Feeling responsible: Emotion and practical ethics in conflict journalism

Abstract

This article examines the role of emotion in the practices of journalists reporting on conflict and its effects in South Sudan, based on a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations of the working routines of journalists from Nairobi, Kampala and Juba. Contrary to perceptions of emotion as an akratic failure to reason in a rational, detached manner, obligations felt to people and situations can be understood as rational, information-bearing guides to action, directing journalists to consider personal ethical norms that may sit in tension with the norms of their professional roles as they understand them. The presence of such feelings in the case of journalists committed to a norm of emotional detachment in their work points to the moral incoherence of norms of detachment in (at least) journalism of this type.

Friends like these: A shift in labour, security and the normative ideals of conflict journalism

“…The memorialisation of journalists binds the phenomenological experience of conflict reporting together. Given the affective and emotional difficulty of the work (Stupart, 2021b), our findings suggest foundation discourses play a role in lending these experiences value. Understood as such, the construction of the journalist as a secular, cosmopolitan saint articulates experiences of risk, danger and hardship into a story of moral valour while glossing over the structural causes of these experiences.…”

“…Finally, we observe that the language in which the profession justifies itself in moments of loss appears to rely far more on the language of humanitarian cosmopolitanism than that of institutional journalism (Sharp and Stupart, 2023). We argue that the language used by memorial foundations to commemorate journalists killed reporting on conflict increasingly relies on a normative ideal of conflict journalism as a humanitarian, witnessing endeavour in ways that diverge from previous ideas of what conflict journalism ‘was for’ and what its ideal motivations were.…”

“…We argue that the way journalists who died in the line of duty covering conflicts are memorialised has tended to valorise them in a language of humanitarian excellence (as witnesses, as givers of voice and helpers of others), rather than in terms of more traditional norms associated with journalism (objectivity, balance, excellence at the craft). In our earlier work on this phenomenon (Sharp and Stupart, 2023), we highlighted the case of how journalistic foundations memorialising the work of war correspondents help construct the moral basis for the subfield of humanitarian/conflict journalism which we discuss here. These trusts and foundations inscribe logics of war correspondents’ work around metaphors of sainthood and morality, adopting a peculiarly religious language that frames reporters’ practices through a cosmopolitan, humanitarian moral lens (Chouliaraki, 2013).…”

Making African Suffering Legible: Co-Constructing Narrative of the Darfur Atrocities

“…Scholars have also recently focused on how the continent represents conflict; however, this strand has focused on how countries represent conflict within their borders (e.g., Demarest et al 2020;Gathara, 2020;Mare 2013). Nonetheless, attention on how African countries and journalists cover international conflict occurring within the continent is also growing (Alozie 2005(Alozie , 2010Mody 2010;Ray 2009;Stupart 2020Stupart , 2021. This study builds on and extends this third strand by focusing on the sources that journalists in African journalism fields chose to give voice to when reporting on the atrocities in Darfur.…”

Anger and the investigative journalist

“…They draw on Hochschild's (1983) work on emotional labour to draw attention to the emotional work required to cultivate forms of detachment as a way of dealing with traumatic reporting experiences and argue that far from being an intruder in journalists’ professional lives, emotion is a core part of how the work gets done ‘well’. Elsewhere, Stupart (2021b) has argued for the importance of seeing emotion as fundamental to managing day-to-day interactions with potential sources and threats as well as being a part of journalists’ practical moral reasoning (Stupart, 2021b).…”