Measuring peace in the media

This report explores the media coverage, or lack of coverage, of peace and conflict with a special emphasis on news themes that may help to create stable, peaceful societies. The paper states that the concept of peace news coverage is new and may provide a unique differentiator for a television network. The document emphasises that it does not matter whether the coverage is positive or negative; however, what really matters is which topics are covered.

The author notes that positive peace stories make up just 1.6% of total number of the stories examined in the report, demonstrating the following findings:

• the majority of broadcasters do align their media reports with the actual levels of violence in the countries they cover
• in relatively peaceful countries, exceptional violent events tend to receive the majority of international coverage
• US TV networks broadcast more violence than other countries
• less peaceful countries have far fewer reports on the structures of peace
• the ten least peaceful countries are reported on far more frequently than the ten most peaceful countries
• countries where conflict ended or subsided have a dramatic fall in the level of total coverage.
  

Furthermore, the report adds a couple of findings about the Middle East in particular:

• coverage of the Middle East tends to focus on violence topics, with a very small proportion of positive stories
• Middle Eastern TV programmes are the most likely to report positively on Afghanistan.