Shaw argues that journalism should focus on deconstructing the underlying structural and cultural causes of political violence such as poverty, famine and human trafficking, and play a proactive (preventative), rather than reactive (prescriptive) role in humanitarian intervention.

This book explores the role and purpose of journalism to spark and propagate change by investigating human rights journalism and its capacity to inform, educate and activate change. Downman and Ubayasiri maximize this approach by proposing a new paradigm of reporting through the use of human-focussed news values. This approach is a radical departure from the traditional style that typically builds on abstract concepts. The book will explore human rights journalism through the lens of complex issues such as human trafficking and people smuggling in the Asian context. This is not just a book for journalists, or journalism academics, but a book for activists, human rights advocates or anyone who believes in the power of journalism to change the world.

This book examines why press freedom has not become part of the established international human rights debate, despite its centrality to democratic theory. It argues that an unrestricted press is not just an important economic actor, but also an influential power in the political process, a status that interferes with government interests of sustaining their own power and influence. Despite the popularity of ideational explanations in the field of human rights studies, in the case of promoting press freedom, considerations of power and strategic interests rather than ideas dominate state behavior. The author makes the case that the current place of press freedom in the human rights debate needs to be rethought not only in developing countries, but in liberal democracies as well.

Reporting Human Rights provides a systematic examination of human rights news and reporting practices from inside the world of television news production. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the book discusses the potential of journalism in contributing to human rights protection, awareness and debate, in ignoring, silencing or misrepresenting human rights issues around the world or, in extreme situations, in inciting hatred, genocide and crimes against humanity. It provides insight into how journalists translate human rights issues, revealing different reporting patterns and levels of detail in reporting, and suggesting different levels of engagement with human rights problems. The book explains the most important factors that encourage or limit the coverage of human rights news. Grounded in a close examination of the news production processes and key moments where possible human rights stories are contemplated, decided or eventually ignored, the book opens up new insights into the complexities and constraints of human rights reporting today.

The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights offers a comprehensive and contemporary survey of the key themes, approaches and debates in the field of media and human rights. The Companion is the first collection to bring together two distinct ways of thinking about human rights and media, including scholarship that examines media as a human right alongside that which looks at media coverage of human rights issues. This international collection of 49 newly written pieces thus provides a unique overview of current research in the field, while also providing historical context to help students and scholars appreciate how such developments depart from past practices. The volume examines the universal principals of freedom of expression, legal instruments, the right to know, media as a human right, and the role of media organisations and journalistic work. It is organised thematically in five parts: Communication, Expression and Human Rights Media Performance and Human Rights: Political Processes Media Performance and Human Rights: News and Journalism Digital Activism, Witnessing and Human Rights Media Representation of Human Rights: Cultural, Social and Political. Individual essays cover an array of topics, including mass-surveillance, LGBT advocacy, press law, freedom of information and children’s rights in the digital age. With contributions from both leading scholars and emerging scholars, the Companion offers an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to media and human rights allowing for international comparisons and varying perspectives. The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights provides a comprehensive introduction to the current field useful for both students and researchers, and defines the agenda for future research.

This collection sets about untangling some of the knotty issues in the underexplored relationship between human rights and the media. We investigate how complex debates in political, judicial, academic and public life on the role and value of human rights are represented in the media, particularly, in print journalism. To focus the discussion, we concentrate on media representation of the controversial proposals in the United Kingdom to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and to replace it with a British Bill of Rights. The collection is underpinned by the observation that views on human rights and on the proposals to repeal and replace are polarised. On the one hand, human rights are presented as threatening and, therefore, utterly denigrated; on the other hand, human rights are idolised, and, therefore, uncritically celebrated. This is the ‘fear and fetish’ in our title. The media plays a decisive role in constructing this polarity through its representation of political and ideological viewpoints. In order to get to grips with the fear, the fetish and this complex interrelationship, the collection tackles key contemporary themes, amongst them: the proposed British Bill of Rights, Brexit, prisoner-voting, the demonisation of immigrants, press freedom, tabloid misreporting, trial by media and Magna Carta. The collection explores media representation, investigates media polarity and critiques the media’s role.