The 50th anniversary celebrations of NGO CSW/NY, which organizes the civil society side of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) commence this month. The civil society forum is the central stage for global advocacy to promote women’s empowerment, human rights and gender equality.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week has declared war not just on the country, but on what now seems to be a different reality. News media images from Ukraine depict the desperation of fleeing women and children, babies born in bunkers, men turned away from evacuation trains and racist treatment of foreign students.
How to make sense of the contradictions in our world, the co-existence of celebration with human suffering, of hope with despair, or peace with war?
In the current phase of mediatization of war, news institutions have adapted to the present [digital] media environment more effectively than western governments and policy elites, according to scholars Andrew Hoskin and Ben O’ Loughlin. Following this, they ask us to consider whether power – of agenda-setting and framing, for instance – rests with the news media.
It is a dangerous path when some news media are bent on disinformation. “Never was there a better illustration of the alternative reality presented by Russian state media (of the current war in Ukraine) than at 17:00 GMT on Tuesday (March 1, 2022),” wrote the BBC’s Simona Kralova & Sandro Vetsko, who monitored the coverage of the war. For example, the news reports blame Ukraine for bombing its own cities and citizens.
With power comes responsibility. Just as sectors such as the global finance system and sports are pulling out the stops to strongly encourage an end to the invasion, it is imperative for responsible news organisations to use their power to “stop war from escaping unintelligibly” by fighting disinformation.
The toolbox of strategies is clearer than it ever was. Social media giants including Facebook (Meta), Twitter, Reddit, Google and YouTube are restricting Russian state media’s use of their platforms, barring access or ending advertising. Media bodies outside Russia, including Canada’s cable TV giants, have announced the end of Russian propaganda channels on their platforms. Global News even advised readers how to spot fake news about the invasion. Elsewhere outside Russia, however, other voices are still spouting misinformation and confusion.
Peace is not a given. Lived realities can and do change in the blink of an eye. Planned events may be re-configured to respond to the unpredicted. And more than ever, the news media’s responsibility in ensuring truth-telling, particularly in a war-threatened world, is paramount.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
