The Weaponization of Reporting
Year: 2025

Using North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO's) “humanitarian intervention” in the Balkans as a case study, this paper explores how fear appeals were used to dehumanize and to justify bombing a civilian populace while claiming the moral high ground. Situated at the nexus of media, power, and military conflict, Western news outlets were complicit actors that capacitated and sustained conflict through propagandized reports and demonization.