‘The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.’
When the late French critic Michel de Certeau made this observation over 30 years ago he was referring to his own circumscribed society: the developed West. Today the unrelenting expression of the real has permeated nearly every part of our world, into societies that had for centuries remained shrouded in a great silence, veiled from the outside world and cut off from the free-flow of information. There is no question that the pervasiveness of media has had a profound, transformative impact on the world we live in. The great silence of things that once prevailed has been replaced by a pandemonium of data, imagery and sound bites.
Yet, when reality talks is it really being understood? Evidence suggests otherwise.
We are living in a global society as conflicted, confused and insecure as it is interconnected. And, I’m sorry to say that much of this conflict, confusion and insecurity has been exacerbated by the media. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.’ This noble 18th century assumption seems to be in retreat in the 21st and I think we need to look very closely at the role media plays in empowering people and contributing to the commonweal.
In Thomas Friedman’s analysis of globalization, he identifies three interacting balances of power: the Super-Power; the Super-Market and the Super-Empowered Individual and Friedman uses Osama Binladin as a prime example of a Super-Empowered Individual. Binladin has been empowered not so much by his wealth as by his ability to use media to incite hatred and violence in a way that has effectively threatened the public safety and security of entire nations. He has turned Jefferson’s ideal on its head. Mainstream media, on the other hand, seems, for all its power and reach, utterly incapable of providing an effective and credible counterpoint to the incendiary messaging of extremists. How can this be?
The answer may lie in Albert Einstein’s reminder that ‘information is not knowledge’. Mainstream news media and research organizations are in the information business, not the knowledge business. Indeed, it would be seen as dangerous and irresponsible hubris for the media to arrogate to itself the role of teacher. Yet this is exactly how extremism has proliferated through the media and in to the susceptible minds of untold thousands of young people around the world. Extreme ideologies are not presented as information but as knowledge, as unvarnished truth. The only countermeasures taken are government pronouncements and blanket condemnations or propaganda programs carried out by surrogates to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of people that have been vanquished or occupied, which have no credibility or long-term impact.
The news media, on the other hand, are professionally constrained to observe and report with objectivity. A reporter may comment but can only present his commentary as an opinion, never as the truth. The irony is that when you ask most journalists why they do what they do very few will tell you their goal is to gather and report information. They will tell you that they are trying to find and report the truth.
But ‘truth’ is a loaded word. The quest for truth implies a quest for knowledge. And knowledge is meant to be liberating. ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32). But real knowledge must be presented as pure and unequivocal not as a deluge of conflicting and contradictory opinion, a welter of news angles.
So it might seem that those of us best positioned to form bridges of understanding between cultures in our global society are hamstrung by our professional ethics and the practical exigencies of our business. There is plenty of reporting out there. Reality is talking to us 24 hours a day. But this blizzard of information, news reports, data, surveys and statistics is so heavy that ordinary people may be blinded to what all the reality emerging from the silence actually means.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that the media suddenly assume some sort of demagogic tutorial role as a counterbalance to extremist communiqués. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a fundamental change in the approach to the way public information is processed and world events are reported.
When the late French critic Michel de Certeau made this observation over 30 years ago he was referring to his own circumscribed society: the developed West. Today the unrelenting expression of the real has permeated nearly every part of our world, into societies that had for centuries remained shrouded in a great silence, veiled from the outside world and cut off from the free-flow of information. There is no question that the pervasiveness of media has had a profound, transformative impact on the world we live in. The great silence of things that once prevailed has been replaced by a pandemonium of data, imagery and sound bites.
Yet, when reality talks is it really being understood? Evidence suggests otherwise.
We are living in a global society as conflicted, confused and insecure as it is interconnected. And, I’m sorry to say that much of this conflict, confusion and insecurity has been exacerbated by the media. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.’ This noble 18th century assumption seems to be in retreat in the 21st and I think we need to look very closely at the role media plays in empowering people and contributing to the commonweal.
In Thomas Friedman’s analysis of globalization, he identifies three interacting balances of power: the Super-Power; the Super-Market and the Super-Empowered Individual and Friedman uses Osama Binladin as a prime example of a Super-Empowered Individual. Binladin has been empowered not so much by his wealth as by his ability to use media to incite hatred and violence in a way that has effectively threatened the public safety and security of entire nations. He has turned Jefferson’s ideal on its head. Mainstream media, on the other hand, seems, for all its power and reach, utterly incapable of providing an effective and credible counterpoint to the incendiary messaging of extremists. How can this be?
The answer may lie in Albert Einstein’s reminder that ‘information is not knowledge’. Mainstream news media and research organizations are in the information business, not the knowledge business. Indeed, it would be seen as dangerous and irresponsible hubris for the media to arrogate to itself the role of teacher. Yet this is exactly how extremism has proliferated through the media and in to the susceptible minds of untold thousands of young people around the world. Extreme ideologies are not presented as information but as knowledge, as unvarnished truth. The only countermeasures taken are government pronouncements and blanket condemnations or propaganda programs carried out by surrogates to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of people that have been vanquished or occupied, which have no credibility or long-term impact.
The news media, on the other hand, are professionally constrained to observe and report with objectivity. A reporter may comment but can only present his commentary as an opinion, never as the truth. The irony is that when you ask most journalists why they do what they do very few will tell you their goal is to gather and report information. They will tell you that they are trying to find and report the truth.
But ‘truth’ is a loaded word. The quest for truth implies a quest for knowledge. And knowledge is meant to be liberating. ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32). But real knowledge must be presented as pure and unequivocal not as a deluge of conflicting and contradictory opinion, a welter of news angles.
So it might seem that those of us best positioned to form bridges of understanding between cultures in our global society are hamstrung by our professional ethics and the practical exigencies of our business. There is plenty of reporting out there. Reality is talking to us 24 hours a day. But this blizzard of information, news reports, data, surveys and statistics is so heavy that ordinary people may be blinded to what all the reality emerging from the silence actually means.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that the media suddenly assume some sort of demagogic tutorial role as a counterbalance to extremist communiqués. What I am suggesting is that there needs to be a fundamental change in the approach to the way public information is processed and world events are reported.
At the moment there is what journalist and educator S.A. Schleifer calls ‘a dangerous shortcoming within mainstream media’ which he characterizes as ‘the limits of empathy’. According to Schleifer there are two ways one can cover news – the first is detailed, general news coverage of many aspects of society which forms a multi-dimensional, holistic picture of a nation or region that depicts the society in human terms that elicits empathy. This is the kind of media exposure the developed world – North America, Europe, Japan and now China – routinely gets. The second way is what Schleifer calls Catastrophe Coverage – natural disasters, riots, assassinations, revolutions, wars, plagues, famines – which is what the rest of the world gets. This kind of unbalanced, editorially selective approach to newsgathering and reporting militates against the extension of empathy. In the rush to cover catastrophes there is very little time spent in looking at the religious, social, cultural, ethical and economic nuances and implications of a place or situation that can give the public real understanding of what is happening. Whole cultures are reduced to alien, exotic, forbidding and one-dimensional places, composed of villains and victims. There is no way for outsiders to grasp the meaning of what is actually going on in these places. There is no way of seeing an ongoing process at work. We only see flashpoints. There is no basis for empathy.
In terms of the Middle East we are acutely aware of the need to expand the limits of empathy to national audiences, who have been raised on state-controlled media designed to limit the inflow of information and manipulate public opinion. Economic policy has traditionally been formed behind closed doors by the ruling elites and announced as fait accompli. Corporations have traditionally been wholly owned private enterprises, operating in secrecy. Financial transparency is new to our region. Business news reporting was limited to mainstream corporate and government announcements. There was little attempt to bring ordinary people into the economic loop and this has contributed to a sense of estrangement from and distrust of national leadership, multinational organizations and foreign powers. Xenophobia has been one of the lethal side-effects of this overall alienation. We wanted to help change that.
One of our aims has been to provide an underpinning of understanding that can help empower and prepare the public for a greater role in the life of their home countries as government reform leads to a gradual democratization of their societies. We wanted to try to help organizations bridge the gap between public policy and public understanding. Broadcast television is becoming the most powerful medium for communications and education in the Middle East. We see our role as that of helping to empower people through information, analysis and insight. Every legislative, political, military and social development in our region impacts on the economic welfare of the people. It is critical that the public can understand how all these events relate to their daily lives.
Most people evaluate their lives in economic and security terms. The Middle East is in a dramatic period of transition and much of the change we see, good and bad, can be traced back to economics in some way.
Most observers agree that the roots of extremism in the Arab and Islamic world have as much to do with socio-economic factors as with politics and religion. Young people in Arab societies have found themselves marginalized, frustrated and disenfranchised. They have been polarized: drawn to the siren’s call of Western permissiveness and materialism, on the one hand, or the preacher’s call of paradise and martyrdom, on the other. Unemployment and underemployment are staggering problems in many Arab societies where up to 70% of the local populations in some countries are under 25 years of age. Education reform is urgently needed. Nationalization of the workforce is the number one priority for Gulf societies.
Perception has an overwhelming impact on how the world works. As we merge in to a global society, more information and greater transparency will be demanded of this region. Economic achievement is by its very nature inspirational. More and more, as the region becomes increasingly open and market-oriented, business and economics will play an ever larger role in forming the way we learn and the way we develop as a people. Mass media, New Media and satellite television in particular, are central to this process of education and awareness. The role of the media can and should be more than chasing the hottest story of the moment, covering the latest catastrophe. We should, instead, be mining insights that will bring nations, economies and peoples together.
Albert Einstein said, ‘Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.’ The media have an enormous responsibility, not only to gather and present information in a way that clarifies and illuminates the real, but to build bridges of empathy and understanding that close the gap between the developed and developing worlds, between dissimilar societies, between conflicting ideologies, between the centres of power and ordinary people. Only then will the media truly transform the great silence of things for the better.
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