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Forging Peace: Intervention, Human Rights and the Management of Media Space

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Forging Peace focuses primarily on the problems of media management in conflict and post-conflict situations. More specifically it examines situations where Western democracies, the United Nations, the OSCE and even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have attempted to transform the media sector in third party states. By examining the legal and political context of the new interest in media before, during, and after conflict, the contributors make current trends more visible and illuminate the relationship between speech and force in international affairs.
Together the contributors consider how international law is changing to encompass, reflect, and channel intervention practices. They each from various academic, legal and diplomatic perspectives look at `information intervention' through the lens of human rights principles, especially those relating to restrictions on hate speech and the right to receive and impart information. They examine the distinctions between State-authorized and rogue uses of media to incite conflict; between authorized and unauthorized incidents of information intervention; and between preventive intervention as opposed to that directed towards resolving conflict. And they test some of the justifications that are articulated for different forms of information intervention, actions that range from mere monitoring of broadcasts to the total reformulation of media laws, and ultimately the seizure or bombing of transmitters, and full-blown cyberwarfare.

Monroe Price and Mark Thompson have assembled a fantastic array of scholars, thinkers, and lawyers who each bring to bear a unique perspective on the intractable relationship between media and conflict. From Alison DesForges's discussion about the impact of hate speech in Rwanda to former U.S. State Department official Jamie Metzl's discussion about United States actions in Somalia, Kosovo, and Serbia the book answers many interesting questions but raises many more. Of particular interest were Eric Blinderman's chapter which discussed the legal rules surrounding, what he terms "information intervention," and Stephanie Farrior's discussion about the legal principles related to hate speech.