Media Content in the Central African Crisis: An Overview and Solutions for Further Peace-building and Governance Interventions

This 70-page report presents the results of media monitoring and analysis conducted to explore post-conflict media content in the Central Africa Republic (CAR), with a view to developing strategies for peacebuilding. The media monitoring research was conducted by Internews during a month-long period in April and May of 2014, as part of the Supporting Local Media to Inform Vulnerable Populations project. It included six radio stations, six daily newspapers, and four websites in the CAR, which according to the findings are "not contributing enough to limit violence, to mitigate the conflict by treating issues leading to violence between communities (land conflicts in rural areas, public resource management etc.) nor to support the transitional process."

The research was focused in the conflict-affected Bangui area of the CAR, where prolonged sectarian conflict between mainly Christian militias and the Muslim population had resulted in widespread violence and displacement. According to the report, tensions eased and a Transitional National Council (TNC) was created in January 2014 to bring together the factions, with the task of designing a new constitution and overseeing general elections slated for February 2015. However, the post-conflict period has been characterised by ongoing and lingering tensions between Muslim and Christian communities, which presents an ongoing challenge for governance and peacebuilding. One aspect of this has been hate speech in the media.

The report first discusses the media context in which the monitoring took place. According to the report, there are few media outlets, and most struggle to produce content. Radio is the most accessible form of media, but all the current radio stations in the country are either state controlled or run by Catholic or non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The only TV station is state-run. Likewise, the print press and information websites are extremely politicised, except the ACAP and RJDH websites (respectively edited by the public Central African Press Agency and the Association of Journalists for Human Rights, which is supported by Internews.) "Security issues, looting and the severe decrease of advertisement income due to the conflict, affected all Central African media outlets in different ways. Since March 2013, the capacity of the production of media content is continuously decreasing."

The report outlines the main findings as follows.

• News and information radio programmes - The monitoring found that 23% of broadcasting on the six radio stations monitored focused on news. Of the news and information more than a third focused on the conflict (but not on grassroots conflict mitigation activities - only 2.6%) and a third on politics. Security issues were another main priority - with little time given to social subjects such as food security, health, and education. The Central African media outlets serve the role of provider of local and national news, while international media outlets, like Radio France Internationale, are considered to be the sources for international news.
• Gender issues in the media sector - In the print press, just 1% of reports not related to entertainment were identified as having a woman author, (however, 17% of the authors of the reports have not been identified) while in radio stations, 38.4% of news and information content is produced by women. Very few women in both print and radio are used as sources - about a third in each medium. Likewise, few management positions are occupied by women, though the situation is better in the public and associative sector than in the private sector.
• Hate speech seems to be limited to print press - The media monitoring analysts identified 74 elements of hate speech in the print press and only four in media content broadcast by radio stations. The most occurring types of hate speech were: prejudice (33%), ridicule of an individual or community (24%), and incentives to violence (14%). The report also notes a lack of professionalism and credibility due to the lack of credible sources and crosschecking of information. The monitoring team found 77.6% of reports published in the print press present a bias. "The Central African print press is an opinion press. Only 23.2% of the content monitored in the print press did not include comments, against 95.3% in the radio content."
• Lack of sensitivity to the conflict - More than 95% of radio reports did not have personal opinion comments from journalists (i.e., were somewhat objective); while in the print media, there was found to be tendency for journalists to insert their own personal perspectives. However, while radio journalists refrained from making personal statements, access to airtime was not equal among Muslim and Christian communities, in terms of both coverage and sources interviewed. For example, when covering interreligious peace initiatives, journalists often interviewed Catholic and Protestant leaders but not Muslim religious leaders. Journalists explain the lack of equal news time as resulting from lack of access to sources (most of the journalists are Christian). As radio journalists often used Christian sources, leaders, or people who have been victimised, the on-air dialogue was usually one-sided, with antagonistic, rather than peacebuilding, vocabulary.
• Lack of peace journalism - The monitoring found that the print press contains more discussions on conflict, while the radio is more news-focussed, but that "due to the presence of hate speech in the print press, 19.2% of articles presenting or discussing solutions to the conflict propose the radical answer 'Muslims must leave the Central African Republic' against 2.3% in radio reports." Radio more often provides information about basic needs, including the overwhelming security need, of the population. However, none of the media engages the public in debate or discussion on the conflict.

Based on the findings, the report offers a number of recommendations and proposed strategies, which are very briefly summarised here and outlined in detail in the report.

• Build the role of media as a watchdog by building capacities around conflict sensitive journalism, peace journalism, and investigative journalism, and by covering electoral processes.
• Build the role of media in facilitating democratic debate by supporting electoral and civic education and in focusing democratic debates on finding solutions to the conflict, the provision of emergency public action, and institutional building processes.
• In terms of capacity building, the report suggests that a mix of hands-on training sessions and mentoring may suit the local emergency context in order to begin producing more sensitive content right away.
• To address imbalances and gaps, a network of correspondents in rural and militia-controlled areas is suggested, as well as developing ways for journalists to work collaboratively to pool their resources for better quality content, both among themselves and with civil society organisations.
• There is a need to promote women's participation in the media, both as journalists and as sources, with a view to also encouraging their participation in peace and political processes.
• There is a need to support electoral education activities through the media, including trainings to improve: electoral coverage, cooperation with civil organisations working on civic education, and collaborative production.