The study “Saints and witnesses: Virtue and vocation in the memorialization of the Western conflict journalist” by Richard Stupart and Rob Sharp from University of Liverpool looked at the discursive repertoires through which the memorialization of journalists killed in conflict reporting. It utilized Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to do so.
War correspondents are nowadays something of an anachronism, with newsrooms instead opting to emphasize the humanitarian aspect of the reporting. However, conflict journalists remain a distinct community. The imaginary of the war correspondent in constructed clearly in the memorialization.
As a method, the authors chose five critical case studies of journalists killed in conflict reporting. All the journalists were Western, and the authors critically discuss the implications of this and make sure to not suggest universality. Some of the five have had feature films dedicated to them. Their names were Marie Colvin, Tim Hetherington, Camille LePage, James Foley and Chris Allen.
Being Western, the journalists in question benefitted from forms of professional, social and financial capital not accessible to the families of journalists living elsewhere. Caveats aside, the study made use of texts ‘about the journalist’ and ‘foundation aims’ of their websites and coded them for thematic analysis.
The authors argue that the perished journalists were constructed to be sort of secular, cosmopolitan saints – accomplished via the use supererogatory, quasi-religious language that framed the journalists’ lives through a humanitarian lens. Despite this, such foundations can be seen as acting as gatekeepers of elite networks that redescribe risky work as a source of professional virtue, thus the ‘sainthood’ is not entirely unproblematic.
In essence, the journalists are celebrated as good humanitarians rather than good journalists. Thus, there is considerable overlap with other sorts of discourse, with discourses about humanitarian organizations.
The authors conclude that honors conferred on the war correspondents are not without politics. Understanding the terms in which war reporting heroes are constructed may tell us something about “the moral universe” in which this form of journalism is practicing and about the interests that may be served.
The article “Saints and witnesses: Virtue and vocation in the memorialization of the Western conflict journalist” by Richard Stupart and Rob Sharp is in Media, War & Conflict (open access).
Picture: Jeoldusan Martyrs’ Shrine, Seoul, South Korea by Robby McCullough
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