ABSTRACT

It is an unfortunate but inescapable characteristic of what was once called peacekeeping that it rarely makes the news headlines, except perhaps when things go wrong. The media are extremely interested in warfare - although admittedly news organisations do not cover every conflict or war that takes place on the planet at any given time. Even then, however, the causes and consequences of the conflicts they do pay attention to command relatively little media interest. As a result, wars appear to burst out of nowhere on to our television screens and, once over, the countries in which they took place return to relative media obscurity. The last decade is replete with examples of this from Somalia to Kosovo, from Bosnia to East Timor, and from Rwanda to Haiti. Waging peace, in other words, is far less likely to attract journalistic attention than the waging of war.