Bearing the cost to witness

The political economy of risk in contemporary conflict and war reporting

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11267656
AutoresBrian Creech (0000-0002-0986-6842, Temple University, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume40
Fascículo4
Páginas567-583
Data de publicação2018-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMedia Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0163443717715078
OpenAlexW2724915940
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas19
Referências citadas29

As journalistic work has become increasingly precarious in recent decades, exposure to risk – that is, true bodily harm – has become a normalized condition for those reporting from conflict zones. This article considers the political economy of risk, paying particular attention to the ways it has been constructed as a desirable and manageable condition for various classes of news workers. The burden of risk is distributed unequally across staff reporters, freelancers, and non-Western local journalists of all stripes, and a persistent discourse of witnessing obscures both these inequities and the structural conditions that allow news organizations to profit from an increased assumption of individual risk. As structural conditions, individual mitigations, and practices of textual commodification are considered and critiqued, the article concludes by identifying specific strategies that push beyond an economic logic, and thus reassert the cultural and political value of conflict and war reporting as a practice that merits protection, regardless of who produces it. Such a critique focuses on developing the discursive tools that allow journalists and outside observers alike to ask ‘who should bear the costs of witnessing?’

Commodification · Economics · Economy · Harm · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Profit (economics · Public relations · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Witness · Disaster Management and Resilience · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Media Studies and Communication