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Preventing Media Incitement to Violence in Iraq

Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (2010), 5 pp.

Series: Peacebrief, 16

"The monitoring of Iraqi media reveals that inflammatory coverage does not necessarily consist of a direct call to violence, but instead takes the form of indirect or coded terminology that still has dangerous potential to foment conflict. Current regulatory and self-regulatory efforts designed to prevent media incitement to violence have, thus far, been insufficient. Lessons learned from post-conflict Bosnia, Kosovo and Sri Lanka can assist Iraqis in creating their own legal and self-regulatory mechanisms to limit inflammatory media coverage. There are a wide range of measures to mitigate inflammatory media coverage, including targeted training for media and government officials, broad support for a professional code of conduct, a full review of existing legislation relating to incitement, and the creation of a lexicon of inflammatory terms with guidelines for the proper use of these terms." (Abstract)