‘Journalism of attachment’

THE New People’s Army (NPA) will celebrate its 39th anniversary in March this year, and with it a vow to annihilate all its enemies until it seizes nationwide political power. The decades-old, Maoist-led war is one of Asia’s longest-running insurgencies, and hopes for reconciliation remain bleak as the Arroyo government has staged an all-out-war against the rebels. Communists have practically abandoned plans of going back to the peace negotiating table after the government has tagged them as “terrorists.”

(Click here for the photo captions.)

In another strife-torn country, Nepal, where Maoist rebels had waged war for 10 years since 1996, the future also doesn’t seem promising. The civil war between the communists had killed nearly 15,000 people, and now separatists are holding their own little wars in the countryside, leading to fears of prolonged unrest.

For a Nepali like Kunda Dixit, he says much work is to be done if any peace and reconciliation is to be achieved. Publisher and editor of the Nepali Times, Dixit offers that media, for one, must re-learn journalism, and engage in the so-called “journalism of attachment…to try to get inside the story and live it, not just point out problems but present solutions.” (Listen also to the podcast interview with Kunda Dixit below.)

In a way, he says, this is what he and two other journalists tried to achieve with the book, “A People War: Images of the Nepal Conflict, 1996-2006.” Published just right after the war ended, the pictorial book offers 180 images that portray a country torn apart by conflict and a people of innate strength, surviving amidst the carnage and destruction.

The book, together with the photo exhibits that ran for two months in one town after the other, became a sort of a peace movement, sending across a message that war doesn’t solve society’s ills and that violence doesn’t lead to positive endings.

Listen to Dixit reflect on the war and the media’s important role in helping rebuild a country ruined by conflict.

Length: 00:11:10
File size: 10.2 MB

Or listen to him share the stories that went with the images and how a photo “will always be in our mind’s eye,” capturing a decisive moment in a millisecond.

Length: 00:12:46
File size: 11.7 MB