Media and news reports on war and peace

Opinion
Chhay Sophal

Next week, more than 50 foreign journalists and experts from about 47 countries around the world, including Cambodia, will gather in Seoul, the ​Republic of Korea, to discuss their war and peace reporting and their future career.

Due to the war and conflicts, their colleagues have been killed and wounded. The  World Journalists Conference 2024, organized by the Korean Journalists Association from April 21 to 26 in Seoul and various places in Gyeonggi province, will allow speakers and participants to debate on “The Role of the Media in War Journalism and World Peace” as well as “Navigating the Horizon: AI Journalism and the Future of Media”.

The conference comes at a time when the world is terrified by wars erupting in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, leaving hundreds of thousands of people, especially innocent civilians and journalists, dead and wounded after the global disaster of COVID-19 while tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea are also disrupting the world’s economy, trade and tourism.

The world order has been lost. How can the world be happy and peaceful while the powerful have been taking advantage of each other in order to be the world big brother or superpower and aim to take extreme interests by striving to occupy political and military geography respectively at the same time they are having nuclear weapons and wishing to press the button?

For media, the creation of false and fake news and contents to distract and take advantage of the public opinion has poisoned the public truth while the disputed parties are also trying to use all forms of their own propaganda with bias way as much as they can.

At the same time, citizen journalists who have no clear journalism skills have used social media to inspire anger and murder, even though some stories are misleading and Inhumane.

For example, the case of Iran’s attack on Israeli territory recently at the first time after Israel had bombed on the Iranian embassy in Syria, information on the number of casualties and success of both sides on social media is messy and useless.

No different from the war between Russia and Ukraine, fake news about the failures and successes in the battles of both nations are different on social media, but the most so sad and suffered are the country’s infrastructure, which has been built for decades, were immediately destroyed while human lives, especially women and children, were killed and injured.

Then, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is causing the media and journalists to face another chapter in the digital age. Though AI is helpful for other work, it is spoiling the fact and causing humans confused between the fact and the fake.

It is undeniable to say that for overthrowing a government, besides using a military coup, there are other means such as providing political, technical and financial support to the opposition while imposing sanctions on the government, instigating social unrest and using social media for information outreaching, and additionally, media controlling through the providing various projects and finance in order to serve the interests for anti-government groups.

Based on the above examples, some people who have no information literacy and critical thinking have lost confidence in the media and journalists, and they frankly say that the media and journalists are the bias mean and political puppet, especially in reporting on both political and armed conflicts, igniting anger between people and people.

For the above reason, professional media and journalists have to continue to increase their professionalism in order to regain the public trust.

The professional media and journalists, therefore, must uphold social reality and justice as well as reporting news with unintentional inciting anger and distorting the truth for the sake of the global justice and peace.

Through their articles in all forms, professional media and journalists must never take side but help keep the world at peace by avoiding bloody wars, because we have so much work to do together, such as tackling climate change, fighting against terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, especially women and children trafficking, environmental protection and sustainable development, as well as global pandemic prevention.

Through their true articles, professional media outlet an journalism practitioners can really contribute to build a harmonious world and be ready to challenge with AI era..