ARCHIVES > ARTICLES

Peacekeeping: Try words, they come cheaper
By Keith Spicer

(The following article appeared in The Economist on September 3, 1994).

It sounds Utopian. But given the death-toll of tribal conflicts like those in ex-Yugoslavia of Rwanda, and the difficulty (and cost) the world meets when it tries to pick up the pieces, how about a different tool to prevent them ever starting: information? That is the idea of Keith Spicer, chairman of the commission that regulates Canada’s broadcasting.

Bloody-minded leaders, he argues, have always marshalled their followers for war by demonising intended enemies. The Hutus’ Radio Mille Collines is just the latest example. In a recent book, "Forging War", a London journalist, Mark Thompson, has documented precisely how both the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman first subverted then used their media to preach hate, months before the war broke out.

Some journalists were happy to help. Others were sacked, beaten up or threatened with death until the politicians got what they needed: a stew of historical caricatures (often concocted by respected intellectuals or religious figures), imagined threats, supposed humiliations and fake atrocities. "Milosovic", says Mr Spicer, "had won his war where it mattered, in people’s minds, before it started."

And the peacelovers answer? Set out to counter warlike tribal myth with the nobler dream -- and realities -- of inter-tribal respect, co-operation and solidarity. Show that, with all their faults, multicultural societies can and do work.

Do-gooders’ propaganda in short? Not propaganda, not the Voice of America or for that matter the United Nations, says Mr Spicer, but the many faces of truth that emerge from the interplay of free and diverse sources of information. In western countries, media freedom and market forces do the job. But neither yet rules fully in Eastern Europe, still less so in much of the third world. How can they be helped? He proposes a conscious effort by the private and public sectors of western countries, based on their own values and experience.

But is not that happening already? The West’s governments broadcast, its publishers invest abroad. Yes, but not with a specific peacekeeping aim; and the investment is far from worldwide. Mr Spicer thinks both would spend more readily if they could see proven "the democratic, and therefore peace and security, benefits of opening politics everywhere to free and physically safe media" -- and the profits.

Proven, how? Eastern Europe, he says, offers an example. In the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, democratic institutions are underpinned by vigorous media debate. Romania is short on both; and its media are still pursuing old ethnic adversaries like the Hungarians, as Hungary’s freer media -- on the whole -- do not. Has anyone forgotten where Balkan wars can lead?

The profit opportunities for western publishers in Eastern Europe are plain (the case for Africa is harder to make). And a number are grabbing them, such as Germany’s Bertelsmann and America’s Turner. A Canadian firm, Alliance, is taking a quarter of Budapest’s first new private-sector television station. These companies will do good simply by doing well: they will transfer democratic values as they transfer (no less needed) professional skills and standards, and through the content of what they sell. Like pornography and crass commercials? asks the sceptic. Maybe, admits Mr Spicer, but no one ever floated an ethnic war on hamburger ads or (at least since ancient Greece and Troy) pictures of naked woman.

So what should western media do? Or -- through modest finance, notably in places such as Africa where profits come hard -- western governments? Part of Mr. Spicer’s answer is long term: a "Marshall Plan" to aid the media in emerging democracies, most obviously (though not only) in ex-communist Europe. This should cover every form of media and every aspect -- content, staffing, distribution, marketing and much else. A good deal is in fact already happening: Reuters and the BBC, for example, train East Europe journalists. But publishers there would welcome more: investment, staff exchanges, training, twinning of television stations and press with western equivalents, cheap access to news services, maybe transitional help with newsprint or satellite costs. Help with regulatory systems too would be helpful: "Television licences allocated by public process make democracy credible," says Mr Spicer. "Handed out to the minister’s pals, they don’t."

More novel are his ideas for short-term, specific crisis avoidance:

1. A worldwide "early warning" system to give governments and others warning – and push them to take it seriously – when the media somewhere are being leaned on to prepare the ground for ethnic or other war.
2. "Preventive" journalism. Once warned, the various international media organisations would urge their members to make a point of spreading the news and views that some national bully-boy wants suppressed. The media would no doubt be accused of propaganda, like The Voice of America or Radio Martí, that broadcasts to Cuba. They would have to live with that. The UN could beef up – and speed up – its broadcasting arms, now mainly used to spread long-term virtue, to focus on immediate threats.
3. If war does break out, efforts to counter the propaganda that sustains it. The UN did belatedly use broadcasts to challenge Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda. It should have aimed radio and television at the Serbs, argues Mr Spicer; in the event, efforts like those of Oslobodjenje, a Sarajevo newspaper, or the ship-based radio Droit de Parole got only token backing from the UN.

Who could do all this? Governments and intergovernmental bodies, no doubt; but better the private sector media groupings like the Paris-based Reporters sans Frontières or the 36 diverse groups liked in the Virginia-based World Press Freedom Committee, charities such as the Soros and Gannet foundations, which emphasise on-the-job training. And the new world of communications, from satellite to the Internet, can handle any amount or diversity of news and news sources.

Yes, but will any of it happen? Not automatically, Mr Spicer admits: tolerance, multiculturism and democratic values are not as obvious money-spinners as fast food or close-ups of Helen of Troy. It depends on politicians and publishers to understand the links between free information, democracy and peace.