Eyes on the prize: an analysis of ten years of Amnesty International media awards for human rights...

Phil Chamberlain: 08971128University of the West of England

MA Journalism: Dissertation

Eyes on the prize: an analysis of ten years of

Amnesty International media awards for

human rights reporting

Wordle made up of text from

some of the winning print entries in

the Amnesty International media awards

Phil ChamberlainMA Journalism DissertationFaculty of Creative ArtsUniversity of the West of England

Supervisor: Dr Lee Salter

Word Count: 14, 202

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Contents

1. Acknowledgments

2. Abstract

3. Introduction

4. Literature review

a. Human rights and the news media

b. The function of prize giving

c. Journalism and awards

5. Methodology

a. Overview

b. Analysing the Amnesty International Media Awards

c. Who were the journalists on the awards list?

d. What media organisations feature?

e. What countries were featured?

f. What kind of human rights abuses were reported?

6. Findings and discussion

7. Conclusions

8. Bibliography

9. Appendices

a. List of human rights awards

b. Breakdown of amnesty International award winners and runners-up

c. UN Declaration of Human Rights

d. European Convention on Human Rights

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the support and advice of Dr Lee Salter, Bernhard Gross, Myra

Lee and Kathryn Houldcroft.

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Abstract

For 20 years the Amnesty International media awards have recognised the “best in human rights journalism”. There is an extensive and mature debate on the nature of human rights but academic studies into human rights and journalism are much less prevalent. Rarer still are studies into journalism and prize giving .This dissertation analyses the winners and runners-up in the Amnesty International media awards for the last ten years. It looks at how human rights are framed in the stories, which countries are covered and which journalists and organisations are honoured. It uses key critical theories on the nature of human rights reporting to understand the results. It argues that the stated desire by the media and human rights organisation for the awards to show the breadth of reporting and highlight issues little covered elsewhere is not borne out. The actual content of winners and runners-up shows a narrow range of organisations taking part, a narrow range of countries covered and limited range of topics reported. Instead the awards support the strategy of “information politics” aimed at targeted reporting to leverage human rights gains. Finally that they demonstrate a battle over the colonizatrion of the human rights sphere by the media.

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CHAPTER ONE

IntroductionThe story about one woman’s quest for peace grabs your attention.

“Sharmila Irom, a young woman from the Indian state of Manipur, has not eaten for

almost 10 years. She is too angry to eat, too upset, too disgusted by the violence that

surrounds her, too disturbed by her helplessness to do anything about it. She is

hungry for justice, not for food."1

It also grabbed the attention of Amnesty International which gave its author, Andrew

Buncombe, an award for human rights reporting.

The same day that it was published violence exploded in Athens as a general strike took

hold.2 Riots left at least three people dead in the Greek capital. The strike had been called

because of planned austerity measures forced on to the Greek government in return for

billions of euros in loans to bail out its moribund economy. These measures would have

frozen wages, cut pensions and raised taxes.

Articles 23, 24 and 253 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights say that everyone has the

right to favourable employment conditions, an adequate standard of living and security in

1 Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, One Woman’s Quest for Peace, May 5, 2010, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/one-womans-silent-quest-for-peace-on-indias-wild-frontier-1962571.html accessed October 2011.

2 See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8661385.stm

3 See: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a235

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a23

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8661385.stm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/one-womans-silent-quest-for-peace-on-indias-wild-frontier-1962571.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/one-womans-silent-quest-for-peace-on-indias-wild-frontier-1962571.html



the event of unemployment or sickness. In light of those Articles there is a legitimate debate

to be had about the Greek government’s proposal in the context of human rights. However,

in the many mainstream news reports on this event that I looked at, none framed it as a

human rights story.

I would suggest that Buncombe’s article about a woman confronting institutional violence

conforms to a traditional perception by the media of what constitutes human rights

reporting. The story has been framed in a familiar David versus Goliath narrative that allows

the cultural and geographic distances to be collapsed and thus make the event

understandable to the reader. The abuse takes place elsewhere, in some exotic other, and

we are spectators; we’re not complicit in the event. It fits Mutura’s description of the

dominant Western metaphor of human rights which forces actors into roles of savage,

victim or saviour. According to Mutura:

“The victim figure is a powerless, helpless innocent whose naturalist attributes have

been negated by the primitive and offensive actions of the state or the cultural

foundation of the state.” (Mutura 2001: 203)

Meanwhile the saviour is any human rights story is “ultimately a set of culturally-based

norms and practices that inhere in liberal thought and philosophy”. (Mutura 2001: 204)

Although it is possible to make a critical reading of Buncombe’s article, it won the 2011

Amnesty International Media Award in the national newspaper section4 and therefore is

4 For list of all the winners see: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10058 6

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10058



considered an example of excellence in its field. Now in its 20th year the Amnesty awards

have grown to be one of the premier celebrations of human rights reporting in the western

media. According to Amnesty they “recognise and celebrate the best in human rights

journalism”.5

Rodgers has shown that there has been a huge increase in the amount of news stories

covering human rights (Rodgers 2009: 1098) but not everyone who suffers human rights

abuse gets the same coverage :

“Poverty and ignorance prevent many needy groups from taking actions that would

raise their international profile.” (Bob 2002: 144)

Bob compares the Chinese abuse of Tibetans with similar abuses against Xinjiang’s Uighurs

arguing that the former’s high profile is due in large part to the media friendliness of the

Dalai Lama. That suggests that at least part of the problem is the organisation of human

rights advocates on the ground doesn’t meet the structural needs of the Western media. If

only the Uighurs had a Dalai Lama they too might get a story in the BBC.6

Another way of considering what human rights abuses make it into the media (and thus

become eligible for an Amnesty International award) is offered by Chomsky and Herman.

Their propaganda model suggests that, no matter how good a particular oppressed group or

5 Amnesty International website, http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10058 accessed December 2011

6 BBC website, Dalai Lama warns of backlash against immolations, 18 November 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15799762

7

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15799762




individual’s public relations strategy, coverage depends on their relationship to the United

States. Enemy states will find Amnesty International reports on ill-treatment discussed

thoroughly in the mainstream news media while abuses in carried out by friendly nations

receive different treatment. In their analysis of the media coverage of Latin American

dictators supported by the US they write:

“Since the installation and support of military juntas, with their sadistic tortures and

bloodbaths, are hardly compatible with human rights, democracy and other alleged

Western values, the media and intellectuals in the United States and Western

Europe have been hard-pressed to rationalize state policy. The primary solution has

been massive suppression, averting the eyes form the unpleasant facts … When the

Latin American system of torture and exile is mentioned at all, it is done with brevity

and ‘balance’.” (Chomsky and Herman 1979: 12-13)

We can see, then, that there is a debate about how human rights stories find their way into

the news media and why certain stories are constructed as human rights ones. The very best

human rights stories, according to Amnesty International, are those which it has awarded

prizes. If there were issues being ignored, countries overlooked or groups which had slipped

under the radar than Amnesty has an opportunity to put that right through its awards.

Indeed in presenting the awards in 2003, Amnesty International UK campaigns director

Stephen Bowen said exactly that:

"At a time when the world's attention has been focused on Iraq, there is a grave

danger that human rights abuses elsewhere will get overlooked.

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"The range and quality of the shortlist reminds us of the critical role journalists can

play in drawing attention to events in Israel, Zimbabwe, Guinea and the former

Yugoslavia republic for example."7

From the other side, the list of award winners can also demonstrate what kind of human

rights stories the media considers are signs of excellence since these are the ones they have

selected for entry into the awards. By looking at the organisations submitting stories, the

issues covered and the countries involved we can get an idea of the selection criteria

employed by journalists. Therefore this dissertation will look at the winners and runners-up

in the Amnesty awards for the last ten years. That offers a strictly defined data set which

can be analysed in light of the critical approaches outlined above and which will be added to

through this dissertation.

Human rights are fundamentally important issues for the news media to cover because it is

one of the key avenues through which citizens can arm themselves with information

necessary to protect themselves from abuse. Therefore getting coverage right is vitally

important. My analysis will show how effective what is considered the best in human rights

reporting is at performing that function. I also argue that extra attention is likely to be paid

to award winning stories not just by consumers, but also by other news outlets because

they garner prestige which helps increase profitability. Therefore I will consider the current

thinking on awards systems themselves, and in journalism in particular.

7 Press Gazette, Amnesty reveals shortlist for human rights awards, 2 May 2003, http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=22795&sectioncode=1 accessed November 2011

9

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=22795&sectioncode=1



My hypothesis is that the idealised narrative constructed by both the media and the human

rights organisation around human rights awards is not borne out by the content of the

award winner and runners-up. The chosen stories will reflect a narrow view about what

constitutes human rights and they will be guided by well-established and internalised news

values. Therefore, the idea that issues previously unexplored, countries often ignored,

people frequently marginalised can find a voice through the championing of articles by the

awards system is a myth.

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Chapter Two

Literature reviewI will outline three key areas in my literature review which are pertinent to my study. The

first is literature around the reporting of human rights; the second the literature on awards

and prize giving and finally the literature on prize giving in journalism specifically.

Human rights and the news media

I do not intend to present a summary of the vast canon of work which has developed

around human rights but instead look specifically at the relationship between human rights

organisations, and Amnesty International in particular, and the media.8

From the beginning Amnesty International has worked closely with the media. It was

founded in 1961 following an article in The Observer. British lawyer Peter Benenson wrote

about people imprisoned and abused because of their political or religious beliefs. He felt a

spotlight should be shone not just upon what he called the ‘forgotten prisoners’ but upon

their jailers. That relationship continues. BBC journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, who has

been nominated, for several awards said:

“Amnesty as an organisation I think is extremely important. Not just in its awards,

but also in the work Amnesty does. We rely hugely on Amnesty International’s work

8 By media I mean the print, radio, television and online providers of news and analysis of current events.11



in the field, for information and for all sorts of background information to the stories

that we do.”9

This is the relationship as seen by traditional liberal commentators. The news media as a key

guarantor of human rights and making use of the best sources (McIntyre 2003: 1). However

there are divergent opinions on how and why journalists report human rights stories.

Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model suggests that news passes through five filters

before the “cleansed residue” makes it on to screen or page. The look at the different ways

in which the US media report similar human rights abuses in different countries. They argue

that consistently the U.S. and its client states are held to different standards (Herman 2000).

The reason for this is that the mainstream media are fundamentally businesses selling

consumers to advertisers and as such they support the current economic hegemony. A more

recent analysis by Edwards and Cromwell (2009) using the same model looked at the

coverage of Iran and Venezuela by The Guardian and BBC. It highlighted what the authors

saw as different treatments in human rights issues for the countries conceived as enemies

of the U.S. compared to abuses perpetrated by Allied forces in Iraq. In applying this model

to the prize winners we might expect to find a greater representation of those states

politically antagonistic to the U.S.

One critique offered by Naomi Klein is that human rights organisations, in striving to be

impartial, have separated abuses from their cause. She uses Amnesty International reports

9 Amnesty International website, http://www.amnesty.org.uk/videos.asp?id=113 accessed January 201212

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/videos.asp?id=113



about human rights abuses in Chile under Pinochet as an example of an organisation, wary

of being painted as biased, offering a neutered discourse (Klein 2007: 119). She also

highlights a differing attitude towards corporations and governments with the latter

receiving the greater weight of attention as perceived guarantors of human rights even if

the former can be just as complicit in abuses.

An alternative set of filters is offered by Kaplan of what he says causes the media to

misrepresent or marginalise human rights issues (Kaplan 2002). Anyone familiar with

Galtung and Ruge’s taxonomy of news values (summarised in Harcup 2004: 30-31), would

find Kaplan’s list unsurprising. His filters are bias (political, cultural etc); instrumentalisation

(the use of human rights for political purposes such as leveraging aid); use of biased

language (loaded terms such as terrorism); selectivity of news stories; pollution during the

news gathering process which distorts the facts; reductionism that renders human rights in

simplistic terms; sensationalism and negativity (only the worst or most unusual get

reported) and finally an absence of context so that key historical, social or economic

background is omitted. (Kaplan 2002: 8)

It is more than just, as Kaplan suggests, a question of focussing on sensationalism or

negativity. A particular issue or incident often originates from a report from an authoritative

source such as a government or human rights NGO as the media have fewer resources to

cover foreign news. The fact that such stories tend to take place abroad means they have to

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fight extra hard to justify news space. The media is not structurally geared to cover long-

term processes such as, say, the gradual displacement of an ethnic group. There is also the

othering of human rights stories by positioning them as taking place somewhere else and

not at home.

The sourcing of a story from an NGO, or in the case of awards their endorsement of

particular stories, does not mean that some filtering hasn’t taken place. Ron, J et al give four

factors which influence how prominently a human rights story is judged by an NGO press

operation before it is communicated to the media. These are; the previous reporting efforts

with those that have succeeded in gaining press before privileged in the future, how much

power the state in question wields internationally, whether it receives U.S. military

assistance and a country’s general media profile. (Ron, J, et al 2005). Their analysis of

Amnesty International’s activities shows that, while rights are universal, the organisation

targets its efforts in what is called “information politics”. Contrary to the propaganda model,

there is a deliberate attempt by Amnesty to focus on the activities of powerful states as a

tool to leverage better conditions worldwide. The authors write:

“There is little doubt that information politics is enormously useful. Intense NGO

reporting on U.S. violations of international law in Guantanomo Bay, for example,

may strengthen global laws against illegal incarceration, while a focus on the U.S.

war in Iraq, the trial of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, or the

Israeli/Palestinian conflict promote public awareness of the laws of war,

accountability for past abuses, and the treatment of occupied populations.” (Ron, J.

et al 2005: 576)

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In outlining this strategy the authors warn that its very success can lead to some abuses

being marginalised. As one Amnesty International worker tells them:

“You can work all you like on Mauritania, but the press couldn’t give a rat’s ass about

Mauritania. You don’t put a press release out on that.” (Ron, J. et al2005: 576)

These critiques argue that the very way news media outlets are structured politically and

economic affects, often negatively, the way they report human rights. My methodological

approach to analysing the Amnesty prize winners (outlined in the next chapter) also takes a

structural approach and so the data produced is well suited for testing against these

approaches.

The function of prize giving

The fact that prize giving can be found in many different organisations and societies shows

that it fulfils some fundamental purpose. Anthropologists class awards as part of the rites of

enhancement along with rituals such as the medals given to soldiers and the prizes for top

performing sales people. Trice and Beyer describe the role of such a rite as to:

“provide public recognition of individual accomplishments from which all derive

benefit and seem to enable the organization to take some share of the credit for

these accomplishments. Another obvious, not-so-latent consequence is to motivate

other members to greater efforts.” (Trice and Beyer 1984:660)

While they might share this common heritage and serve the same broad social needs, prize

giving and awards vary immensely among different organisations. 15



There is a lot of research on prize giving as an inducement for scientific innovation. This has

a long history with some of the most famous examples being solving of the longitude

navigational problem, the invention of canned food as way of better feeding Napoleonic

troops and, more recently, various aeronautical endurance tasks (Kay 2010).

Meanwhile Shavell and Ypersele (1988) and Maurer and Scotchmer (2004) have looked at

other aspects relating to prizes driving technological innovation. That includes the

importance of publicity and how prizes help scientists gain peer respect and generate

further funding. These are all applicable background to the focus of this dissertation.

There also prizes for excellence in the arts. Street (2005) and English (2002) are two key

authors who have looked at the cultural capital that accrues to artists from winning awards

and how the pursuit of prizes might affect the kind of art produced. In other words,

designing the entry to fit the criteria rather than any intrinsic value. This concern is a

common complaint raised with the Pulitzers where it is feared the success of the prize

skews the entries.

There has also been research into prize giving as an inducement for good behaviour. One

example is a report from management consultants McKinsey (2009) into philanthropic prize

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giving. It analysed 219 major awards worth at least $100,000 and then carried out an in-

depth analysis of six of these followed up with interviews with award organisers. The report

argues that prizes are well-suited to achieving philanthropic goals and goes on to say:

“For many philanthropists, the ability of prizes to grab attention and influence public

perception of a topic or discipline is deeply attractive. There are many examples of

well-crafted prizes, backed by a relatively small amount of capital, establishing the

importance of a field, catalyzing market demand, shaping public debate, and even

changing the image of sponsors.” (McKinsey 2009: p21)

Amnesty International says that its criteria for judging its media awards includes exposing

human right abuses to new audiences and “carrying forward the debate on human rights or

highlighting new or emerging issues”.10 There is an obvious parallel between the

philanthropic approach outlined in McKinsey, which aims to encourage good behaviour, and

Amnesty’s aim of encouraging good practice in the media.

Journalism and awards

The literature on journalism and prize giving can be split into two categories; academic

analysis of the criteria used to judge awards and observational pieces by journalists on

whether awards are good for their industry or not. As Beam et al note in their study: “The

bulk of what has been written about journalistic prizes appears in the mass media

themselves.” (1986: 693).

10 Amnesty International website, awards, http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10058 , accessed January 2012.

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Beam et al were inspired by studies on how scientists achieved greater peer recognition

through winning awards. They also wanted to consider how awards might be a firm of social

control by conferring prestige on the winners.

They carried out a postal survey of American journalists and found that, while winning

awards did translate into personal prestige it did not necessarily lead to greater job

satisfaction. It also found that journalists rated more highly those awards given by their

peers rather than those from non-professional organisations. They concluded that: “Prizes

become part of the array of mechanism for assuring that employees meet expected

standards of performing.” (Beam et al 1986: 698)

Coulson drew upon a similar methodology a few years later for his study looking at

American editors’ attitudes towards journalism awards (Coulson 1989). His interest

stemmed from the Janet Cooke scandal where a Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winner had

to hand her award back because she had falsified large parts of her story.

It did not appear that the Cooke affair, blamed on too much emphasis on awards, was

putting editors off. Coulson’s study showed not only that 90% of those responding

considered awards valuable, but nearly 90% had received one themselves.11 However, only

half of respondents felt the awards were “proof of excellence” and the assumption by 11 The sample was made up of senior journalists so the high incidence of award wins suggests a correlation between advancement and trophy wins.

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Coulson was that that their ‘value’ was external in terms of promoting a corporate image

and internal as a reward system for staff.

“This might suggest that the awards have become ends in themselves and raises a

question for future study: does prize journalism heighten performance or focus more

attention on the importance of the rewards rather than on the activity being

rewarded?” (Coulson 1989: 147)

A narrow study by Gladney (1995) noted how award entries needed to be visually exciting if

they were to claim top spot even if the criteria was just on written content. It hinted at the

vague rules often set down by judges.

This issue of criteria was then looked at by Shapiro et al who studied how judges defined

rules on excellence in two Canadian journalism competitions. Their postal interviews

revealed that judges, given latitude by vague or non-existent criteria, applied inconsistent

standards.

These studies attempt to pull back the curtain to see what is the process which leads to the

award being given and what the effect is upon journalists. Apart from Gladney, no-one has

looked at the entries themselves. The methodology has also been similar; a mass mail out to

members of a professional guild and then a representative sample frame drawn from the

resulting returns.

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Gauging the effect upon journalists is difficult because, as Beam et al, showed, not all prizes

are viewed the same. This dissertation will look at a specific, high profile award and analyse

the entries that actually made it onto the podium. This offers a complimentary

methodological approach and one more suited to my line of questioning.

As for high profile awards, while academics only started looking at prize giving in journalism

from the 1980s, trade journals such as Colombia Journalism Review () had been carrying

opinion pieces by reporters on the topic since the beginning of the 1970s (Zinman 1970,

McCormally 1971), and the Pulitzers were a focus of interest.

America’s premier journalism award, the Pulitzers were established in 1917 to help restore

the reputation of yellow journalism. A review by Shepard (2000) makes clear how serious

the media industry in the United States takes the Pulitzers. The process is very ritualised and

one in which all parties invest a lot of energy and from which the winners draw enormous

prestige. However, some journalists believe the prizes are mean little outside of the

industry.

Columnist Jack Shafer wrote:

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“Put it this way: If another trade association gave itself awards—and despite the

presence of a few academics on its board, the Pulitzer Prize Committee is a glorified

newspaper trade association—would its winners get Page One play?12 Never.”13

Journalist Alexander Cockburn’s critique of the Pulitzers was along the same lines.

“The truth is that the Pulitzer business – and, given the promotional uses to which

the prizes are put, it definitely is a business – is a self validating ritual whereby

journalists give each other prizes and then boast to the public about them.”

(Cockburn 1988)

In an excoriating attack a few years later on the Pulitzers awards Cockburn described them

as specifically failing in terms of human rights reporting.

“To my mind, much of 1983 was a record of journalistic failure, failure to set forth

accurately the issues of arms control and negotiations with the Soviet Union, failure

to discuss objectively and accurately the situation in the Middle East, failure to

report the political change in the black community that has stimulated the Jackson

candidacy. The list could go on for quite a while” (Cockburn 1988, p225)

The list which Cockburn does supply could be viewed as a list of unreported human rights

stories. Certainly the conflict between Israel and Palestine, highlighted by Cockburn,

generated, as we shall see, more than a dozen stories nominated by Amnesty. It is this

conflict in particular to which Cockburn then goes on to reference with regard to a Pulitzer-

winning photography portfolio.

12 ie, should it go on the front page

13 Jack Shafer, Slate, So You Won A Pulitzer, Slate, April 6, 2004, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2004/04/so_you_won_a_pulitzer.html, accessed December 2011

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2004/04/so_you_won_a_pulitzer.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2004/04/so_you_won_a_pulitzer.html



“I hope the Palestinians in Lebanon feel a little better today. Largely misreported and

racially denigrated though they may have been in the US news media over the past

40 years, at least their sufferings have contributed to the Pulitzer process.”

(Cockburn 1998: p225)

It is not just journalists who gain from the prestige accompanying a Pulitzer. Savage (2009)

recalls a university professor of journalism who entered the competition each year simply to

say he was a Pulitzer nominee and bask in the reflected glory.

It might be argued that some professional jealousy is at play in these critiques and that

these articles are partial and polemical. However they have picked up on an aspect which

the academic analyses have not, and that is the political economy behind prizes. The

professor can enter the Pulitzers each year because, as with most awards, the only criteria

to do so is to pay the entrance fee submit an article which meets the broad requirement of

being published within a certain period and in an appropriate format. The judging process is

likely to rule it out on whatever quality criteria are employed. However, no business turns

away customers. So, much like a fairground shooting game, as many can have a go as pay

the owner – it’s just that only a few will go away with a teddy from the shelf.

The awards as business can be seen in a report by Sweet (2001). It raises concerns about the

commercial sponsorship of prizes influencing the judging process and helping push issues

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corporations were interested in. For instance, Kellogg’s sponsoring an award for nutrition

journalism. They very language journalists use to assessing their professional prizes

demonstrates how the commercial aspect has been internalised. Shepard says that “if

prizes are journalism's currency, then Pulitzers are newspapers' Gold Standard” and quotes

Thomas Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland’s College of Journalism and a former

editor, saying:

"Prizes are the only way we have to keep score. Stock prices and stock options are

the only way to keep score on Wall Street. In journalism, we can only talk about who

does good work and who has a great staff. But that's pretty subjective. Yet there's

nothing more subjective than prizes. Every journalist you ever talk with will say our

obsession with prizes is criminal. It might even be venal how much value we put on

prizes. But it's the only quantifiable way of the industry recognizing you as a player."

(Shepard 2010)

Given this influence it is not surprising that she finds the winner of an Edward R Murrow

award (a prestigious television news prize in America) giving a talk called “How to win a

Murrow”. For those not in journalism but looking to monetize the awards process they

could also learn from former Emmy14 judge Leverne (1997) whose book “And the winner

is…” provides a step-by-step guide for business to create their own awards process.

We can see from this review on the literature of prize giving that the very limited academic

research has used interviews to gauge what those taking part in the process feel is the

purpose and outcome. Apart from Gladney it is has not actually looked at what wins prizes.

14 American television award23



The much more numerous comment pieces from journalists are concerned with prizes as

threats to their professional standing. That might be because of the desire to win a prize

becomes the most important reason for writing a story rather than any intrinsic

newsworthiness (however that may be defined) or that the commercialisation can comprise

a journalist’s perceived independence. At the root is a desire to gain prestige that can be

seen by their peers to have been fairly earned.

This dissertation will complement these three areas of study outlined above (human rights,

awards systems and journalism prizes). One way to consider a prize system is look at what it

actually honours rather than what its participants say it should honour. The academic

papers which have looked at journalism awards have not differentiated between award

types but aimed to uncover general rules applicable across all competitions. They have been

exclusively North American based. Similarly, the comment pieces have all been North

American focussed (indeed Pulitzer focussed) and generally concerned with the how

participants view the process.

I will look at the output from a UK-based awards process, and one which carries significant

professional prestige. My focus will be narrower than previous studies in that it will look at a

single award process but much deeper because it involves a close reading of the output over

a ten year period. I do not claim my findings are applicable across all UK journalism awards.

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However, it does add an ingredient missing from the current literature which is a

comprehensive look at what actually wins. In focussing on a human rights award it will add

to the on-going discussion on the relationship between human rights NGOs and the media

and how that moderates the public discourse on rights. Finally, it can provide material for

the wider study of organisations and how employees take part in reward systems.

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Chapter Three

Methodological overview

The primary tool I employed was content analysis which has a well-established pedigree as

rigorous statistical analysis attempting to uncover values in text.

“This content gives communication scholars a window through which to explore a

vast array of theoretical possibilities.” (Hoffman and Slater 2007: 59)

According to Bertrand and Hughes:

“The search for scientific reliability and validity has led to the refinement and

standardisation of techniques, but all content analysis still consists in taking a sample

of media, establishing categories of content, measuring the presence of each

category within the sample, and interpreting the results, usually against some

external criteria.” (Bertrand and Hughes 2005: 198)

Beyond this broad definition are a number of different approaches which researchers may

employ depending on their hypothesis, the data set and their preferred methodological

approach.

Previous studies on journalism awards such as Coulson (1989) used questionnaires to

ascertain the motivations of key actors in the awards process. As Bertrand and Hughes point

out, though, this approach “provides simple answers to simple questions, so they cannot

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help to establish thick description or to understand process or social context”. (Bertrand

and Hughes 2005: 69)

The key difference between interviews by questionnaire and content analysis are people –

or rather the lack of them. The former is concerned with teasing out insights from people

involved in some way in the area being studied. While the results can be extensive they are

also limited to the areas the subjects know about. The accuracy is also reliant on who agrees

to complete the form and how they choose to answer the questions. The latter method,

provided the sampling is done correctly, is better suited for large-scale surveys. In looking at

the hundreds of entries in my chosen media award a content analysis approach seems a

better ‘fit’ with the area being studied – the right tool for the job. I am interested in what

was produced as a result of the awards system, and from that what it suggests about the

nature of human rights reporting, rather than the justifications of those involved in the

process.

Aside from getting the right sample, one that is weighted properly so that it can represent

the totality of data, a key issue is establishing the right categories. The content analysis

approach is rather rigid and means that the conclusions are only as good as the categories

chosen to measure the data. If, subsequently, it is found that there is a better way to

measure the text the whole process has to be redone. This empirical approach can be

27



inflexible and only shine a light on the surface of the question rather than being able to

probe fully its depths.

“In practice, the researcher is forced to compromise, making the best possible

category definitions in the circumstances, acknowledging that they are always

imperfect.” (Bertrand and Hughes 2005: 200)

That imperfection extends to measuring the categories once complete. Texts are not like

geometric shapes which can be weighed, counted or measured in absolutes. The empirical

heritage behind content analysis tends to falls away at this stage as researchers employ

more intuitive methods to judge the data before them. Despite these drawbacks, this

approach appears the most appropriate method testing my sample.

I need to bring some order to the sample frame so that I can situate it within wider socio-

economic context. The motivations of those submitting and judging the awards, while of

interest, are secondary to understanding the entries in of themselves. I wish to look at them

as a discrete sample and take them on face value. Therefore, careful coding should be able

to perform that function better than interviews or surveys. Having decided to adopt a

content analysis approach I set about constructing a series of codes or markers which I

would check against each entry.

28



Firstly, therefore, I needed to find my sample frame. My aim was to look at all the awards

open to journalists working in the UK which had a human right category or were all about

human rights reporting.

There were several reasons for limiting my search in this way. One was practical in that

awards for non-English speaking journalists would have been too time consuming for me to

research and translate. I was also guided by the few other studies in this area. One asked

American journalists for their views on awards (Coulson 1986) and the other compared two

Canadian awards (Kosicki et al 1985). They both restricted themselves to awards within one

country.

Although there is much in common between American and UK reporting in terms of

fundamental approaches to news construction, there are only a few prizes open to

journalists from both countries. For instance, the prestigious Pulitzers dominate the

mainstream American journalism but are not open to UK publications. Therefore trying to

compare entrants would have been difficult because it would not have been possible to

compare them equally. It was more coherent then that I restrict my first sample to those

open to UK journalists. My definition of journalist would be guided by the eligibility criteria

employed by the awards themselves.

29



In establishing what awards were open to my target audience I was unable to find a

directory such as that used in the American studies.15 I therefore carried out a

comprehensive survey of UK and European professional journalist organisations as well as

human rights organisations.16

My research identified the following award schemes: One World Media Awards; Index on

Censorship - freedom of expression awards; Golden Pen of Freedom; International Press

Freedom awards from the CPJ; Liberty; Knight International Journalism Award for Human

Rights; Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize: EU HR Journalism Award; Minority Rights Group

International – media award; Sakharov Prize and the Amnesty International UK media

awards.

Some of these prizes were more directly applicable than others. For instance, Liberty is a

human rights NGO and has honoured journalism award in the past but does not have a

specific journalism award. The Golden Pen of Freedom has been won by a Northern Irish

paper in the past and, while it favours reporters in developing countries or those facing

severe repression, it does not explicitly exclude UK newspapers or reporters. The Committee

to Protect Journalists (CPJ) award is open to UK reporters, though the only reporters from

first world countries to have been honoured have been American. The majority are from

15 Editor and Publisher is commonly used as resource for such awards listing. See: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/

16 The organisations, NGOs and publications searched were: National Union of Journalists, British Association of Journalists, the Chartered Institute of Journalists, Press Gazette, MediaWeek, journalism.co.uk, English PEN, The Journalism Foundation, The Joseph Rowntree Trust, Fritt Ord, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, The Committee to Protect Journalists, the Rory Peck Trust, the International Centre for Journalists, Article 19, the International Federation of Journalists.

30

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/



developing nations or those with severe censorship issues. The Knight International Award is

on the borderline of being accepted in that it is open to UK journalists (it is open to all) but is

aimed at those from developing countries or who have faced violent censorship. Its criteria

is loosely worded by generally encompasses human rights themes. Meanwhile the Sakharov

Prize is borderline but has been awarded to journalists in the past. It was clear from looking

at the range of awards and profile that the Amnesty International and One Word prizes

dominated this sector. A search for mentions on the Nexis database for mentions in the

English language press of the awards in previous decade showed that Amnesty had the

higher media profile. Therefore I selected the Amnesty Awards as the most

methodologically sound to investigate.

Analysing the Amnesty International Media Awards

Amnesty International’s UK section has been making awards to the media since 1992 and

has grown to be a significant prize for human rights reporting.

I decided to look at the last ten years of entries as this would give me a necessary sample

frame to consider the nature of human rights reporting and reveal any longitudinal

developments. This was also motivated by the fact that only since 2002 has Amnesty made

readily available its winners and runners-ups. The awards are split into categories covering

print, radio, television and, latterly, online. In each category there was a winner and

between one and three runners-ups. I excluded categories which journalists could not apply

31



for but were instead just chosen by Amnesty. That meant all the entries in the sample were

those which the journalists themselves considered worthy of consideration and met the

criteria demanded by Amnesty. Therefore analysing them would shed light on both Amnesty

and the media outlet’s assumptions and practices. I also excluded those categories which

were not open to UK journalists so as not to contaminate the data with material produced

to different standards or using different processes. There is a debate about the globalization

of news culture and the export of UK and US news practices to other countries which I don’t

intend to go into. Suffice to say that I saw this exclusion as helping create a more coherent

sample frame.

It was possible to gain a brief understanding of the content of each of these from published

material. However for in-depth analysis I would restrict myself to the print entries only as I

could not be sure of accessing the television footage and it would be difficult to draw valid

assumptions soley from a script.

Who were the journalists on the awards list?

I started by listing the names of the journalists responsible for each winning or runner-up

entry. This would show how wide was the spread of journalists honoured and provide an

indication of whether human rights was a story type which many different reporters

covered.

32



An initial analysis highlighted an uneven, and unexpected, gender split. There were two

years when the numbers of men and women nominated were equal (2006 and 2008) and in

2004 it was 18 men to 14 women. Otherwise the balance was firmly in favour of men. It

cannot even be said that the situation is improving as the worst out of the ten years was the

penultimate one (46 male journalists and 13 female). In total 273 male reporters were listed

to 178 female reporters.17 I discuss the implications of this further in my Findings chapter.

The number of journalists acknowledged increased in 2007 when Amnesty expanded the

number of categories. It also appeared that the television submissions began to be made up

of larger teams. While the first five years had a mean of 23 journalists acknowledged, the

next five years saw a mean of 57.6.

In total, over the ten years (and excluding the international section introduced later which is

not open to UK journalists) 441 journalists are mentioned. However, that is not 441 different

journalists because what is quite clear is that several people are consistently honoured. In

fact there are 361 separate journalists with 15 managing at least three separate

nominations. Indeed Hilary Andersson managed five and Robin Hammond six (and winning

four of those). It helped that Hammond could submit in the newspaper, periodical and

photojournalism categories.

17 The gender of each reporter was checked via web search rather than relying on names which suggested a particular gender. The TV journalist Alex Crawford being a case in point.

33



What media organisations featured?

While several journalists crop up regularly in the awards list the number of media

organisations is even more repetitive. Over the ten years there are 252 organisations which

either won or were shortlisted in the categories I looked at.

Of those, the lion’s share was taken by various arms of the BBC. In total they had 78

nominations through their radio, regional and national programmes. Particularly strong was

BBC Radio 4 which had 20 nominations. Perhaps that should not be surprising as it is the

corporation’s main radio news outlet.

Aside from the awards juggernaut that is the BBC, a few other organisations dominate the

list. There are a number of independent television companies but these provide films for

established networks (including the BBC). Otherwise it is Channel 4 which comes closest in

the television category with 28 nominations. ITV has just six and Sky two (one of which is for

an online report).

The way that news media companies can now offer material across a range of platforms is

demonstrated in these awards. For instance The Guardian (and its sister paper The

Observer) is named not just in the national newspaper section but also contributing to

several television documentaries as well as entering the magazine section and producing

34



digital content. Its performance in the awards is an impressive 38 wins and runner-up spots

– second to the BBC. That compares with News International where Sky earns two and The

Times and Sunday Times 25. The only other national newspapers to make an impression are

the Telegraph (five) and the Independent (eight) – which is an impressive showing for the

latter considering the comparative resources available to the former. Finally, in the list of

those making the biggest impression, it is worth highlighting The Herald in Scotland with

seven nominations. These were earned in the regional section of the awards and the entries

from Scotland are almost exclusively from this newspaper and the BBC’s Scottish section.

One thing apparent from the list of newspapers is that, almost without exception, they are

all broadsheets. That is, out of all UK national daily newspapers they are the more expensive

ones, catering for a more elite audience and are more likely to cover politics, economics and

other serious national and international news. Interestingly, the first winner in the national

newspaper category in 2002 was the Daily Mirror – the only time a tabloid newspaper has

made an impression. The broadsheet Financial Times has one entry (in the digital media

section) while mid-market Mail on Sunday won one and was a runner-up in the ‘periodicals

– newspaper supplements’ section in 2008 and 2009. These were both by the same

reporter.18

18 Jonathan Green website, hat trick of awards for LIVE reporter, http://www.jonathangreenonline.com/articles/award_04/, accessed December 2012

35

http://www.jonathangreenonline.com/articles/award_04/



To summarise, a breakdown of the 252 times an organisation either won or was a runner-up

over the ten years shows the BBC dominating with 31%.Three other media companies get in

to double figures (Channel 4, News International and the Guardian Media Group) totalling

90 entries or 36%. That equals four organisations with two-thirds of the award spots. The

remainder are shared out unevenly with six outlets getting between three and seven

nominations each. Just 22 outlets (or 8.8%) make only one appearance.

Without the data on all the entries submitted to Amnesty for entry into the awards any

conclusions drawn from these figures must made with caution. It might be that very few

media outlets are writing human rights stories. It is not within the scope of this study to

measure that. However human rights organisations over this period have much improved

their ability to gain media coverage (Rodgers 2009). Perhaps one statistic might serve to

suggest that these type of stories are being covered. A LexisNexis database search by the

author for use of the term “human rights abuse” in the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror over

the last ten years found 304 articles.19 Of course that is only a very tight snapshot, but I

would argue that, with that number of returns for a tabloid newspaper least likely to cover

such issues, human rights stories are being written.

It could well be that a plethora of organisations are writing human rights stories but do not

feel the need to enter the awards, are unable to spare the time or simply do not know about

19 The newspapers were chosen because it was the Daily Mirror which won the first national newspaper entry and also because, as a tabloid, it is seen as increasingly concentrating on celebrity news and away from ‘serious’ journalism. Therefore, if it was least likely to covering human rights stories.

36



them. For the latter I have demonstrated that these awards are well-known and the

Amnesty ‘brand’ garners a lot of publicity.20 For the former, studies outlined in my literature

review chapter have shown the importance of awards for personal and corporate prestige in

both journalism and other professions. This leaves the question of resources. Coulson has

identified the bureaucracy of prize submissions as a barrier to small news outlets (2009).

Indeed, the evidence from Shepard is that the major American journalism awards have

grown into an industry which requires of participants specialist knowledge and targeted

resources (2010). A questionnaire to UK news outlets could ascertain if there are barriers to

entry. However those reasons (if any) are outside the scope of this study as I am only

concerned with looking at the output of the awards and whether my sample frame is

rigorous enough to allow me to draw viable conclusions. An examination of the Amnesty

awards entry criteria (discussed in more detail in my findings chapter) shows that the

organisation does not have a complex and expensive submission process. Also, considering

that in the regional section some quite small operations such as The Big Issue have entered,

it suggests the resources hurdle is surmountable.

What countries were featured?

The next part of my analysis considers which countries which were covered by the awards

and shows that the stories had a narrow geographical focus.

20 In 2004 Amnesty said it received “a record more than 200 entries” but has not made any comment on the submission numbers since then, Amnesty website, Media awards shortlist revealed, http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=15314, accessed November 2011

37

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=15314



Quite often a story covered more than one country. For instance, those involving rendition

may cover the country where the person was illegally taken into custody, where they ended

up being held without charge and that the Americans directed the operation.

Where possible I analysed the stories to see which countries were identified as having

human rights issues. In 13 cases it was not possible to identify the country. In nine cases it

was a region or even global issues being covered. The result was that out of the 252 stories,

a country was identified in terms of human rights abuses taking place 287 times and 69

different countries21 were mentioned.22 As with both journalists and organisations; these

mentions were not spread evenly. Thirty-four countries were featured just once.

The country to receive the most mentions as a perpetrator was the UK with 46, followed by

the US with 22. Meanwhile Iraq had 15 mentions and Afghanistan nine. In many cases the

same theme linked these countries – the invasion of those countries by forces led by the UK

and America and the conduct of the war on terror. This will be discussed more in the section

on coding of content.

After the UK and the US the country most often featured was the Democratic Republic of

Congo (DRC) with 18 stories. Unlike other countries the DRC was generally reported in

21 The differing figures are because one story might mention Algeria, Afghanistan and America and the next story might mention America and Armenia. That would make four countries, five mentions overall with America having two of them.

22 There are 192 members of the UN. United Nation’s website, Member states, http://www.un.org/en/members/, accessed November2011

38

http://www.un.org/en/members/



isolation and not in terms of its relationship with neighbours. The next two locations

mentioned most frequently were also linked – Palestine23 (13) and Israel (12). Only one story

looked at Palestine in isolation; the rest framed any story about either location in terms of

their antagonism to each other. Also with 12 mentions was India, followed by Zimbabwe

with eight stories, China also with eight and Sudan with seven. The Sudan stories all

concerned the conflict in Darfur.

So those seven countries which made it into double figures accounted for 138 out of the 287

mentions or 48%. Roughly breaking the results down by region, the number of African

countries written about was 22 (out of 55 countries on the continent) but with the vast

number only mentioned once. The Far East and Asia feature in 12 stories, Eastern European

(10), Middle East (9), Central and South America (9) and Western Europe (4). Looking at the

figures this way does not account for the predominance of some countries such as the UK

for Western Europe. The most over-looked region was Central and South America with

Mexico taking most of the interest around the problems suffered because of drugs wars and

migration into North America. Only one story covered America’s role in the geopolitics of

the region and that was in 2002 when Christine Toomey looked at campaign to shut down

an American military training school whose graduates had been held responsible for

numerous massacres in Latin American dictatorships.

23 Not strictly defined as a country but the abuses would have taken place in territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority or in the so-called occupied territories.

39



What kind of human rights abuses were reported?

In attempting to analyse what kind of human rights abuses were covered in the stories I

employed a coding system. This gave a short written summary of the key concerns being

expressed in the article. Some stories were general reportage from an area giving an

overview of a situation. In that case I classified them as covering general human rights

abuses. In many cases several different types of abuses were identified. For instance

rendition sometimes included torture. There were 15 instances where none could be

identified because no submission could be analysed.

By its nature this coding was a subjective but it attempted to bring some uniform analysis to

provide an overall snapshot. I was guided by the UN Declaration on Human Rights (see

appendix) for definitions on what constituted a human rights violation. The coding was led

by the content of the story and the framing that was applied by the reporter. Therefore,

although the plight of migrant workers could be considered an issue of racism as well as

economic exploitation, it was only coded as such if the article framed it in such a way.

Similarly the use of the term migrant, asylum seeker and refugee followed that deployed by

the journalist. It was important to take the article on its own terms to see who issues were

labelled and defined. Finally, an issue such as rendition is covered in the UN document

under detention without trial but I wanted to make sure my categories reflected the

richness of the reporting. Therefore I ended up with many more categories than there are

articles in the UN Declaration of Human Rights so that I could better survey the nuances of

reporting.

40



There is an obvious danger of simplifying some complex pieces. As Bertrand and Hughes

write:

“The major problem with this kind of content analysis is a tendency to make

unwarranted inferences, to take the discussion further than the data legitimately

allows.” (Bertrand and Hughes 2005: 179)

However, journalists are trained (and media outlets work best) when they have a single

driving narrative. What they would call a hook or a lead. Indeed complexity creates

problems for the news production process (Galtung and Ruge 1981). So, while articles might

well touch on a range of issues, they often highlight a only a few key features. Therefore the

coding approach represented an accurate measure of the human rights issues the journalist

and media outlet had foregrounded.

The analysis generated 274 categories and it was clear that many were linked (eg abuses

directed at women because of their gender) so I then grouped the categories into similar

themes. These can then be broadly broken down in the following way:

The biggest coding was for general human rights abuses where a report looked at a

situation in a country in general and often covered a multitude of issues focussed

around a democratic defict.

Issues involving women such as rape, honour killings and the sex trade as gender-

specific crimes accounted for 23 mentions.

41



Issues involving children such as the sale of babies to, child slavery or children jailed

accounted for 32 mentions.

Economic exploitation accounted for 21 mentions.

Migrant, asylum and refugee stories accounted for 23 mentions.

Rendition and Guantanamo Bay accounted for 17 mentions.

State misbehaviour outside of a war accounted for 28 mentions while corporate

misbehaviour accounted for four mentions (such as a report on the Bhopal disaster

and the illegal sale of landmines).

War crimes in various guises accounted for 26 mentions.

Health issues accounted for five mentions of which four were to do with people with

HIV/AIDS and one was the forced sterilisation of women.

Environmental concerns accounted for six mentions.

Torture was specifically looked at on five occasions.

Other general points that came out of the coding were that only two stories looked at gay

rights. One of those was about a school for gay pupils in New York and the other gay rights

in Jamaica. However education specifically did not figure at all.

There were several articles which did not fit easily into these broad definitions. They looked

at issues such as abuse of the elderly, foster care, the Hmong tribe in Laos which sided with

the Americans during the Vietnam war and Israelis who refused to serve in the military.

42



Chapter Four

Findings and discussion

In his history of Amnesty International Jonathan Power wrote:

“Major wars, involving the most powerful industrialised states, those capable of

massive destruction far and wide, are much less likely than it has ever been. Unlike

in previous ages, neither economic, religious nor ideological forces point us or push

us in the direction of war.” (Power 2001: 295)

The events of September 11 the same year he published that book comprehensively blew

that optimism away. Power’s triumphalist paragraph, an example of what Upendra Baxi

called the “epistemic epidemic of endomnania” (quoted in Lund 1999: 3) demonstrate that

political, economic and social forces change and that leads to a change in in focus for human

rights reporting. Comparing the award nominees outlined in the previous chapter with the

kind of cases Amnesty began its life highlighting show that, while rights are positioned as

fundamental and universal, certain aspects have always been privileged over others.

When Peter Benenson wrote his article for The Observer which launched Amnesty

International in 1961 he highlighted the case of eight prisoners imprisoned for their beliefs.

Two were from Africa, one from the US and the other six from Europe. None came from the

Middle East or Asia.24 The make-up is in stark contrast with the current focus of human

rights reporting outlined in the previous chapter where Africa, the Middle East and Asia

24 The countries were Angola, Romania, Spain, US, South Africa, Greece, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.43



were more often the settings for stories. The large numbers of US mentions were almost

exclusively to do with their military operations abroad, not for abuses taking place at home.

It is also worth considering the background of Benenson’s original ‘forgotten’ eight. The US

prisoner of conscience he highlighted was a pastor jailed repeatedly for his activities

promoting black civil rights. Does the fact that none of the articles Amnesty nominated for

an award in the last decade involve a similar case mean that black civil rights in the US is not

a cause for concern? The pastor was one of three of religious figures involved in political

activities highlighted by Benenson. The others included a doctor, an academic and a lawyer.

They were all men. The awards analysed in the previous chapter predominantly use case

studies involving people who do not hold such socially privileged positions and women and

children were featured most frequently. Does that mean that academics and lawyers are no

longer subject to human right abuses? I would argue that it is an example of how the

discourse on human rights in these awards has been colonised by the media perception of

what makes a ‘good’ story.

Before looking in more detail at the results of the content analysis in the previous chapter I

want to consider the awards criteria outlined by Amnesty International and how they reflect

this idea of colonisation. Amnesty says that in selecting the winners the judges will consider:

“Quality of writing, filming or photography; currency or news value; accessibility or

appropriateness for the target audience; exposure of human rights abuses or

44



bringing them to a new audience; carrying forward the debate on human rights or

highlighting new or emerging issues.”25

Subjective terms such as “quality”, “currency” and “news value” are not defined. The

assumption is that they are shared values between the organisers, the judges and those

entering so obvious they do not need to be spelt out. Then there are phrases such as

“carrying forward the debate on human rights”. It is unclear what debate that might be.

There are no examples in those stories honoured which feature a debate about human

rights. There is an assumption from the author that the rights transgressed do not have to

be justified to the reader. What is required is evidence the abuse is taking place.

For those applying to the awards there is an online form to fill in which asks the nominees

what problems were overcome in covering the story and “How does the entry help to

further the understanding of the issues covered and what impact did the piece have?”26

Under this is a section for filling in the details of the submitting organisation’s press office

contacts. The implication appears to be that value is added to those stories which were

researched and written in difficult circumstances. Further, that those which have an impact

beyond the intended audience will score more highly with the judges. This vague criteria

matches the findings of Shaprio et al (2006) whose research into journalism awards showed

25 Amnesty International website, awrds, http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=10058 , accessed January 2012.

26 Amnesty International website, awards form, http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=12194, accessed January 2012

45






similarly loose definitions of what was required of a winning entry. This, then, is not specific

to these awards but suggests they have been constructed along similar lines.

I would argue that the fact that terms such as “news value” are used in the criteria without

explanation, along with the foregrounding of the publicity potential for such stories, is

evidence of the colonization of the human rights discourse by the media. There is no

criteria, for instance, which asks for stories which consider the cultural relativism of human

rights; a key issue for the last decade (Lund 1999). The logic of the awards is defined on the

media’s terms, while the logic of human rights is subjugated.

Meyer says that once the sphere of politics falls under the influence of the media system, it

changes considerably.

“It becomes dependent on the latter’s rules, but without completely losing its

separate identity. In colonizing politics the logic of the media system does not simply

restructure the way the political is portrayed or its relation to other systems; it

affects the political process at the “production level; ie where the political sphere

emerges as a unique form of life.” (Meyer 2000: 57)

We see evidence of this transformation at the production level in the make-up of the

judging panel for the awards. When Andrew Gilligan won the radio category in 2003 for

Radio 4 Today programme report on landmine sales he could thank several colleagues. The

judges for that category were Channel 4 news presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, BBC DJ

Andy Kershaw, Radio 4 journalist and presenter Nick Clarke, Radio 5Live presenter Fi Glover,

46



BBC DJ John Peel and Amnesty’s head of press, Lesley Warner (Amnesty has a

representative on each judging panel). Indeed if Gilligan hadn’t won, then Radio 4 would still

have. The two runners-up that year were from the same network.

Previous studies have already shown that journalists attach greater importance to receiving

awards judged by peers rather than those from non-professionals (Coulson 1989). An

analysis of the professions of those sitting on Amnesty’s judging panels shows they are

dominated by senior working journalists operating in the same strata of the media as the

winners and runners-up. The BBC in particular was well-represented. Former winners also

often featured on awards panels. This would have encouraged participants to take the

awards seriously as it would have resulted in peer acclaim.

Again, one can see this as an example of the colonization of the human rights discourse by

the media. The sole Amnesty representative on each panel and the single criteria that an

award further the debate on human rights accords with Meyer’s description that the

colonized sphere doesn’t completely lose its identity. When Meyer writes: “From the very

outset and in every phase of their deliberations they consider how potential themes might

play in the media or how great their potential is to be effectively presented.” (Meyer 2000:

57) he could be describing the judging process. From the initial entry that asks for a press

officer’s contact, to the domination of the selection panel by journalists through to the

staging of a ceremony that provides a reliable news event the production cycle is geared

47



towards the media’s interests. Rodgers reports that there was “strong resistance” in

Amnesty in the mid-1990s to the idea that the organisation should “follow the news

agenda”. (Rodgers 2009: 1108) However, the structuring of the awards system can be

contrasted with the construction of each of Amnesty’s prisoner of conscience dossiers which

follows a lengthy and scrupulous procedure more akin to an academic paper (Power 2001).

Looking at the impact of the award nominees stories shows how the articles often had a

ripple effect which amplified the issues. For instance, again using the Gilligan report on

landmines in 2003, it was aired on the Today programme which has a powerful agenda-

setting ability and consequently the story was reported across BBC outlets. Subsequently it

led to an investigation by the police, Customs and Excise and MPs which themselves

generated their own news stories.27 The ability of the BBC to get its stories to set the agenda

and spur government agencies into action was not a one-off. Four years later a BBC story

shortlisted in the TV news category followed an undercover reporter from Lithuania to the

UK posing as a migrant worker to expose the economic abuses of such workers. This too led

to debates in the House of Commons.28

By encouraging such programmes with an award it looks like Amnesty is engaged in the

strategy of “information politics” theorised by Ron et al (2005) and outlined in the literature

27 BBC website, Police to probe landmines ‘sales’, 10 May 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1978986.stm, accessed November 2011

28 BBC website, Migrant ‘underclass’ to be probed, 26 April 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6594577.stm accessed November 2011

48

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6594577.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1978986.stm



review. This strategy targets powerful countries on issues which might lead to action on a

much wider scale. In this case the sale of landmines which is something that affects many

countries but is primarily an issue of corporations in rich countries selling to poor countries.

Arms control is currently one of eight campaigns Amnesty is engaged in and Gilligan’s report

led to exactly the kind of discussion at a governmental level over how the law might be

changed which the strategy is designed to encourage.

The BBC coverage leads me on to my next point which is why the content analysis revealed

so few organisations were nominated. Despite the 252 awards, the BBC, Channel 4 and The

Guardian Media Group have dominated for the last decade. The effect is to create an ‘echo

chamber’ where a few journalists and even fewer organisations are honoured for their

reporting. The narrative about human rights inevitably gets shaped by these few voices.

The research also showed that those voices are generally male voices. In total 273 male

reporters were listed to 178 female reporters. It is not as if that balance is getting better

because the worst year out of the ten looked at was 2010. This imbalance does, though,

match the national picture. Research commissioned by Women in Journalism in 2011 found

that 75% of national newspaper reporters were men.29 The papers which had the best

representation for women at senior levels were The Times, Sunday Times and The Guardian

which, coincidentally, are also well-represented in the Amnesty awards list. Therefore the

29 Journalism.co.uk, Nearly 75% of national news journalists are male, March 4 2011, http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/nearly-75-of-national-news-journalists-are-men-suggests-new-research/s2/a543083/

49

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/nearly-75-of-national-news-journalists-are-men-suggests-new-research/s2/a543083/

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/nearly-75-of-national-news-journalists-are-men-suggests-new-research/s2/a543083/



picture could be even worse or the awards. While some rights can be gender specific most

are supposed to be inalienable whatever a person’s background. Yet the discourse in these

awards is dominated by male voices which reinforces the idea that what constitutes a

human right and how they are presented is decided by men. It fits with Allan’s comment:

“My reading of British newspaper and broadcast news suggests that invocations of

reality asserted by men may be shown consistently, but not exclusively, to command

the available discursive terrain over those advanced by women.” (Allan 2001: 147)

Although my methodological approach is a primarily a structural one the information on

who writes the articles suggests a fruitful area for further research. If gender is to be looked

at then it should also consider sexuality, race and class and how those might relate to the

content of the articles. A suitable tool to elicit such information would have been to use

interviews with the journalists involved. That would have allowed me to ask each about

their profile. It was one which I considered but rejected for several reasons. I could not

guarantee that everyone would respond to my request and therefore that my sampling

frame would be sufficient. That would mean time and resources wasted. It was also outside

of my research question. I was not so much interested in who the reporters were as what

had been produced for the awards process and how that material might be analysed. There

was also a question of ascribing too much power to individuals. My analysis of the winners

and runners-ups showed that the vast majority were part of a corporate entry and often

part of a team. The individual, therefore, was often secondary to the production unit which

submitted the work.

50



My methodological approach to concentrate on looking at the output from the awards

process was partly motivated by a desire to compliment the approach taken by other

studies (Coulson 1989) which had used questionnaires to ascertain the stated motives of

journalists as to why they took part. Given the paucity of evidence from the UK about how

journalists in this country view awards such a survey would be a useful future exercise. One

possible answer, at odds with the evidence from America, is given by this advice from

journalism.co.uk, an online forum for news about media industry, on information about

awards:

“We loathe awards ceremonies. All of them. Even the Oscars. We'd like to smash

each and every tacky glass statuette against a brick wall and rip all those golden

envelopes into tiny little pieces. Ahem, we've calmed down a bit now. Sorry, where

were we? Oh yes, awards.”30

It might also be useful to consider an ethnographic study of the Amnesty International

awards process using, I would suggest, an observer-as-participant approach. This could

provide a rich vein of qualitative data that would help reveal in full the mechanism of their

production.

I turn now to the findings on which countries figures most highly in the nominated stories.

As the previous chapter explain it was the UK and the U.S. which took the top spots. If we

were to apply Chomsky and Herman’s propaganda model we would instead expect to see

30 Journalism.co.uk, FAQ, http://www.journalismuk.co.uk/faq.htm, accessed November 201151

http://www.journalismuk.co.uk/faq.htm



those states which threaten the hegemonic power of the UK and U.S. As it is Iran only had

one story and China five. Meanwhile Israel, a country which is a close ally of the U.S., which

receives an enormous amount of aid from the U.S. and which has vocal supporters able to

provide ‘flak’ where news reports threaten its interests, figures highly in the award stories.

This again fits with the idea of “information politics” where Amnesty encourages scrutiny of

major powers because the ripple from any changes that might take place are felt across a

wider scale. For Israel to change the way it, for instance, deals with displaced people, has

greater benefit than a country with a much lower international profile and less influence to

wield.

What is, perhaps, more unexpected is that India and the Democratic Republic of Congo

should feature so highly. One reason might be that linked to my next section and that is the

types of human rights abuse covered.

Matching my categories to countries showed some common themes. For instance; human

rights stories from India essentially cover two topics: the exploitation of women in marriage

and the caste system (three stories on the latter). Meanwhile Eastern European stories

covered three general topics; abuse of vulnerable people in orphanages or psychiatric

institutions; the trade in children for adoption and, by far the biggest, migrant labour. The

Democratic Republic of Congo provided a full range of human rights abuses for reporters to

cover from blood diamonds to people with AIDS, women being raped to environmental

52



destruction. On the other hand the US was framed in terms of human rights issues abroad

and its actions in different countries. Only three stories looked at human rights within the

US; migrant labour from Mexico, a school for gay children and a military training complex

for Latin American dictators.

India and the Democratic of Congo therefore supplied a reliable source of stories for

reporters which is an important consideration considering the expense of needed to carry

out such assignments. Once the particular issue had been situated, such as the trade in

blood diamonds in the Congo, reporters could go back and update readers and viewers on

the situation. There was a familiarity which made reporting easier because it redcued the

complexity of the story. There was no need to establish the background every time so less

chance of confusing readers.

According to Galtung and Ruge (1981) a story needs to satisfy a series of informal rules or

codes for it to be considered significant. If you ask a journalist what makes a good reporter

they will often reply that they “have a nose for news”, suggesting some ability wired in to

their DNA that allows them spot a story. What it actually means is that they have a much

more finely honed ability to assess information presented to them in terms of their

publication’s news values. The study conducted by Galtung and Ruge (which interestingly in

terms of this dissertation was based on foreign news stories) came up with 12 factors which,

to some extent, stories needed to satisfy. The more of the following elements they had, the

53



‘better’ the story. The factors were conflict, timeliness, simplification, personalisation,

unexpectedness, continuity, composition, reference to elite nations or persons, cultural

specificity and negativity. Going through the categories of human rights stories in the

awards list we can see that many of these factors are satisfied.

One particular factor is the idea of personalisation – what Galtung and Ruge saw as an

emphasis on “human actors coping with life on the ground” and that this was preferred over

abstract forces or institutions. In contrast, the need for cultural specificity, mapping shared

cultural experiences, is unlikely to be satisfied by such stories. Therefore it becomes more

important to relate to the subject and for the journalist to establish a link between the

consumer and the subject. Women and children provided the greatest source of stories and

one way of considering why this might be also suggests reasons for the way the other

stories have been selected. It could be argued that the prevalence of stories involving

women and children in submissive situations evokes sympathy and concern which can

narrow the cultural gap.

The categories also show that human rights are often presented in terms of a power

imbalance between individuals and the state whereas specific misbehaviour by companies

was a topic which was looked at infrequently. The after effects of the Bhopal chemical

disaster in India was one of the few examples. It is not that economic exploitation is

considered. Indeed it featured in many different ways; particularly in the plight of migrant

54



workers. However, specific companies are rarely mentioned. Instead, while the migrants are

named, photographed and given a full identity the economic actors are indistinct and

blurred. The factors driving the people are ascribed to general faceless companies or broad

economic conditions which, much like the weather, seem to blow out of nowhere and are

similarly uncontrollable. States on the other hand were identified and linked carefully to

specific abuses.

What were also lacking in the categories were positive stories of groups attempting to take

back their rights. Where such positive examples are covered they generally involved

individuals, such as the Buscombe article which I opened this dissertation with. Of the three

articles which focussed on positive differences being made by individuals, one looked at two

doctors on either side of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict who acted as peacemakers. The

other two focussed on an American who was trying to provide humanitarian relief in the

Darfur region31 while another looked at children accused of being witches in Nigeria by

following a British man trying to stop the practice.32 So in half the cases it was an outsider,

positioned as bringing reform from the developed West. Generally the victims of the

particular human rights violation taking place where, as far as possible, allowed to speak for

themselves. Their experiences were not mediated through NGOs, rights groups or other

representative bodies. Nonetheless, often the victims were framed as individuals impotent

before the state, an army or some other disconnected but powerful force.

31 http://www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com/

32 http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-8/episode-155

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-8/episode-1

http://www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com/



Where groups were mentioned it often was through protest and it was the violence which

became the theme of the reporting rather than an understanding of the issues which have

driven the conflict. A rare example of positive action by a group was a Guardian report on

how communities were defending asylum seekers.

As well testing the stories in light of theoretical approaches it is also worth judging their

relationship to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration

was the first human rights document adopted by the UN and is the “textual foundation of

the human rights movement and has been referred to as the ‘spiritual parent’ of most other

human rights documents” (Matura 2001: 201). Since the Declaration was unveiled in 1948,

there have been some 23 other conventions and covenants that, according to McIntyre

(2003: 28), have deepened what counts as a human right. Therefore testing the stories

against the standard will show whether this “deepened” idea of what constitutes a human

right is reflected in those items given prizes.

Of the 30 articles in the Declaration the stories frequently those covering areas such as the

right not to be tortured, have a fair trial and exercise their democratic rights. However

articles on issues such as the right to social security (Article 22), protection against

unemployment (Article 23), to social protection in the event of poverty (Article 23), the right

to form and to join trade unions (Article 23), the right to rest and leisure, including

56



reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay (Article 24), the right

to education (Article 26) are barely covered.

The UN Declaration has been added to with two supporting covenants. These are the

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The ICESCR was adopted in

1966, commits the 160 countries which have signed up to it to work toward the granting of

economic, social and cultural rights to individuals. That includes labour right and the right to

health. The ICCPR came into force in 1976 its parties, which number 167, agree to respect

the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of religion,

freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, electoral rights and rights to due process and a

fair trial. These are much more detailed documents than the UN Declaration outlining not

just rights but also obligations for individuals and states to see that the aims are carried out.

However many of the protocols in these covenants barely figure in the human rights

reporting which Amnesty International honoured. The “deepened” idea of what constitutes

rights and how they might be expanded, not just protected, has yet to penetrate

mainstream media discourse. The one area which has achieved greater prominence and is

shown in the award entries is the idea of gender-specific rights. The abuse of women

through forced marriage or honour killings, for instance, figure quite frequently. Overall,

57



though, human rights stories continue to be framed in simplistic terms even if the discourse

within the human rights movement has moved much further along.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Conclusion

This dissertation should be the beginning of a debate about the kind of human rights

reporting people wish to see in the UK. The country’s premier human rights organisation

and its leading mainstream news outlets have, since 1992, been engaged in a mutually

supportive process to congratulate each other on their respective efforts. They have done

this with little public debate about how this process might reinforce bad practice or where it

has encouraged good practice.

There is a large body of legal opinion about what constitutes human rights which is tested

and debated in numerous political and legal arenas. However, the consumers of news are

presented with an annual list of what the media and Amnesty International have decided

privately constitutes the best in reporting. The results of this dissertation show that the

content of these news stories has, in many cases, not kept pace with that legal and political

dialogue.

This matters because if people are to be properly armed with the information they need to

ensure they can assert their rights then the news media is a vital tool in promulgating that

information. Instead these award-winning stories have been shown to be drawn from a

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narrow range of organisations, cover a narrow range of issues and confront a narrow range

of powerful interests.

That is not to say that what does make it on to the winner’s podium is only the benign and

the toothless. The research has shown a more complex set of stories than the “cleansed

residue” predicted by Herman and Chomsky. There is a tendency for stories to privilege the

experiences of the individual over the group and to privilege political rights over economic

ones. The fact that the right to join a trade union or enjoy financial support from the state

are absent from these stories can only be helpful to corporate interests keen to minimise

such powers. However, there is also a strong thread of stories which look at migrant labour

issues, for instance. At a political level the number of stories involving the U.S. and the UK

also contradicts what the propaganda model predicts we should see. Not only that, but

there is a relative paucity of stories about countries in opposition to the U.S.

I believe that is because what is being played out is tussle between the news media and

Amnesty International over the role of these awards and the agenda-setting potential for

the award-winning stories. News corporations gain prestige, reporters earn peer respect

and both can parlay that into financial reward. The awards process has been structured to

serve, first, the production needs of the news media. In this sense the human rights sphere

is being colonised by the media.

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However, the idea of “information politics” put forward by Ron, J. et al and the deliberate

media policy outlined by Rodgers shows that Amnesty International is not a passive partner

in this process. The type of issues highlighted and the countries spotlighted often match

closely the campaigns the organisation has decided are of particular importance. This

underlying agenda has served to blunt the effects of Herman and Chomsky’s five filters.

The content analysis approach would be improved with the addition of interviewing key

actors in the award process. This would have helped provide a richer picture of how it is

constructed. It has not been within the scope of this study to carry out a critical discourse

analysis of the entries but preliminary readings suggest that could also supply a huge

amount of information. Since academic analysis, particularly in the UK, into human rights

reporting is sparse this would be particularly useful. There is also a wide open area to

explore on how journalists in the UK interact with awards ceremonies. The beginnings of

map explaining that topic have been made in the U.S. but it remains a foreign country in the

UK.

The breadth of material in this study provides a strong data set. The fact that similar story

tropes have occurred regularly over a decade shows that they cannot be random

occurrences but do point to deeper structural causes. However, the data would benefit from

further investigation. The content analysis approach has been useful though it was difficult

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to come up with suitable categories. It would be useful to have another academic repeat the

process using the same data but constructing their own categories. The approach benefits

from being repeatable and could also be done for other human rights awards both here and

in other countries. The end result would be powerful comparative transnational analysis. It

would be of use to the news media but most likely to be acted upon by human rights NGOs

as they have all felt the need to develop sensitive and flexible media policies in this age of

global communication.

In the end, the gold standard for human rights remains the UN Declaration and its

supporting covenants and in the long term the best judge of excellence in reporting this field

remains how well journalists explore, interpret and investigate all its provisions.

ENDS

62



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Appendix A

List of human rights awards open to UK journalists

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Appendix B

Results of content analysis of Amnesty International

media award winners and runners-up from 2002 to 2011

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Appendix C

UN Declaration of Human Rights33

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with

reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without

distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other

opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction

shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the

country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-

governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited

in all their forms.

Article 5.

33 United Nations, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ accessed January 2012

69

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/



No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or

punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection

of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this

Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts

violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and

impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal

charge against him.

Article 11.

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(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until

proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees

necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which

did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it

was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at

the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or

correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to

the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of

each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his

country.

Article 14.

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-

political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

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Article 15.

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his

nationality.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion,

have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to

marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending

spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to

protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes

freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with

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others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice,

worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to

hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas

through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through

freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be

expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage

and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to

realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with

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the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights

indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable

conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for

himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if

necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his

interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours

and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of

himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary

social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability,

widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

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(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children,

whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary

and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and

professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be

equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the

strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote

understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and

shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their

children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to

enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting

from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

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Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set

forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of

his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such

limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and

respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of

morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and

principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person

any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of

the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

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