Their television, their coverage

Addressing journalists in the Oval office on Thursday, President George Bush spoke not so much of the challenge as the opportunity the post-September 11 situation has provided the US for promoting understanding and peace between the Palestinians and Israelis and India and Pakistan. In fact, on the Arab-Israeli track there is already some progress, he said.

Wendy Chamberlain, US ambassador to Pakistan, has reiterated Washington’s resolve “to stand by friends who stand by us.” Naturally, Pakistan was in line for a huge aid package. This would be in addition to the assistance from Washington to cope with the flow of refugees from Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, President Bush did not miss out on the symbolism of making an extensive media event out of Indonesian President Sukarnoputri’s visit to the White House. She was welcomed as leader of the world’s largest Muslim state. “Islam means peace” said the President and it should be driven out of the consciousness of the people that the US was against Muslim countries or Muslim people. Far from it, he said. Muslims in this country “are as loyal to the American flag as I am”.

The choreography on TV shows too is changing. Suddenly, a blonde Afghan journalism student is brought into focus. Her tearful recollection of her home, Kabul, where her grandmother still lives, her unfortunate predicament at the change of American attitude towards foreigners in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks: these are all designed to tone down public anger.

This transition from rage, a mindless quest for revenge, to a much more mellow, reflective anger makes it that much more possible for people, across the globe, to try and understand what Americans have experienced this past fortnight. In many ways Americans are a blessed people —prosperous and secure in their island. The image of the ugly American is actually a product of a lethal combination: excessive prosperity and unspeakable ignorance, particularly of the outside world. In traditional societies last-century wealth and class went hand in hand sustaining both, a hierarchical elegance and class disparities. Egalitarianism made a dent in this order but in the US this success of freedom and egalitarianism overwhelmed everything else. This extraordinarily wealthy American, divorced from what Europeans called class, became the object of resentment. A large chunk of Nehru’s anti-Americanism, for example, did not have its roots in Fabian socialism as it did in large measure in his inherently Anglian disposition — tweed versus polyester, John Lobb versus buckskin shoes.

But this new and extraordinarily creative human being, the American, continued on his unstoppable spiral upwards. Consistent with his means, he created a mass media with an unprecedented reach. Up to the Gulf War, BBC radio was the world’s most powerful medium of information. But Ted Turner made the CNN part of Pentagon’s war effort in the Gulf. When asked whether Operation Desert Storm was going well, Defence Secretary Dick Cheney replied: “Yes, I’ve watched it on CNN”. Beaten in this competition, BBC World Service TV was launched within a month of the Gulf War.

Today it is these two great networks who transmit images of events they think are interesting. Obviously, the agenda for what has to be covered is set in London and Atlanta (Georgia) where the CNN is headquartered. In other words, images beamed from these two points in the northern hemisphere are received the world over as coverage of world affairs.

Ten years ago if you walked into the office of senior officials in South Block, you would have found a neatly folded copy of the International Herald Tribune on the coffee table next to the sofa. Today you will find a TV set. And the set will, most probably, be tuned to CNN. Nothing wrong with the CNN worldview except that it is not your worldview.

A sort of irritation sets in when this elite watches the collapse of the World Trade Centre a hundred times. “But nobody took notice of the Mumbai bomb blasts in 1993 in which so many people died”. We have not developed the means of exploiting the electronic media to send across our message.

Once the dust settles on this crisis, you will have saturation of NATO in the Balkans. You will watch these images day in and day out just as you will if Afghanistan is occupied or pummeled. Spare a thought for your own troops doing outstanding work in Eritrea. In case you are interested, request Doordarshan to telecast it at a reasonable hour when at least our troops can watch. And do it fast because the channel on which these episodes were telecast is being shut. And, alas, CNN and BBC will not be interested.

But don’t Indian networks have foreign coverage? They do. But every clip —barring an occasional effort — is bought from foreign agencies. And these agencies will prioritise the coverage according to their interest. What happens in New York or London will obviously take precedence over what happens in Mumbai. Some people have been grumbling about the media lately. There will be a great deal to grumble about when a major war gets underway in our backyard and in which we shall not be in the frame.

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