Журнал массовых коммуникаций и журналистики

Reporting Peace Negotiations: Content and Tactics from Uganda's Dailies

Abstract

Charles Martin Jjuuko

The media in Uganda face various challenges in their development path although information about this reality is not fully or properly documented. The area of peace journalism is not an exception. Uganda suffered from civil strife, especially armed conflict, between 1966 and 2008. This paper attempts to analyse the representation of peace and armed conflict issues from a peace journalism perspective through a critical assessment of the content published by Uganda’s dailies during the peace negotiations between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army between 2006 and 2008. It concludes that the two main negotiating parties as well as the analysed media engaged in some level of manipulation to, on the one hand, get their preferred points of view published and, on the other, to guarantee access to key sources of information.