The first time I applied to go to university, I applied to
study journalism. I enjoy writing and enjoyed performing arts – my eventual aim
was to become some sort of reviewer or writer around this area. In order to see
if it suited me, I arranged myself a weeks work experience in the local
newspaper in my home town – The Chronicle and Echo. There is one experience
from this week in particular that stuck with me and still influences the way I
look at the news today.
There was a fairly high profile rape case in my town and I
was lucky enough to be at the paper in the week that the sentencing happened
for the rapist. So I accompanied the reporter over to the court room and
listened to the retelling of the details. The victim was a young Chinese girl
who had been thrown out of a club for being too drunk. This was when the
predator saw his chance and led her away, eventually bundling her into his car
and driving away to a secluded area and… well I’m sure no further detail is
really needed. The part that stuck out for me actually occurred after the
sentencing just outside the courtroom. All the local journalists from radio,
papers and television gathered outside the courtroom and resolved as a group to
forgo covering certain details of the case as they may affect victim sympathy.
They decided as a group the fact the girl was Chinese and spoke poor English
would change public opinion on the case. Now, I’m not saying their logic is
flawed – the more cynical readers may see that detail and think it was a
miscommunication or that somehow this justified the mans actions.
However, whether their logic was right or not… I was amazed –
there was no leader or boss telling these journalists to edit their coverage
and yet they were conspiring as a group to emit certain details from a story on
their own. Imagine how much worse this censorship could become if there were
powerful people involved? Politicians, leading business men, governments,
people with real influence… Imagine a paper with a certain political alliance
and how they could censor their coverage? These guys hadn’t had any of that and
had still chosen not to cover a major personal detail of the victim.
This has always lead me to be a little bit cynical in what
you read and take notice of particular angles or language choices. Which leads
me onto the topical event that has inspired the retelling of this memory.
Paris suffered a devastating terrorist attack earlier this
week which has been met with what I see on my facebook page as 3 waves of
responses.
Wave 1: #PrayforParis
This was the initial reaction of people, who don’t know the
meaning of the word pray, responding and thinking they were making some sort of
difference or providing comfort with their hashtags and profile picture
filters. I find this just ridiculous. When a friend of mine snapchatted about ‘the
power of the internet’, I couldn’t help but laugh. What power? What difference
do you honestly think you’re making? ISIS aren’t sitting at home panicking
because peoples profile pictures have changed and fake sentiments were trending
on twitter. What happened in Paris was just horrific and I’m sure we all
condone the actions of the 8 men who found themselves inspired to blow up and
shoot innocent people. We all want to help, we all want to make a difference
and create a world where these things don’t happen. But while we all become
keyboard warriors in these occasions and stay silent while our governments exacerbate
these situations and argue about the refugees running from these horrendous
men, we do nothing to help. I simply don’t know what the average layperson
COULD do to help. Taking to the streets is a show of solidarity. Helping the
victims and refugees is a show of solidarity.
I hate to break it to you, but following the crowd and
social pressure to change your profile picture to a flag changes nothing.
Wave 2: Why is everyone shitting themselves about Paris when
other tragic events occurred?
This was the wave I fell into. Having seen Beirut on the
news a couple days before I was disgusted at the huge amounts of airtime Paris
was getting. You’ll find a trend in this sense: if most of the victims were
Shia Muslims? You’ll hear minimal about it and the language will be
considerably less sympathetic and more ‘this happens every day’. If white people are effected? Be it directly
in the sense of white victims or indirectly in the sense of this is a location
we use for tourism – it’ll monopolise the media attention and attract huge
amounts of social media backlash. It’s mind-blowing to me that this happens.
Are those lives expected to be at risk because of their location? Is it
justified because of their religion? Don’t they deserve the airtime?
Back in June there were several attacks on one day around
the time of Ramadan – the two I remember were the beach shootings in Tunisia
and a mosque suicide bomber in Kuwait. The number of people directly affected
(death toll + number of people injured) by Tunisia was around 40. The number of
people directly affected in Kuwait was much higher than 100+. When I bought the
newspaper out of curiosity the next day, Tunisia gained itself a double page
spread, while Kuwait had a quarter of that – half one page. Now don’t get me
wrong, I know that when British people are involved, it’s going to get more
coverage. But the level of bias coverage and sidelining of Kuwait shocked me.
The language used was different. The length of time it was covered in the media
was different.
So yes, I do understand why Paris will be highlighted more.
But was the extent to which this happened justifiable? Also, I thought this
bias may be because I was in the UK. Because we were closer in geographic terms
and probably political terms too… but even in Australia this bias is simply
unavoidable and in my opinion inexcusable.
Wave 3: The news does cover it, you whingers clearly just
don’t read the news.
Now if you’re going to act like a 13 year old child and take
everything literally and at face value then yes – those proclaiming the other
incidents weren’t covered are incorrect. The other events were covered. I won’t
bore you all to death and repeat myself – I think the above paragraph argues
this point quite nicely to be fair. The emphasis and treatment of different
stories was hands down euro-centric and extremely biased towards white victims
outside of predominantly Muslim areas.
But I do wish to address all those people arguing that this
is fine and we are to blame as the news covers what catches interest and people
simply aren’t interested in the other stories. I think the majority of people
would agree with my sentiment that the news and media of this nature are
supposed to be above simply supplying the demand that is there, focusing on
turning profits and should just be reporting the events that the world should
know about. I agree this is not the reality in the slightest, but does that
make it right? Because, what I like to refer to as the uneducated masses, know
no better than worrying about white faces and not others, should that be what
our news coverage entails? I like to think that the highly influential and well
educated people that run the media should be using their power to educate
people about the state our world is in and help us to make better decisions in
the future based on the mistakes we are making and the real world events that
are taking place. Not add to the ‘us and them’ feeling that most people already
have in order to make money.
The coverage we get is what leads to the xenophobia that is
exhibited so widely and groups like the English Defence League and Britain
First… The media is what snowballs an already tragic situation and raises the
tensions between cultural groups.
I’d like to end on a favourite Spiderman quote of mine: with
great power comes great responsibility…
…a responsibility that unfortunately our media does not take
seriously and aren’t held accountable for.
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