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While Johan Galtung is credited with coining the term "peace journalism," it continues to morph in its definition and practice even after Galtung's passing.
Some tend to see it as the need to interview guerrilla fighters to provide context to viewers and readers to help them understand a hot conflict from both sides. That view is rooted in the problematic war journalism that tends to cover the government side, the rationales behind the official warmaking on the insurgents.
While that is an element of peace journalism, it is my contention that the most important aspect is the gatekeeping to nonviolent actors, who may be just as opposed to government oppression as the guerrilla, but who are using nonviolent methods of resistance. This goes to my personal definition of positive peace: Peace and justice by peaceable means. Admittedly, that six-word definition is the bumper sticker version, but sometimes simple is best.
Of course environmental protections fall under the justice rubric--denying future generations clean water, clean air, and a robust natural world free from anthropogenic climate chaos events is basic injustice.
And by peaceable means I only mean conduct and practices that won't injure or kill people. I include very loud demonstrations, careful property damage, and other means that may not always feel so peaceful in my peaceable means broader scope.
As an example of peace journalism one might ask, so, who were the nonviolent resisters in the long terrible war in Colombia? Everyone keeping track of that war in mainstream media would know about the government and the guerrilla, such as the FARC. But would the indigenous villages who were telling both sides to stay away, to stop offering "protection" that instead would make the village a battleground--would those indigenous villagers be covered by mainstream media? Would there be any appreciation internationally that there was a third side, a nonviolent set of parties to the horrific and protracted conflict?
Peace journalists would cover those villages and villagers. What would the result be? Instead of the vast majority of, for instance, US Americans feeling like, "I don't have a dog in that fight," which contributes to generalized apathy, they might feel like they want to be an ally to those indigenous villagers, they want to pay attention to military aid sent in their name to the government, and they might decide to help put pressure on their federal representatives to vote against any further such aid from the US.
Fast forward to our US (and elsewhere) polarized scene now, with society pitting true believers on one side against the other side of deeply divided others. Michael Brüggemann, Communications research professor at the University of Hamburg and others are focused on this and challenge journalists:
"Journalists and other moderators of public debate need to ask themselves: Are we (unconsciously) contributing to polarization? How can we (consciously) contribute to constructive public debates?"[1]
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