Despite the research interests generated among the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by many, my study has uniquely taken the role of the media to facilitate the implementation of R2P. This was done by examining the nature and gravity of practice of Human Rights Journalism (HRJ) in the international press during the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka amidst the overrunning of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by government forces in May 2009. This study inter-disciplinarily explored the fields of media, human rights and conflict transformation to understand the nexus between R2P and HRJ. Based on the findings on quantitative and qualitative reporting analysis, it was revealed that the international press failed to play its watchdog role to expose the human rights violations and mass atrocity crimes during the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. Besides it also found how the international press failed to draw the international community to consider R2P options on the distant suffering. In Spite of the threats, intimidation and difficulties (whether it was expressed or not) they faced while reporting, majority of the Indian Journalists openly acknowledged the parallel policy with regard to the final war between the governments of India and Sri Lanka. It was that the terrorist label on the LTTE influenced their reporting given their own conceptions and relied on the elite sources for information. While Shaw proposed HRJ as a solution to report physical, structural and cultural violence within the context of humanitarian intervention, from the analysis of the articles on the newspapers and the interviews it was very much evident that the international press did not let the journalists practice HRJ to a satisfactory level and establish a prima facie case to construct the reality of the humanitarian crisis. As supported and corroborated by the two independent yet mutually supportive methodologies, the analysis of this study found that the framing of the news stories is either decided by the editorial policy in accordance with internal guidelines, or by the news sources. Thereby the variety of ideological, political, geographical and cultural contexts of framing establishes a discourse which leaves us with a controlling media power. On the whole this study contributes uniquely towards the development of an epistemological grounding for the practice and research of HRJ within the just-peace framework and development of Frame Analysis Matrix, and Multimodal Discourse Analysis Matrix. In addition, also proves the fact that failing to contribute to the moral responsibility in a truthful and justifiable manner of the victim, rather than via influence will not contribute towards the real human rights practice.

The development of journalism studies has generated increasing interest in researching for a more advanced journalistic role in local and global contexts, where the theory of Human Rights Journalism (HRJ) rises in response in a timely fashion. This PhD study contributes to the development of the theory of HRJ in the following three ways. First, it expands the theory of human rights journalism beyond universal human rights with a focus on individual rights (Western countries) to group rights with a focus on the community (China); According to the findings from the content analysis, interviews and survey, the 5 core elements of the HRJ model (diagnostic reporting, interventionist, proactive, peace journalism, and empathy/critical frame), informed by the universal human rights ethics, need to be adapted to the Chinese political, economic, social and cultural contexts informed by group rights to ensure its smooth practice in China. Unlike the human rights journalists in the Western context, this extended HRJ model argues that the Chinese and foreign human rights journalists must handle the power of negotiations carefully with the state, market and society in China. Second, the Chinese media landscape is too restrictive to allow for the smooth practice of HRJ. HRJ was developed for the global context. However, according to findings mostly drawn from the interviews with Chinese and foreign journalists, there are obstacles such as press censorship, the focus on the ideology of social order over liberalism, and the lack of public interest in the liberal interpretation of human rights that stand in the way of HRJ practise in China. This Chinese context was not captured in earlier studies on HRJ by Shaw (2012) and on Krumbein (2014)’s study on human rights in China, and is therefore seen as a major contribution of this thesis to the knowledge of human rights reporting in the world. Finally, according the survey and interview findings, the Chinese public and elite have a negative perception of the topic of human rights because they only see it in the Western lens of individual rights, and not their own preferred lens of group rights. Due to such negative perception, the unwillingness to talk and discuss ‘human rights’ is strong. This causes obstacle not only for both the Chinese and the foreign journalists to access the views on human rights from the Chinese public, but also deepen the cultural miscommunication on human rights between the Chinese public and elites on one hand, and the Western journalists on the other. This findings further extends Shaw’s (2012b) study on the nexus between cultural miscommunication and human wrongs journalism from a Muslim and Islamic context into the Chinese cultural context. Different from the stereotypical issue that is closely related to culture and civilisation in Shaw’s study, this PhD shows that the clash of cultures could also be encountered when the perception of human rights is negative. Eventually, this causes constraint on the practice of HRJ in the context of China. Overall, this study is a unique contribution, both theoretically and empirically, to the understanding of HRJ globally, and in the context of China, in particular with the consideration of social-political constraints, as well as a mounting challenge on the implementation of the practice.