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Introduction:
Jannie Botes, of the University of Baltimore, says that the Nightline show in South Africa had a major positive impact on the conflict. The same was not true with a Nightline show on Israel, however.
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This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
The Impact of Media on Conflict
Jannie Botes
Assistant Professor, Program on Negotiations and Conflict Management, University of Baltimore
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What's interesting though is that the programs in South Africa had a real impact
on the conflict itself. Where I really couldn't show the same in terms of
Israel, I could show that in terms of South Africa and the reason that
I could show that in terms of South Africa is that I studied three levels of impact.
One
was the actual shows themselves, the transcripts, what was said on those shows
and how do people react to that. Then I did a series of interviews of people with the people
who were on the shows and then I looked at all the media coverage on the shows
themselves. So media on the media and so having triangulated my research in that
way, one of the things that I was very interested was that you could show from
all three of those how Nightline, because the one thing that was so important in
both of these cases is that in the absence of real third parties, media organizations
and journalists become third parties and there was no official ongoing process
of negotiation or mediation or facilitation between the parties with a third
party at the time. So when people saw this, they said, "My god! If the
media can do this, why can't we do this? If somebody can sit here and look like
he's mediating this case on television," they didn't use exactly those words.
But if the parties can talk to each other on television why can't they do that
in real life? Why can't that be arranged? So it became in a sense a model of what should be in South Africa.
From that point of view, I think it shows a huge impact, and you could see that
in what people said to me in their interviews. You could see that in one or two
references that was made on the show itself. And you could see that a lot in
what the print journalist wrote about this which became really a television
event.
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