The epistemic injustice in conflict reporting: Reporters and ‘fixers’ covering Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine

Abstract

This paper investigates the epistemic injustice in conflict reporting, where foreign parachute reporters collaborate with local producers and ‘fixers.’ Drawing from existing research on ‘fixers’ and other media professionals covering conflict zones and the philosophy of emotion and knowledge, I address the following questions: What is the role of local and foreign media professionals’ affective proximity and professional distance in the social epistemology of conflict news production and the epistemic hierarchy among the collaborators? What implications is this particular social epistemology believed to have for conflict reporting accuracy and ethics? Based on 36 semi-structured to in-depth interviews with foreign and local media professionals covering Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine and further online and offline contact with the Ukrainian ecosystem of foreign/conflict news production, I argue that the collaboration between foreign and local media professionals is sometimes marked by identity-prejudicial credibility deficit granted to local media professionals because of their affective proximity to the events they cover. This epistemic injustice mirrors other power vectors and the dominant journalistic professional ideology that values disinvolvement, distance, and detachment. In practice, the (local) media professionals’ affective proximity to their contexts is often appreciated as embodied knowledge beneficial to the nuance, accuracy, and ethics of journalistic practices and outcomes.

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

“…It is worth noting that for reporters from and operating in the global south, precarity is of a different order (Kotišová, 2023;Palmer, 2019), with fixers operating in a perpetual state of 'socio-political precariousness'; in contexts such as the second Iraq war fixers might commonly be labelled 'traitors' for helping Western reporters (Palmer, 2019). We are concerned that the practical and normative convergence of journalism and humanitarian communications may complicate an already difficult-to-navigate social/ political space.…”

Awareness of Trauma-Focused Education and Attitudes Toward Incorporating Trauma-Focused Education in Curricula Among MENA Journalism Educators

“…This emotional impact led to what Al-Ghazzi (2023) refers to as affective proximity to the political cause, which led some journalists to become advocates for the people they were covering. According to Kotišová (2023), affective proximity among journalists covering traumatic events in their communities means they are less strict to maintain objectivity and unwilling to separate their professional and personal lives, which adds another layer to the emotional toll of witnessing violence firsthand.…”