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Journalism of Courage
The global reach of radio, followed much later by TV, is primarily a gift of the BBC in the mid 20th century, around the time the second World War came to a close. It was public service broadcasting at its best but, quite understandably, from a British perspective. Francophone Africa must have been served likewise by French radio.
During the two world wars, American newspapers and radio were energetic abroad but the consumers of this media were largely confined to continental America. Walter Cronkite of CBS News, more than any other American anchor, changed the course of the Vietnam involvement by persistent exposure of that story, again, for American audiences.
The travails of the Palestinians and the Israelis were always a story since the founding of the Jewish state, but concerted Anglo-American, indeed, western focus on the Muslim world was a direct consequence of the post 1973 quadrupling of oil prices by the Arabs, upsetting global economies.
The Saur revolution in Afghanistan, toppling of the Shah of Iran, locking up American embassy staff in their Teheran embassy for months, the intimidating emergence of clerics in long gowns as rulers of oil rich Iran, made for exciting and anxious TV.
The world’s richest and most powerful country earned for itself a degree of exceptionalism in almost everything it did. It permeated the media as well. CBS, NBC, ABC inaugurated an era of cheque book journalism on such a scale as to compel our diversion to more accessible stories. American events became a global tamasha.
The TWA hijack to Beirut in the mid 80’s was a classic example. American networks had occupied every functioning hotel in a somewhat rundown Beirut those days; bulk booking of taxis made transport for lesser mortals difficult. On the tarmac of the international airport was the TWA 707 with over a hundred trapped American passengers. On the roof of the airport were positioned a battery of cameras picking up every inflection — airport officials walking towards the plane, the pilot leaning out.
Satellite communications were not the vogue those days. After taking the sunset shots, the network would rush their cassettes towards their single engine planes on the tarmac which would carry the footage to Cyprus from where the images were beamed to New York for prime time bulletins.
When the TWA hijack ended, ABC news swung a deal with Nabi Beri, leader of Amal, the Shia group in Lebanon, to have the American passengers secretly transported to a hotel where they were guests at a banquet hosted by ABC, all the images committed to posterity in the biggest TV scoop that month.
It was a serious event, sensationalised by American TV for its commercial purposes. It was a story we would cover but not go to the lengths American TV did. For us the Kandahar hijack was the story for which we would strain every muscle to beat our newly generated internal competition. American interest in it may be routine unless, of course, the western media was located in Afghanistan in pursuit of bin Laden.
Thirteen years since the collapse of the Soviet Union have witnessed American action (sometimes in conjunction with the British, Europeans and others) exclusively covered by their own media. A high acceptance level for this American exceptionalism would be harmful for our purposes for a simple reason: most of these events have, in varying degrees, tended to alter the world order in ways which affect all of us. On all these events, therefore, our media must have its own perspective, not in any conflictual way with the western or the Arab media, but to complete the democratic, information order with our own way of looking at developments. In global terms it should be a co-operative enterprise, supplementing huge gaps in the information order.
Operation Desert Storm, Bosnian war, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and now the Iraq war have all been landmark events since the Soviet collapse. With the exception of the Balkans, every other event has been in our vicinity, indeed in our backyard. And yet our print, radio and TV have, except for notable exceptions, not covered these events.
To some extent there is a logistical difficulty. Western journalists can enter dangerous places like Sarajevo, Mogadishu or Kandahar with the support of their troops or other parts of their establishment. However, in my view, such arguments are more theoretical than real.
There were Indian troops and police forces willing to give all support in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, Rwanda, Haiti, Eritrea but only one TV programme availed of the facilities! And even in the case of the Iraq war, the moment Doordarshan approached the allies, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw found time to appear on TV even as the Europeans sent messages back and forth that they had been beaten even in the Indian media despite Doordarshan’s best effort to balance the story in their favour. A lesson for us and the Europeans in all of this.
