Journalists control our access to news. By pitching stories from particular angles, media set the agenda for public debate. In Reporting Conflict, Jake Lynch and Johan Galtung challenge reporters to tell the real story of conflicts around the world. The dominant kind of conflict reporting is what Lynch and Galtung call war journalism: conflicts are seen as good versus evil, and the score is kept with body counts. The media's handling of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq highlight the one-sided reporting that war journalism creates. Peace journalism uses a wider lens: why not report what caused the conflict, and how it might be resolved? Lynch and Galtung show how journalists could have taken a broader approach to reporting conflicts like the Korean War and the NATO bombing of Kosovo to spark a more constructive public debate. This provocative book is essential reading for everyone who wants the media to tell the whole truth about conflict.

Jake Lynch enjoyed a 17-year career in UK media, working at various times as a political correspondent for Sky News, the Sydney correspondent for The Independent newspaper and later as a reporter and news-anchor (presenter) on BBC World television, covering conflicts in the Middle East, South-East Asia and at diplomatic and political summit meetings. At the same time, he taught postgraduate courses based on peace journalism at the University of Sydney, where he is now Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Latterly, he has served as convenor of the first Peace Journalism Commission of the International Peace Research Association. Johan Galtung, one of the founders of Peace and Conflict Studies, gave the field many of its most important concepts, as well as making a notable contribution to the study of media and communication. He also worked for three years as a part-time journalist for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, 1960-62 and 1965, producing a number of radio and television programs, and remembers vividly both the thrill of interviewing the Dalai Lama, Fidel Castro, etc, and how interviews with ordinary people deepened the understanding of what went on.