Journalists to get Nobel Peace Prize?
The Nobel peace prize will be awarded on October 13th and the Guardian reports that the Nobel committee believes journalists should be eligible.
Professor Geir Lundestad, secretary of the committee, says Nobel has commissioned a study on the links between journalism and peace and mentions a list of possible contenders including CNN, the New York Times, Le Monde and El Pais but rules out the BBC.
Given the BBC's record for being among the first to cover many conflicts and BBC World Service Trust's work with local media on reconciliation, this might strike some as unfair.
Nevertheless, the very fact that Nobel is looking at this suggests that those journalists who argue that media can help or hinder peace efforts, including followers of 'peace journalism' or 'preventive journalism' are beginning to make inroads.
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Reuters.
Mark Jones is Global Community Editor for Reuters and has run AlertNet for nearly five years. He's interested in what makes media reporting of humanitarian crises so inconsistent and whether bloggers can fill the gap.
