The ‘us only’ and ‘us + them’ Frames in Reporting the Sierra Leone War: Implications for Human Rights Journalism

Abstract

As Caney (2000: 131) puts it, humanitarian intervention so far essentially remains ‘a “reactive” principle’, which is adopted with hindsight — after people’s needs or rights have been violated. This is exactly what happened in the case of the British ‘intervention’ in Sierra Leone. I argue that this largely explains the high failure rate of humanitarian interventions and the high preference for the military over the peaceful approach, especially to avert distant crises like those in Africa. To overcome this problem, I therefore go with Caney’s ‘strong case for tackling the roots of these problems and seeking to prevent them from occurring rather than responding to them once they have arisen’ (Caney, 2000: 131, a view also shared by Parekh, 1997; Pogge, 1992: 100–1; Booth, 1995: 121). This chapter is important in three ways: first, it makes a contribution to the Galtung peace journalism model; second, it retheorises the binary notions of ‘us’ and ‘other’ or ‘them’ into ‘us only’ (patriotic/war/human wrongs journalism, which is evocative) and ‘us + other’ or ‘them’ (global/peace, human rights — journalism which is diagnostic); and, finally, it conceptualises the human rights journalism model as opposed to the human wrongs journalism model. It is structured into three sections: first, the limits of journalistic practice; second, human wrongs journalism frames in the coverage of the Sierra Leone civil war; and, finally, empathy distance frames versus empathy critical frames.