VISUAL ETHICAL ANALYSIS: COVERAGE OF THE YAZIDI WOMEN ENSLAVEMENT CASES IN IRAQ

This study provides a review and mapping of the academic literature of journalists' coverage of the ISIS militant group attack on the Yazidi community in 2014 and the Yazidi women survivors. It explicitly discusses the ethicality of a video broadcasted by Al-Iraqiya news of a Yazidi woman confronting her kidnapper and sexual abuser. The paper analyzes the video through both a visual ethical analysis, where the video is analyzed frame by frame, and an ethical analysis with respect to previous ethical approaches. The study concludes that the broadcast of the confrontation was unethical as it discounted both the code of ethics and the ethical duties and values of a journalist. Overall, the paper believes that the Yazidi women's media coverage was unethical, subjective, and disrespectful, and undermining towards the Yazidi survivors.