and individuals finding alternative ways to get their voices heard, it is more common to find both Hall and Bennett’s hypotheses unfolding in the form of prominent members of the international community, major clans and central and regional administrations being the primary sources that shape Somali news. Journalists interviewed for this study explained how events related to those primary sources are also headline news. Here is an account from one journalist/producer who works for a media outlet in London:

Deaths, kidnappings and injuries of prominent members of the Somali government and the international community will take priority in our daily news coverage. We also give preference to international conferences that focus on Somalia such as the 2012 London conference. Headlining news would also include work that the UN and its agencies are carrying out. During the famine period for example, related events and issues would often be the headlining news, especially if international countries and donors pledged large sums of money or aid. We also gave the same prominence to meetings, events and conferences that addressed the famine and were organised by international community members.

When asked who the most frequently featured newsmakers were, the journalists either stated international community members or Somali government officials or both. This hegemonic focus on elite figures creates a hierarchy of primary definers that side lines the need for balance and plurality of voices. It re-instates the existing social inequality that the conflict produced where those who are voiceless, continue to be voiceless.

Economic Advantage of War Reporting

War reporting often produces the dilemma to appear nationalistic and reconciliatory but also to be critical and not necessarily fall in line with the official government rhetoric (Kirtley 2001). There is also the added pressure to increase audience figures that translate into profitable shows and programmes. The Somali journalists explained that they particularly feel the pressure to generate audiences, which often leads to them framing stories and producing programmes to purposefully incite existing antagonism. A London-based journalist says:

The stories that feature two opposing clans generate audiences because members of those two clans would want to hear what their representative has to say and what the opposing clan member is accusing them of. We have several programmes at our station that work within this framework. These programmes are put on our web site and YouTube as well to diversify and further increase audiences.

Sometimes viewers complain about these programmes but the journalist thought that these complaints were misplaced and journalists are not responsible for what the guests decide to say on air:

The live discussions, especially the ones with in-house guests often cause complaints because the guests will praise their clan and progress that has been made in their towns and regions and speak ill of other clans that they have hostilities with. The viewers whose clan has been disrespected think of us as being responsible for that and will log a complaint. We make a disclaimer at the beginning of the programs where we state we are not responsible for what people say but at the same time we warn participants to be respectful but we can’t promise they will listen. This is mostly done for financial reasons as these types of reports generate large volumes of audiences and attract advertising.

There seems to be a misunderstanding of what journalists are responsible for, which is rooted in most of them lacking professional training in journalism ethics and practice. Pitting two opposing clans against each other can at the very least re-create the ‘us-vs-them’ dimension of the conflict but this can also very easily erupt into violent outbreaks.

Summary

This chapter’s key aim was to present how journalists in their reporting can re-create conflict but the chapter has also highlighted how owners meddling with editorial decision making for financial purposes can contribute to the re-creation of conflict as well. This is chiefly done through giving importance to key conflict dynamics such as clan antagonisms and events which are re-created on their platforms and transported to their audience.

There is also a general sense of lack of accountability both on the part of the owners as well as the journalists. The journalists tend to see this as a type of freedom effectively giving them free rein to air their political and ideological standpoints and this in and of itself can fuel certain aspects of the conflict and recreate it. This is particularly dangerous when journalists don’t feel politically represented. The owners take advantage of the fact that they are not held accountable in the form of avoiding salary payments. This is particularly concerning for journalists from minority clans since owners feel these clans aren’t powerful enough to challenge them. This effectively takes away the right for the journalists to be paid for the work they do but more broadly speaking, it manifests in them feelings of powerlessness and marginalisation, a lack of recognition.

The third highlighted factor was that of elite sourcing and tendency to prioritise elite stories. Journalists expressed a unanimous sentiment of international community members and Somali government officials being seen as the primary news definers. It creates unequal accessibility and a hierarchical mind-set amongst the Somali public. It also reinforces the existing social inequality, which further marginalises the voices of the voiceless and authorises the elite members as being more important than ordinary citizens.

The final factor that this chapter shed light on was the need to generate audiences. There is a tremendous appetite for conflict-driven topics, particularly when hostilities can become apparent. There seems to be a misunderstanding of what journalists think they are responsible for as complaints have been raised by audiences about these topics but the journalists shrug it off and place the responsibility on the guests of the shows.

Some of these factors particularly that of accountability and responsibility can be traced to the journalists’ lack of education and professional training. Like the diaspora communities they are part of, journalist spend most of their time in their own circles around each other, making their interaction a circulation of similar experiences leaving little room for professional growth or acquiring new knowledge.

Furthermore, there isn’t a regulatory body that journalists and owners feel accountable to and this shows that whilst laws and regulatory frameworks exist, there is a need for implementation. Governing bodies such as OFCOM have a key role to play to regulate diasporic media outlets that operate in the UK. This is especially important with regards to diasporic media whose homelands’ governing institutions are too weak or have collapsed altogether.

In sum, what this study has highlighted is that although diasporic media is helpful in providing platforms for development and reconstruction efforts, which is especially important for homelands in conflict, it is playing a bigger part than current scholarship has warranted. Diasporic media also goes beyond maintaining ties with kinship and preserving immigrant identities, cultures and tradition. They can play a performative role in enacting conflict-laden sentiments and reinforce war produced identities that then come alive many thousands of miles from where the conflict is taking place. A hopeful remark to be made is that most of the journalists don’t intentionally seek to re-create the conflict but the structural, social and financial constraints within which they operate inform their dispositions and their output. The following chapter explores how their content is received by the diaspora communities.