Art & Entertainment

Now Running: The Boob Tube Blitz

When hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last fortnight, it also set off the biggest explosion of reality TV one has seen recently.

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Now Running: The Boob Tube Blitz
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There could be few complaints about the sheer quantity of the images beamed, or indeed their shock value. Till, that is, the endless repetitions put an assembly-line feel on them. As the shock subsided, and "rage" took over, America struggled to fix this incredible set of events within their mental coordinates, to render the alien familiar. Network television worked and reworked the unfolding scenes, dipping into their bank of words, archetypes and responses—and gradually a context, a worldview, emerged. The TV had cracked it. If that perennially slippery question—of a journalist's ethical choices in times of crisis—cropped up, too bad. This was a time for passionate involvement.

Unsurprisingly, however, dissent too emanates from within. Media columnist Danny Schechter, who runs a media-watch website in the US, says: "Much of the coverage is jingoistic. Pro-war cheerleading in the tabloids is achieving new levels. If their words could kill, everyone in Afghanistan would be dead already." The analysis doesn't stop there. The media's role as the state's accomplice is thrown into sharp relief. "The media is completely establishment-oriented," says Robert Stam, professor of cinema and media studies at the New York University. Ian Jack, editor, Granta, has an explanation: "The sheer weight of news from one side can't allow a balance. Rich countries have the most powerful news media."

But that has done little to change the insular ways of the American networks. "cnn hasn't attempted to move beyond lower Manhattan," says media commentator Sudheesh Pachauri. Some feel that the American agenda has become the global agenda. "The wtc disaster has put us on the sets of Independence Day. Our tears, the whole world over, are now colour-coded: red, white and blue," says Amitava Kumar, writer and professor at Penn State University.

To be sure, cnn did manage to communicate the immediacy of the earth-shattering event with some sensitivity: it kept the blood and gore out while reporting non-stop from Ground Zero. There was also no hasty attempt to do a fancy body count. But what after that? TV, after September 11, has been all about survivors, eyewitnesses, debris-cleaners, candle vigils, about the shattered and the injured. It's an overdose of horror and woe that begins to look voyeuristic. Like Lee Amaitis, ceo of Cantor Fitzgerald, crying for his 650 dead employees. Or veteran Larry King clutching a baby born two days after his father's death in the terrorist attack, a desperate attempt at showing "beauty" in grief.

Then there was the utter lack of debate and analyses during the primetime mayhem show. Says Pachauri: "The coverage has been like an event mounted for popular TV. The fear and violence got aestheticised and the politics of it couldn't be heard even in the voice-over." But the politics apart, the bombardment of images couldn't convey much despite keeping the viewers riveted. Says Khushwant Singh: "There were a surfeit of images. But we saw the same scenes repeated hundreds of times. It ended up stereotyping horror."

When news becomes high-pitched soap, fairplay becomes the first casualty. "The media concentrates on the human emotions of the story, not much on the analysis," opines Stam. What the coverage does project is a frenetic posturing of action.Every major player, Bush, Powell or Giuliani, makes statements, holds press conferences, and uses TV as a tool or an ally.

Emotions ran so high that the bbc had to "regret" any offence caused by the allegedly anti-American views expressed in a special edition of Question Time. bbc staff say that the programme was valid on the grounds of free speech and in the interest of letting the other side have its say, and feel that the apology has now compromised them. Chairman Greg Dyke told his staff in an e-mail: "We failed to judge properly the mood of the moment. The programme had the wrong tone given the scale of the tragedy which had occurred so recently."

In India, we've been catching the action on cnn and bbc World, apart from our homegrown DD, Star News, Zee News and Aaj Tak. Most of our networks depend on live feeds from networks like msnbc and Fox which TV personality Karan Thapar refers to as "parochially, domestically American". The channels, according to Singh, "fell hook, line and sinker for the American images". Agrees journalist Saeed Naqvi: "They think they are buying information cheap but you are also bartering your right to think for yourself." He feels the need for an international channel for India that is not "controlled by Atlanta or London". Says he: "The situation is unfolding in our backyard. Our media has got to echo a representative opinion but we've just one agenda: Pakistan. Our vision gets blocked at the Wagah border."

The skewed and monochromatic American coverage might have to do with a collective national mindset of rallying together during a crisis. "An American network will reflect the interests of America," says Michael Fathers of Time magazine. Historically too, media and the government are known to close ranks in moments of crisis. Says Naqvi: "They become close-minded and ultra-chauvinistic." Remember how cnn became a propaganda machine during the Gulf War, or the way the Indian media cosied up to the government during Kargil. Says Jack: "The anger felt by Americans will be reflected in their coverage. In the middle of that how do you find another view? In any case, not many want to find the people who can address the other point of view. If you did, it would be hard to get them to the camera these days."

No wonder alternate opinions are kept aside. "One notices a gap between the discourses on the street, which range from 'It's the chickens, i.e American imperialism, come home to roost' to violent responses like 'nuke 'em'," says Stam. Informed public debate and a new political engagement, which are very much part of the public discourse in the US now, is missing from the small screen.

In this spectacular patriotic soap, introspection and investigation don't even get cameos. "The enemy without is being attacked. Americans are not looking inwards, they do not want to see the enemy within," says media analyst Shailaja Bajpai. Thapar, however, grants that the US media's response was understandable: "It was a moment to unite, heal wounds and come together. It would have been a kneejerk, immature reaction to ask for accountability and start demanding resignations."

The camera never lies, they say. It did lay bare the fears of George Bush and the anxieties of Gen Musharraf. But quite often, what we get to see depends on what a network chooses to show us and also on what it decides to hide. The unnecessary repetition of the footage of Palestinians celebrating displayed an obvious and mischievous slant.But there have hardly been any pictures of the tough Afghan terrain, the drought and the famine. Only those of kids getting trained in the camps in Afghanistan. With a single brushstroke, the entire Islamic world seems to have been painted as fundamentalist. Writes Sevanti Ninan: "The attack is being projected by the TV channels as the villainy of Islam.... Was the media failing to see the separation between a community and the terrorists belonging to that community?"

A lack of historical perspective is also evident in the media's reflections on anti-US terrorism. "It's giving rise to a war narrative where you're fighting an individual, not a nation. It's making a global myth out of bin Laden. Even if he gets killed, his legend is now going to live on," says Pachauri.

Yes, disasters do make pretty pictures. Only, some tragedies are more telegenic than others. As for rest? Well, the camera doesn't reach Ground Zero.

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