The video revolves around the concept of peace journalism in contrast to traditional conflict-driven reporting. It explores historical instances like the 1914 Christmas truce during World War I and Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent struggle for India's freedom. The speaker illustrates how these examples reflect the potential for humanity and peace in adversarial settings.

By providing contemporary examples such as Afghan writers' collaborations across divides and capturing intimate moments through photographs during conflicts, the content conveys the importance of focusing on civilian survival and compassion in reporting. The speaker urges a shift in journalism towards more positivity, human empathy, and comprehensive understanding of all sides of a conflict.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. trenches [trɛnʧɪz] - (noun) - Deep ditches used in warfare for protection and defensive positioning. - Synonyms: (ditches, pits, moats)

It was a cold December month and soldiers were stuck in trenches at the so called Western Front in Belgium.

2. embrace [ɛmˈbreɪs] - (verb) - Hold closely in one's arms, especially as a sign of affection. - Synonyms: (hug, hold, clasp)

They sang together and they even embraced each other.

3. polarization [poʊlərɪˈzeɪʃən] - (noun) - The division into two sharply contrasting groups or sets of opinions or beliefs. - Synonyms: (division, separation, dichotomy)

Journalists seem to prefer conflict and polarization to peace and harmony.

4. propagate [ˈprɑpəˌɡeɪt] - (verb) - Spread and promote (an idea, theory, etc.) widely. - Synonyms: (spread, disseminate, publicize)

A more serious journalistic challenge is to uncover the ways in which warring parties propagate the strength of their side and hide uncomfortable truths.

5. catastrophe [kəˈtæstrəfi] - (noun) - An event causing great and often sudden damage or suffering; a disaster. - Synonyms: (disaster, calamity, tragedy)

Finding this will to coexist and forgive amazing, not least in a country suffering from continuing catastrophe.

6. explanatory [ɪkˈsplænəˌtɔri] - (adjective) - Intended to explain or make clear. - Synonyms: (clarifying, elucidating, explicatory)

Peace journalism seeks to understand through listening, and its explanatory thus needs to be based on updated knowledge.

7. mercenaries [ˈmɜrsəˌnɛriz] - (noun) - Professional soldiers hired to serve in a foreign army. - Synonyms: (soldiers of fortune, hired soldiers, freelancers)

Thousands of warriors, terrorists, enemies of different shades and ethnicities, foreign mercenaries, having been born and brought up by war.

8. dehumanize [diˈhjuːməˌnaɪz] - (verb) - Deprive of positive human qualities, often making someone seem less human. - Synonyms: (brutalize, demonize, objectify)

The reason is, I believe, that it is easier to hurt another person, to hang another person, for that matter, if you are not able to meet his gaze.

9. exile [ˈɛɡzaɪl] - (verb / noun) - To expel someone from their native country (verb); the state of being barred from one's native country (noun). - Synonyms: (banishment, expulsion, deportation)

Most of the writers I know have now left the country again.

10. reconcile [ˈrɛkənˌsaɪl] - (verb) - Restore friendly relations between; make or show to be compatible. - Synonyms: (reunite, harmonize, resolve)

Finding this will to coexist and forgive amazing, not least in a country suffering from continuing catastrophe.

How can journalists highlight peaceful solutions during conflict? - Elisabeth Eide - TEDxUWCRCN

Hello, everybody. I'm representing here the grandmother generation and I am thrilled to be with you guys and to learn from you. I already picked up a lot of interesting youth. My topic is another way of reporting, another way of thinking.

Let me start by telling you about the Christmas experience. It was 1914, early in the First World War. It was a cold December month and soldiers were stuck in trenches at the so called Western Front in Belgium. Very little news came from there as nobody seemed to be winning even an inch. On one side were British and French soldiers and the other side German ones. Then Christmas day arrived with a surprise. Soldiers stepped out of their deep trenches and met across the dividing line. They distributed cakes and other food to their enemies. They sang together and they even embraced each other. They organized teams and played a football match. This happened during a short interval of time before they all had to withdraw to their positions. Some of the initiators were later punished by their superiors and sent home in disgrace.

Let's move to the year 2005 because then a French film director, Christian Carillon, made a movie about this unique event. The title was Joyeux Noel, Merry Christmas, and the movie received several awards. This experience 110 years ago is just one historic example of how people in tough conflict situations can see and feel that there is humanity on the opposite side, the so-called enemy side, and they can experience indeed also moments of peace.

Ten years later, in 1924, Mohandas Gandhi, later to be called Mahatma, arrived back to British ruled India after having practiced as a lawyer in South Africa. Step by step with peaceful means, by individual fasting or by inspiring collective boycott, he led millions of Indians in a struggle for freedom from the empire. This was reported by many journalists and inspired people around the world. For example, Nobel laureates such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Even if not all people around the world or all journalists would understand his insistence on peaceful methods. My observations through visits to India tell me that his legacy still survives.

And let us now move west from India to meet with Afghan writers. As a writer and journalist myself, I've traveled through countries at war. I've often asked myself what role journalists can play to make citizens aware of peaceful perspectives during burning conflicts or before these conflicts even erupted. One of my major experiences is from Afghanistan, a country which has been in constant war since 1978. The Soviet Union occupied the country during the 1980s. Then came a period with civil war and then Taliban control before the western power invaded, backing the resistance to gain control in 2001 after the 9/11.

Two years later, in 2003, I met with a group of writers within the capital of Kabul. They had very different stories to tell. One writer had been imprisoned and tortured for eight years during the Soviet Russian occupation, while another one had been a judge. During this brutal period, I thought about the Norwegian World War II experience and wondered why they could even sit at the same table. How were they able to do this? But he's a good writer, said the ex-prisoner. The ex being tortured, and nodded respectfully towards the former judge, who nodded back, a bit embarrassed.

Though most of the writers I know have now left the country again. As a visiting journalist and a colleague, I wrote about this encounter around a table in Kabul, finding this will to coexist and forgive amazing, not least in a country suffering from continuing catastrophe.

And then let me move to a universal experience, meeting the gaze of the other. It is well known that journalists seem to prefer conflict and polarization to peace and harmony. They tend to prefer the unusual to the routine. They tend to speak to top-level people, not least celebrities, more than the common woman or man. They prioritize the negative more than the positive. Good news is no news, as the saying goes. However, too much polarized news may lead us to believe that there is no solution. The lack of peaceful alternatives when war threatens to break out may put people in danger.

Can we imagine a journalism focusing more on positivity, on dialogue and human compassion, without disregarding the truth? Compassion can be found in strange places, and I now come to the gaze World Press Photo Award winner Jean Marc Beaujeu in 2003 took a picture of a war prisoner and his son in Iraq. Imagine an Iraqi man sitting on the ground behind barbed wire. For a moment, a soldier guarding his prisoner allowed him to have his false gun with him. Imagine a grown-up man, a black hood, covering his head with a four-year-old boy sitting on his lap, trying to keep this boy from crying.

Personally, I saw layers of compassion from the story told by this picture, as well as the story told by Mister Beaujeu about what he had witnessed in Afghanistan. I saw that some reporters were more eager than others to enter war helicopters and to study weaponry. At Mustafa hotel in Kabul, I met freelance reporters waiting for the next bomb or suicide bombers to attack and then find a story that editors might like and accept. All this is part of war journalism and will not go away.

However, can we imagine more journalism focusing on civilian survival than on weaponry and so-called surgical strikes? I think we can, and it does exist, as I've shown by the photo that I just mentioned, or through victims' voices in armed conflict, voices being filed by journalists risking their lives, as it happens nowadays too, to remind the world of their suffering.

I do not know the fate of the Iraqi father and his son, brought to the world by the French professional war photographer. I could see the boy's face in the picture. He looked rather terrified. A black hood covered the father's face. Since medieval times, most victims who were tortured or about to be executed have been blindfolded or had their heads covered. The reason is, I believe, that it is easier to hurt another person, to hang another person, for that matter, if you are not able to meet his gaze. In other words, if you cannot see his or her eyes, as it is also perhaps less hard to read about people dying if you are unable to find a point of identification.

These points may be eyes, faces, someone staring back at you, even from the TV screen. Eyes asking, where is my right to survive? How then, about traditional journalism and its alternatives? The US social activist Abby Hoffman in 1968 wrote a critical media piece. The headline of the Daily News today read, brunette stabbed to death. Underneath, in lowercase letters, 6000 killed in Iranian earthquake. I wonder what color hair they had. Most likely, Hoffman's brunette was living somewhere near. While the earthquake victims remained faceless and remote, they were reduced to numbers.

Professor Johann Galtung, the father of Peace journalism, in 1965, co-wrote an article titled the Structure of Foreign News. The text explored mechanisms behind special news priorities. They had to do with geographical distance, level of conflict, your own country's involvement, number of people in danger of being killed, amounts of money involved, superpower interference, and so on. This was a description of journalist realities at the time. So was Abby Hoffman's ironic comment.

Has then journalism changed? I like to believe so, but only to an extent, because in real life we tend to care more for our neighbor and her cat, and for people at risk in places we hardly know. I add here that I am a cat lover and my social media algorithms regularly feed me with cats taking care of, for example, ducklings.

I admit that I am touched by such images, even if, as a media researcher, I would want to know who arranged these videos and how staged these situations. Appearing where, I should know, since a magazine reporter once visited my home when I was a child, which contained a mother cat, four kittens, and two turtles, he desperately tried to balance the kittens upon the shields of the slow-moving turtles for the best photo. This manipulation is not, however, considered a journalistic virtue.

A more serious journalistic challenge is to uncover the ways in which warring parties propagate the strength of their side and hide uncomfortable truths, such as civilian casualties another global challenge is to reveal how different world crises affect each other. Beyond doubt, my nation's doings and priorities regarding climate, as well as my own practices, may hurt people and affect people's livelihood and welfare. In corners of the world I know vaguely or not at all. Local disagreements about natural resources may also cause armed conflicts, which in turn damage nature and affect global climate.

On the other hand, people struggle to amend crisis, a source of hope, for example, with massive tree planting campaigns, as with tree planting in northern Afghanistan that I witnessed myself. I also once met a small farmer in the Indian Himalayas who had received a medal for planting more than 300,000 trees, different species to fit the local diversity. I remember sitting with him, listening to his song about his love for trees, as a very peaceful and special moment.

Few other crises and complex connections, including the development of artificial intelligence, nowadays used in violent conflicts in countries such as in Ukraine and in Gaza as well. Do they call for a different kind of journalism? Let us consider recommendations that may need to be taken seriously by those whose role it is to report the world to their audience. When I speak of such advice, I am again inspired by some of the late Professor Galtung's suggested guidelines for Peace journalism, contrasting traditional war and conflicts journalism.

Such recommendations need to be taken seriously by us all. As citizens, we all need to engage, at least if we believe that one of the most important reasons for being present on this planet is to understand the world better and then respect human rights, freedom of expression and democracy. Let us begin with understanding a conflict then. For that we would prefer a journalism which gives voice to both, or indeed to all sides. This is also necessary to reach a solution, even if the solution may hurt.

Peace journalism seeks to understand through listening, and its explanatory thus needs to be based on updated knowledge. As citizens, we all want to be respected, don't we? Thus, if we experience journalists talking down to us, we should ask them not to underestimate us, indeed, trust and provide us with news, with elements of learning. People are not afraid of deeper understanding, for example, of which forces aggravate a given conflict and which sources and which forces support solutions.

Let us continue, then, by asking journalists not to overemphasize elite countries, elite person mainly by the way men, celebrities and negative events. Perhaps then we can inspire them to find more positivity, more grassroots people raising their voices and independent expertise. We see this happening today in the coverage of ongoing wars, because people often want to talk to strangers.

I have a fond memory from sitting with a woman potato farmer during the harvest in central Afghanistan. And I could relate to that, because Norway is a country of potatoes, in case you haven't known. And we were sharing a cup of tea at a small rug in the middle of the field. Another moment of peace. And as the Taliban were paving their way back to power, I met with road workers who explained about their past experiences having to grow their beards so and so long, and about their experiences being commanded to pray so and so often, and they feared what was eventually to come.

Those were brief encounters, and my mind is too brief. Listening, though, to the voices of the voiceless is what peace journalism is also meant to. Journalist sources are still male dominated. At the grassroots, one finds an equal number of women. And as we know, elite persons from elite countries meet at big conferences. These are ideal arenas for media and journalists that concentrate. However, they remain remote and estranged from people and peace movement.

And as citizens, we need to ask, what are the chances for non-governmental voices to be heard there? How can reporters contribute? By having their ears closer to the ground. And while we're at it, many say they miss reporting on all the good things people represent and can do during a conflict of to help them support each other.

And even more, if, or indeed, when, a situation of peace occurs. Such journalists will find people who create things, who play games, for example, a football match between two teams, at this occasion, female teams in Kabul, another occasion I was lucky enough to witness more than a decade ago. Such matches are unfortunately impossible since the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

But on the other hand, furthermore, people who build livelihoods, you still find them. Find people who fight for survival. You find people who live in harmony with differences, and you find people who take part in each other's religious and other ceremonies. And you find that there are people who try to avoid differences developing into aggression.

And finally, let me say a few words about one of my dreams. As mentioned, I have traveled to many corners of this world, not least to countries where peace is absent, longed for, or threatened. It is not hard to understand how aggression may occur for so many reasons, but it is hard to see such aggression time and again.

I have a very strong memory from Band-e Amir in the heart of Afghanistan. It shows one of the most peaceful places I've ever visited. It is a site of beauty, with deep lakes, surrounded by rugged mountains, a place to wash your feet in fresh, cold water, to have a picnic, and a place to get rid of negativity. When I visited, I imagined a particular scene, a scene where thousands of warriors, terrorists, enemies of different shades and ethnicities, foreign mercenaries, having been born and brought up by war, how they would arrive and be stunned by Band-e Amir's beauty.

Then they would throw their guns and ammunition into the deep blue water. They would embrace each other and prepare a fantastic picnic for all. And our course? As a matter of course, I would be there with lots of colleagues to report on this precious event. And I hope you would be there with me, all of you. Thank you.

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