Media Framing And The Destruction Of Cultural Heritage (news Narratives About Artsakh And Gaza)

Analyzing media coverage in cases where cultural heritage sites have been destroyed during conflict, occupation and war, this book highlights the important role media play in the preservation of cultural heritage when states or other combatants engage in human rights violations.

Analyzing media coverage in cases where cultural heritage sites have been destroyed during conflict, occupation, and war, this book highlights the important role media play in the preservation of cultural heritage when states or other combatants engage in human rights violations.

Author Mischa Geracoulis discusses how the role of journalism and the media during times of conflict is to report information from the front lines and war zones with integrity, and report accurately when states or other combatants engage in human rights violations. This book examines the media coverage, language, and discourse surrounding two key situations—the destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in Artsakh/Nagorno‑Karabakh and that of Palestinian cultural heritage in Gaza—and explores the ways media coverage has succeeded or failed in accurately illustrating the destruction of cultural heritage as a human rights violation. Geracoulis emphasizes the importance of factual, ethical reporting and sufficient coverage, underlining professional journalistic standards and best practices for the future to ensure similar destruction is not only understood but responded to within a human rights framework.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of media, journalism, and cultural studies, as well as media professionals interested in the role and influence of media framing and narratives on war, conflict, human rights, and humanitarian response.

Epigraph by Ammiel Alcalay
Acknowledgments
Forward by Benjamin Gatling
Preface
Introduction
1 Media Practices and Constraints Covering Cultural Heritage Destruction
2 Silences That Bury the History of Armenia, Its People, and Its Cultural Heritage
3 Destruction of Gaza and Palestinian Cultural Heritage
4 Cultural Heritage Is a Human Right
Conclusion
Index

This essential book is one that teaches us how to challenge such absolute loss through engagement, attention and - most importantly - recall.

Salar Abdoh, Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing, The City College of New York, USA.

Drawing from two recent cases of ethnic cleansing—namely the annihilation of Gaza and the forced displacement of the Armenian-populated territory of Artsakh—the author examines how legacy media have normalized atrocities against these “unworthy victims” and the destruction of their respective cultural heritages. Geracoulis does us all a favor by dismantling the make-believe objectivity of the corporate press when it comes to their coverage of these two conflicts, and by extension, of many others.

Markar Melkonian, Philosophy lecturer, California State University (retired), author, and co-founder of the Monte Melkonian Fund, Inc.

In this book, Mischa Geracoulis examines how media covers the destruction of Armenian and Palestinian cultural heritage and the evident bias that appears in its narrative. The topic is extremely timely especially considering the on-going violence in Gaza and Artsakh and the attacks on academic freedom and freedom of speech. Geracoulis does an excellent job challenging media representation of two communities that have suffered cruelty, social exclusion, displacement, and homeland dispossession. She advocates for the protection of cultural heritage as a human right, and she is absolutely right. Cultural heritage serves as the beating heart and memory center of a community. Without it, a community loses its story, whic