Ekaterina Balabanova, The Media and Human Rights: The Cosmopolitan Promise

Abstract

The book Media and Human Rights: The Cosmopolitan Promise, by Ekaterina Balabanova tries to develop a link between two different subjects: media and human rights. It recognises that the media is more receptive to human rights issues today than at any time in modern history. Today, the media has become interested not only in violations of human rights but also in the institutional apparatus that promotes and protects human rights. Balabanova identifies three main issues that concern human rights‘reporting. The first issue is the knowledge gap, which results in an inadequate understanding of human rights. The second relates to the media‘s understanding of the concept of human rights according to which it notices the occurrence of violations. Quite often the media is predisposed to seeing violations taking place in other countries while missing the actual state of human rights in their own societies. Coverage of human rights issues at home appears as national or local crime or politics. The third problem concerns the quality of reporting. The media tends to miss the historical, political, social and local context of human rights‘stories and fails to provide in-depth analysis of the nature of a given violation. As a result, human rights violations are represented as isolated instances or new events even when they are only the latest in a history of similar violations.