Making Peace Visible

In our time when rumors and lies spread across the internet with lightning speed, journalists play a vital role in debunking misinformation and disinformation.Media outlets run by and for non-white audiences, while working under great financial pressure, occupy a special role in the information ecosystem. With immigrants and people of color so often targeted, ethnic and indigenous media outlets are often paying closer attention to these rumors and lies about their own communities. So, they’re well positioned to address disinformation before it reaches the general population. And they offer lessons for mainstream journalists and news consumers. A new report, Disarming Disinformation: United States takes an in-depth look at how disinformation shows up in ethnic and indigenous communities and in their news media, and also highlights ways these outlets are fighting disinformation. It was published in October 2025 by the International Center for Journalists in collaboration with journalism schools at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University.Our guests this episode are:Garry Pierre-Pierre, editor-in-chief of The Haitian Times, an English-language news outlet that covers Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. The Haitian Times was one of five case studies highlighted in the disinformation report. Sarah Oates, Associate Dean for Research/Professor and Senior Scholar at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Oates is a co-author of Disarming Disinformation: United States, and of the book Seeing Red: Russian Propaganda and American News. Special thanks to Nabeelah Shabbir. Music in this episode by Doctor Turtle.  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Our guest Megan K. Stack began a recent op-ed in the New York Times describing a contentious debate about anti-immigration riots in the Northern Ireland Assembly, “each speaker straining to upstage the last in outrage and fervor.” But unlike many opinion writers, she doesn’t go on to expound on the importance of civility in public discourse. Instead, she marvels that this debate is happening at all – amidst the children of Protestant paramilitaries and I.R.A. bombers, people who grew up in communities that battled each other bitterly for about 30 years – but now share power under a peace agreement that’s endured for almost as long. Megan K. Stack is a  journalist and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, who’s reported from several conflict zones including Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. In this episode, she analyzes key moments and actors in the negotiations that ended the “Troubles,” the 3 decades of violence between Irish Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. And she makes the case for applying lessons from that peace process to Israel’s negotiations with Gaza – including on the sensitive issue of disarmament.Read Megan Stack’s essay Northern Ireland, Gaza and the Road to Peace.Use this link to share the episode: www.makingpeacevisible.org/megan-stackMusic in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and Joel Cummins.  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Since his election in 2010, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has transformed Hungary from a democracy into a quasi-authoritarian country. In Hungary today, elections, economic policies, and the media are warped to benefit Orbán and his conservative Fidesz Party. Orbán’s government, with its consolidation of executive power, Christian nationalist and anti-LGBTQ policies served as inspiration for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for Donald Trump’s second term. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts has called modern Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”A new documentary film, Democracy Noir, shows how Orbán changed Hungarian politics. In the words of Budapest-based journalist Babett Oroszi, Orbán has “hacked democracy” – quietly using the levers of democracy, rather than a violent revolution, to accomplish his aims.  The film tells the story of modern Hungary through the eyes of three female members of Hungary’s resistance – reporter Oroszi, nurse and activist Niko Antal, and Tímea Szabó, an opposition leader in Hungary’s parliament. Our guest, director Connie Field, has followed Hungarian politics since the country’s first years as a democracy in the early 1990s. An American progressive and award-winning documentarian, she has a shrewd eye on how Orban’s actions are being mirrored in the United States. The episode also includes discussion of a new leader who observers think has a real chance of upending Orbán’s hold on power in the 2026 election.LEARN MORE:Stream Democracy Noir now! Watch a trailer for the film, find out where it’s being screened, or request a screeningDownload the discussion guide.Connie Field bio ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

When we first read Suchitra Vijayan’s reporting on the media in India we were shocked to learn that much of the press in the world’s largest democracy, had fallen in line with Narendra Modi’s authoritarian agenda. Now it feels like a portent of what could happen in the United States. In India today, 75% or more of news organizations are now owned by 4 or 5 large corporations, all led by allies of Modi. In contrast, journalists who have dared criticize the government have been harassed, detained, imprisoned, and even murdered. Suchitra Vijayan is a journalist and attorney. She is the author of two books: How Long Can the Moon be Caged? Voices of Indian Poltiical Prisoners, co-authored with Francesca Recchia, and Midnight's Borders. Vijayan is also the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a journalism and research organization focused on authoritarianism and state oppression. She was born and raised in Madras, also known as Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and lives in New York City. Read Vijayan’s reporting in The Nation about the government’s targeting of Kashmir’s free press.Follow Suchitra Vijayan on Substack.This episode was originally published in November 2023.  Music in this episode by Siddhartha Corsus and Blue Dot Sessions ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

This episode comes to us from independent journalist Scott Gurian. In the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen, there's a small building with a garden and wooden seats. At first glance, it looks like some sort of neighborhood cafe, but it's actually the Menneskebiblioteket or Human Library, where the "readers" and "books" are people having deeply personal and intimate conversations about topics that might normally be considered off-limits or taboo in polite society. The library is staffed by volunteers whose life stories and experiences mean they face some sort of stigma, whether it be due to their ethnicity, religion, orientation, occupation, disability, or social status.Gurian visited the Human Library and produced this episode for his award-winning documentary-style travel and culture podcast Far from Home. Since its beginning in Denmark, the Human Library concept has now spread to more than 80 countries on 6 continents. You can visit the library's Facebook page to find out about upcoming library events near you.Find all four seasons of Far from Home where ever you listen to podcasts.  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Peace negotiations and reconciliation processes can change the world – but they’re not much to look at. The shortage of compelling images is one of many challenges to making peace more tangible in our very visual world.  But if  we expand the concept of peace to include what peace actually means to people who have lived through conflict, then what peace looks like can be expansive. Like a portrait of a family reunited after a war. Or something unexpected, like a photo of a man walking on stilts through a refugee camp, entertaining a host of children.  Our guests this episode are Tiffany Fairey, a Senior Research Fellow based at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and Ingrid Guyon, a photographer and participatory visual media practitioner. They’ve both spent over 15 years working around the world helping communities affected by conflict to tell their own stories through photography.  Fairey and Guyon are co-authors of Peace Photography: A Guide, which presents a methodology and approach that celebrates peace efforts and encourages creativity, drawing on projects in 21 countries. Fairey’s upcoming book Imaging Peace: How People Use Photography to Resist Violence, Transform Conflict, and Build Connection will be out this autumn from Edinburgh University Press.  To view the images discussed in this episode, go to makingpeacevisible.org/podcast.   LEARN MOREDownload a free copy of the guide in English, Spanish or French; browse peace photography projects, explore Fairey’s research, and more at imagingpeace.org.  Follow the Imaging Peace project on Instagram @imaging_peace.Read Tiffany Fairey’s essay on the Everyday Peace Indicators project in Colombia in The Conversation  Read Ingrid Guyon’s blog post for Beyond Skin on visiting Belfast as a peace photographer ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

Think about the infrastructure that makes your community tick. Roads, schools, buses and trains, parks and playgrounds, the sewage treatment plant are probably the kind of things that first come to mind. But what about local news?Our guest this episode, journalism scholar Jennifer  Henrichsen, says local newspapers, news webistes, and TV and radio stations are a necessary part of public infrastructure too.Local news journalists play crucial roles in times of crises, like wildfires and floods. They also play a less visible watchdog role in keeping local governments accountable. And even less visible -- there's evidence that the erosion and closure of local news outlets is contributing to increasing polarization.Jennifer Henrichsen is an Assistant Professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. She's also the research director of the Washington Local News Ecosystem Project -- a publicly-funded initiative to measure the health of local news around the state. Washington State University is using the data collected by Henrichsen's team to help match up young reporters with newsrooms that need them. ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

This podcast is a project of Making Peace Visible, is a small 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Somerville, Massachusetts. What we do is unique -- consistently analyzing how the media covers conflict, and amplifying stories of resolution and reconciliation that are often ignored by the mainstream media.  In the month of July, we're working to raise $40,000 to continue and grow this work. With your help, we can fund journalists producing rigorous, underreported stories of conflict transformation through the Making Peace Visible story awards, and convene strategic gatherings of peacebuilders and journalists to shift how stories get told. Your donation also keeps this podcast going and helps us reach more listeners. Make a one-time or recuring gift at makingpeacevisible.org/donate. --When Pope Leo XIV addressed over a thousand journalists at the Vatican just days after his ordination, his message was both striking and urgent: “Let us disarm words, and we will help disarm the world.” In a time of escalating global conflict and diminishing trust in institutions, the new pope placed moral responsibility on the media: to move away from aggression and polarization and toward communication that fosters understanding and peace.In this episode, we hear from Miguel Díaz, 9th U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See (under President Barack Obama), and Elizabeth Hume, Executive Director of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Drawing from their respective fields—diplomacy and international peacebuilding—they reflect on the broader implications of Pope Leo’s message, particularly the role that religious institutions like the Vatican can play in addressing global division, violence, and institutional fragility.Díaz offers context on the Vatican’s long-standing diplomatic role. He describes how Pope Leo’s formation in both the U.S. and Latin America, along with his theological grounding in justice and bridge-building, may inform his priorities as pontiff. Hume brings a sobering view from the peacebuilding field, where violent conflict is on the rise and support for prevention is declining. Together, they examine how the Catholic Church, under Pope Leo, might offer renewed institutional leadership in a world in search of stability.Further Reading: Pope Leo’s address to journalists, May 12, 2025 (English translation):https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2025/may/documents/20250512-media.htmlNYT coverage of Pope Leo’s address to the media:https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/world/europe/pope-leo-vatican-journalists.html‘The pope is Peruvian!’ How 2 decades in South America shaped the vision of Pope Leo XIV:https://theconversation.com/the-pope-is-peruvian-how-2-decades-in-south-america-shaped-the-vision-of-pope-leo-xiv-256415Maria Ressa’s speech at the Vatican on January 25, 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0kHvIeYN5M&t=12s ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

This podcast is a project of Making Peace Visible, is a small 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in Somerville, Massachusetts. What we do is unique -- consistently analyzing how the media covers conflict, and amplifying stories of resolution and reconciliation that are often ignored by the mainstream media.  In the month of July, we're working to raise $40,000 to continue and grow this work. With your help, we can fund journalists producing rigorous, underreported stories of conflict transformation through the Making Peace Visible story awards, and convene strategic gatherings of peacebuilders and journalists to shift how stories get told. Your donation also keeps this podcast going and helps us reach more listeners. Make a one-time or recuring gift at makingpeacevisible.org/donate. Our guest this episode is Terrell Jermaine Starr, an independent journalist based in Ukraine. His work focuses on interconnection: how Ukrainian politics and society relates to the rest of the world, especially the United States, Europe, and Africa. In the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion, Starr gained international attention for his up-close-and-personal reporting style, and for helping vulnerable Ukrainians flee the country. And, for being a rare Black American reporter on the ground.  On Starr's podcast, Black Diplomats, and his Substack blog, Terrell provides reporting and analysis on politics in the Ukraine, the United States, and beyond. He pays special attention to equity and discrimination, drawing parallels between Putinism and the MAGA movement in the United States.  Terrel is also a contributor to Foreign Policy magazine, the Washington Post, and MSNBC.MPV digital media producer Andrea Muraskin sat down with Terrell Jermaine Starr on July 3, 2025, just days after his home city of Kyiv was bombarded by Russian missiles and drones.Follow him on X @terrelljstarr ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show! 

In hopes of learning from the past and In light of US missile strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and subsequent retaliation in an escalating regional conflict, we're revisiting one of our best episodes on how Western media covers war.Guest Bette Dam is a Dutch journalist who covered the war in Afghanistan for 15 years. She began her coverage in 2006, embedded with the Dutch military. She’s the author of two books: Looking for the Enemy, Mullah Omar and the Unknown Taliban, and A Man in a Motorcycle, How Hamid Karzai Came to Power. In the course of her reporting Dam realized that most Western journalists were providing a distorted view of the war. It left out the perspective of the Afghan people, and made the country appear more dangerous than it really was. And Dam says the press missed opportunities to hold the U.S. and NATO to account for major blunders – including largely overlooking the fact that the Taliban surrendered in December 2001. This interview was recorded in October 2023.In 2024, Dam completed a PhD at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels on the role of Western media in conflict, where she now serves on the faculty. In February 2025 she launched UNHEARD in partnership with the Tow Center at the Columbia School of Journalism, a project that aims to help news organizations reveal potentially overlooked narratives by using AI to audit who is quoted in their articles. **Copy this link to share this episode anywhere**MORE FROM BETTE DAMTEDx talk: The shortcomings of war reportingFollow Bette on X (formerly Twitter)Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions, Zero V, and Doyeq.  ABOUT THE SHOW The Making Peace Visible podcast is hosted by Jamil Simon and produced by Andrea Muraskin. Our associate producer is Faith McClure. Learn more at makingpeacevisible.orgSupport our work Connect on social:Instagram @makingpeacevisibleLinkedIn @makingpeacevisibleBluesky @makingpeacevisible.bsky.social We want to learn more about our listeners. Take this 3-minute survey to help us improve the show!