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| Media, Terror’s Instrument? | | | Santosh Desai
WHAT A pummeling our eyes have received in the last few days. A nation sat glued to television, watching a horrific event unfold over what seemed to be an interminable period of time. We watched in horror, disgust, anger, disbelief and shame as we sat helplessly, consuming images we could not quite comprehend. The television screen was a cross we were getting nailed to, and each successive nail numbed us further to the images that followed.
The coverage was, by the dubious standards set by Indian television, restrained on the whole. Even television channels could not outdo what was happening in reality. Hyperbole lost last week as it was made irrelevant by what actually happened in front of our eyes.
The access given to the media was extraordinary. In some senses the terrorists were provided with a running commentary of what the commandos were doing. Even if they did not have access to television, surely they were on the phone to people who did. The images of frightened people locked up in their rooms potentially gave the terrorists concrete targets to go after. The position and number of commandos were given away routinely. It is as if there was an overriding responsibility that was felt towards feeding the insatiable appetite that the media has for information and images at a time like this.
The implicit assumption that information should be available universally and in real time is an interesting one to examine. Why must the media have access to a battle like this one? Why is it important that we get to see events at such close quarters? Live television is not about knowing what happened, but it is an atomised examination of the anatomy of events. By taking us so close to the action and by giving us a minute-by-minute account of events, television usually trades perspectives for images. The Whats get privileged treatment over the Whys.
The right to be informed is not the same thing as the right to be a spectator. The nature of 24x7 television has made us transit from wanting to know, to wanting to see, from being informed about what happened, to seeing for oneself what is happening. Information has been recast in the present continuous tense.The trouble is we now construe our fundamental right to know as one fundamental right to see.
Also, proximity gives us the illusion of knowledge. Because we get to see so much, we forget or ignore what we did not get to see. In our belief that we were there, and saw it all, it is possible that we stop asking fundamental questions about what we see. In its place, one can end up focusing on questions arising from what we did see, which may not be the most germane. Ram Gopal Varma’s presence at the Taj as part of Vilasrao Deshmukh’s Grand Bloodbath Show becomes a key issue. Now that we get to see the rank insensitivity of a politician with our eyes, we cannot but be outraged. However, in the larger scheme of things, this callousness is not new information, we have always believed so; it is the spectacle that is a new experience.
Journalists from all over the world converged at the Taj to catch the action live
Photo: Shailendra Pandey
At a more fundamental level, terrorism thrives on media coverage. Indeed, without media, terrorism loses its reason for existence. The idea of random violence shorn of any conventional intentionality loses its power without the presence of the media to broadcast the news. A symbol draws strength from the larger narrative it points to, and needs universal currency to be fully understood. Terrorism, in its current form, is a post-media phenomenon. Ten people can make a nation quake with fear by killing 200-odd people. Horrific as the slayings were, the total casaulty in this case was no larger than the average train accident or flood that we see quite routinely, and with a degree of apathy, in India.
For terror to be produced from symbolic acts of violence, information must be graphically conveyed to millions of people as quickly and as loudly as possible. Media is the terrorists’ best friend, for without such efficient transmission, fear cannot be broadcast, and terrorism ends up being a senseless but local act of violence.
THE REASON why terrorism is so hard to combat is that it turns the tools of civilisation upon itself. The regard for human life is doubly overturned. The terrorist has no respect for other peoples’ lives. And, indeed his own. This gives him freedom of a kind not envisaged and planned for by any society. It then takes the pillars of the existing system and turns them into its own instruments. Cities, with large aggregations packed into small areas with easy access, become its preferred arena. The vulnerable, who do not get protection under the power equation that is in place, become easy prey; and the media, whose role is to keep citizens informed, becomes an instrument of broadcasting fear.
The role of the media in constructing fear is more easily seen in the case of the recent attacks on ‘outsiders’ in Mumbai, where small doses of violence were enough to create a new larger than life ‘leader’. Here, we can see how the camera frame was able to intensify an experience by excluding all other reality. One was made to see in tight focus only what the media wished us to see. I happened to be in Mumbai on the day that it was alleged that billboards of Amitabh Bachchan films were defaced by MNS activists. There were literally a few microscopic drops of paint on a few of the billboards, but close-ups seemed to indicate otherwise.
What our recent nightmare in Mumbai underlines is that the media is a crucial part of the terrorists’ calculations. Battling terror will need to include much savvier use of media. The notion that unfettered access this close to the action is somehow a media right needs to give way to a more nuanced understanding of how the media gets used, and can be used, in a situation of this kind. The media is a player inside the battleground and not a detached spectator outside it. Much greater introspection is required in evolving a new understanding of the role of the media in crises of this kind. Of course, given the ratings-driven nature of television news in India today, whether any introspection can be expected at all is yet another in the long and vexing list of questions that these three days of carnage have thrown up. |
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