"Truth at All Costs": Journalistic Discourse About 2012 War Reporting From Syria

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Paper Session: Journalism Studies Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This article examines 1,217 news articles published in February 2012 about the deaths, injuries, and rescues of Western war journalists reporting from Homs, Syria. Interpreting this metajournalistic news discourse about what it means for war journalists to report from conflict zones, journalists can be understood sometimes as cultural imperialists, sometimes as hybrid actors in the production of knowledge, but both critical positions insufficiently explain why news discourse persistently positions journalists as a special class deserving of special treatment by governments engaged in conflict. This article argues that journalists should be understood to be part of a corporatist professional-managerial stratum, through which they claim exception to conditions that should be understood as Agambenian states of exception. Thus, war journalists are revealed to be agents of global capital as seen in corporatist terms, and their deaths and injuries are considered threats to the field of journalism and to the corporatist system itself.

Author

• Nicholas Gilewicz, U of Pennsylvania