This Just In
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| THIS JUST IN - Daren Foster talks about his recent column -- The news media and how they go after perhaps the more sexier stories than the right stories |
THIS JUST IN
By Daren Foster
**Death and destruction. The media's bread and butter.**
Let’s get this straight right from the outset. No matter what you think you’ve read after finishing this column, regardless of how much you’re convinced that I’m condoning or downplaying terrorism or sympathizing with a gang of murderous thugs, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, let me state here and now: shut up and stop being stupid. That will not be the point of this and if that’s the impression you take from it then you came to this predisposed to think that way. So, it will all be on you.
To reiterate.
Do I believe that the calculated, cold-blooded murder of 180+ civilians is unimportant and not newsworthy? Well, after I pry apart that grammatically awkward inquiry, my answer is short and to the point. Of course I don’t, you idiot. Even in these violent and tumultuous times, the brazen attack on an unarmed populace last week in Mumbai was shocking and horrific. The fact that it has become all too commonplace over the course of the last 7 years makes it no less disturbing.
So again, no, I am not condoning, downplaying or sympathizing with terrorism and its practitioners.
Keeping that in mind, ask me if I think the media coverage of the attack in Mumbai was over-the-top and hysterical, further fuelling the feeling of fear, anxiety and the comforting need for alliteration. In a word or two, with one of them being contracted making it almost seem like a single word: you betcha. As if working in unison with the terrorists, when news of the attacks broke, the television media ratcheted up into overdrive with wall-to-wall coverage consisting largely of 2nd and 3rd hand hearsay and a handful of footage showing crowds fleeing upscale hotels that had been set ablaze.
What was woefully missing, what is always woefully missing when tragedy strikes, especially in cases of seemingly random acts of violence, was a sober sense of perspective.
“Perspective?!” you scream. What kind of perspective can there be when a group of highly trained and armed-to-the-teeth perpetrators open fire and toss bombs into an unsuspecting crowd, storm a hotel, allegedly knock on room doors to find westerners to shoot dead and mercilessly execute Jews simply because they’re Jews? Perspective that, you terrorist-loving, freedom-hating, mayhem-embracing, anti-Semitic bastard!
Right then. One bus company alone has killed 70 people in India so far this year after taking out 120 last year. There will be an estimated 400 traffic fatalities a day in India in 2008. A day, folks. Each and every day. By the turn of the decade, one million Indians will die per year from tobacco related diseases. That’s.. let me get my calculator out here.. 1 000 000.. 6 zeros in a million, right?.. divided by 365.. 2739.726 deaths every day due to smoking. Allow me to spell it out for you. Nearly twenty-eight hundred people dying daily due to entirely preventable diseases.
So yeah, even in the face of a stunning terrorist attack that kills less than 200 people over a three day period, I think we could all use a big dose of perspective.
Unfortunately, that’s not really the strong suit of our august newsgathering organizations. While sometimes informative and revelatory, perspective operates on a more quiet and less salacious level than the major networks and newspapers prefer. It takes time to give perspective. It’s three-dimensional and chock full of history, nuance and mitigating circumstances. Perspective can bring a soothing, calm hand to seemingly out of control situations. Everything our 24 hour media has long since rejected as stodgy, boring and ratings killers. Paraphrasing the author of my present bedside book, the media wants to catch our eye not inform us.
As many of my loyal readers will know (hey, Andre.. beers soon?), I have long railed about this aspect of the media south of the border especially during their most recent election campaign. I’ve left their Canadian counterparts largely alone especially my beloved CBC as I wallowed in the delusional pool of denial, believing them to be above such empty journalism. Alas, with their coverage of the Massacre in Mumbai©™®, the scales have fallen from my eyes. Oh, where have you gone Knowlton Nash? Remember Lloyd Robertson? Good old Lloyd was even able to bring a certain gravitas when he crossed the floor to the private sector, briefly elevating the tone at CTV before he was replaced by that guy with the weirdly red-orange dyed hair.
It wasn’t CBC’s wall-to-wall reporting, quickly devoid of enough new content to warrant the degree to which it took over the airwaves that came as a shock to me. Although, I was certainly taken aback by that. I mean, seriously. How long can you pretend that you’re not really delivering any news that hasn’t already been heard but are just now merely gossiping and pushing rumours and half-baked theories? What struck me as truly loathsome, however, was, early on when the story had just broken, there was this creepy sensation that all of the CBC’s investigative muscle was being put into uncovering a Canadian connection. If only we could find a Canadian that was killed or maimed or being held hostage. Then we can drive this thing into the ground!
Their persistence paid off as news eventually surfaced that 2 Canadians had been killed. More had been held as hostages. And one jumped out of window to save himself! Is he going to be a great interview or what?
It was all just so unseemly. You couldn’t help but feel that the coverage was overwrought and sensationalistic because we, us westerners, were under attack. Yeah, yeah. It was mostly Indian nationals who died. Just like it was mostly Indians who died in the 11 other terrorist attacks in India this year including one almost a month to the day earlier than the Mumbai assault where at least 50 people died in a series of bomb blasts. Remember that one? No, me neither and probably because none of us was among the dead.
And no, no, no, I am not minimizing the scourge of terrorism that India faces simply because they are inundated by it. Oh well, shit happens over there. So what’s all the fuss about? I am just struck by the incredible double standard we and our news media live by. As long as they go around killing each other and leave us at peace, well, that’s not news now, is it? That’s just crazy, dark-skinned people going around acting all crazy-like. There are a billion of them. Who’s going to miss a couple hundred here or there when they’re killed by bomb blasts and bus crashes and enforced starvation and genocidal purges and tonnes and tonnes of our bombs that we drop on them in order to root out all those who have the temerity to question our motives and kill us simply because we like to undermine their self-determination whenever it conflicts with our self-interest. I mean, kill us simply because they hate our freedom and way of life.
So yes, without taking the terrorists’ side or trying to airbrush over their egregious acts of homicidal aggression, I think when tragedies like the one in Mumbai happen, we all should take a big step back and help ourselves to an extra large cup of steaming hot perspective regardless of how many of “us” die. Wigging out and screaming irrationally for immediate vengeance of biblical proportions only serves to further the terrorist cause. This must be obvious by now in the way things have been handled since 9/11. An enduring cycle of violence, based solely on a principle of tit-for-tat that ultimately begets radicals from even the most temperate of moderates.But such even-handed restraint now seems beyond the reach of once serious and sombre newsgathering organizations like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. They have become players in the tragedies they report on, heightening the fear and outrage rather than trying to explain it or simply just report it. Delivering decontextualized fragments of information, our media has become simply gleeful purveyors of the ol’ ultraviolence as Anthony Burgess’s Alex in A Clockwork Orange might say. Bloodhounds, the lot of them; no longer worthy of anything but the viewing public’s complete and utter contempt and distrust.
READ MORE COLUMNS BY DAREN FOSTER
December 1 2008 - UNDER THE RADAR - The curious career of Albert Brooks.
November 24 2008 - PULP FICTION FOREVER - Once exciting filmmaker now never fails to disappoint.
November 17 2008 - CHARLIE KAUFMAN UNLEASHED - Brainy scriptwriter goes for broke in directorial debut.
November 10 2008 - A GOLDEN AGE - TV's renaissance amidst the ruins.
November 3 2008 - POLITICS AS UNUSUAL - Media tales fail to take flight.
October 27 2008 - EYES HAVE IT 2 - Joe the Plumber 4 President!
October 20 2008 - EYES HAVE IT - You say pollster. I say huckster.
October 13 2008 - MUSLIM COMEDY REVIEW - Ahmed's now your wacky next door neighbour!
October 6 2008 - BVLGARI VVLGARIS - Celebrity overseas whoring.
September 29 2008 - COMEDY TODAY
September 22 2008 - FALLEN SEASON EXPECTATIONS
September 15 2008 - CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
September 8 2008 - KILL THE BATMAN - Seriously. Put him out of his misery.
September 1 2008 - MY SUMMER VACATION
August 25 2008 - PHONING IT IN
August 18 2008 - GUNGA GULUNGA
August 11 2008 - EMMY DAZE - Where is The Wire
August 4 2008 - ME TALK GOOD
July 28 2008 - TAKE THE CANNOLI
July 21 2008 - TECHNO BEAT 2
July 14 2008 - TECHNO BEAT 1
July 7 2008 - THE INDIGESTIBLE HULK
June 30 2008 - KING GEORGE
June 23 2008 - PLAYING ONE ON TV
June 16 2008 - NEW MONDAY MORNING COLUMN - LIFE IS TOO SHORT - Finally, I saw the last episode of The Wire.
June 4 2008 - FLIP THIS CHANNEL - Buying first house leads to having many things on the mind.
May 29 2008 - BE AFRAID VERY AFRAID - The Canadian military is no longer some namby-pamby, truce-brokering, do-gooding, adventure-seeking, peacekeeping bunch of pacifiers
May 22 2008 - STONE COLD BORING ANGEL - All about The Stone Angel
