Abstract
"This study seeks to highlight some of the problems inherent in the Western journalism model that exist even when covering peaceful relations among neighbours and allies. Peace journalism, as a practice and a field of study, criticizes mainstream media’s preference for violent conflict, elitist visions of the world, and dichotomized representations of reality when reporting on international conflict (see, e.g., Galtung, 1971, 1998; Hackett, 2006; Lynch & McGoldrick, 2005; Ross, 2003, 2007). Here, we study these concepts outside the context of violent conflict. The following examination of New York Times coverage of the U.S.–Mexico border in May 2006 analyzes how reporters discursively positioned the bilateral relationship during a period of non-violent interactions. A primary goal of this study is to identify new terrain for engagement of peace journalism practices that reduce the build-up towards conflict. Borders are a primary site for mapping identities, existing as both physical and metaphorical locations for exclusion and containment. Borders and borderlands – the agreed-upon boundaries to political nation-states and the transoms over which people, ideas, and goods flow 1 – represent both separation and contact. As Anzaldua has said, ‘Borderlands are physically present whenever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, … where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy’ (1987, preface). Borders demarcate the territory and the people of a nation, and border crossing represents both the act of transgressing the physical locus of a nation and the intersection of identities that generates hybridity. This study examines the discursive construction of the U.S.-Mexico border, ‘a dynamic site that encompasses modern global issues that range from migration to trade to international relations to national sovereignty’ (Romero, 2008, p. 9). The border also operates as a vital space for the production, reproduction, and negotiation of U.S. and Mexican national identities (Shome, 2003). Border discourse shapes how each nation sees itself and the other. News stories help to form the taken-for-granted ideas about who ‘we’ are, contribute to beliefs that ‘our side’ of an issue or conflict is moral and righteous, and encourage us to view ‘them’ as different, frightening and aggressive."