It has been said that most downsizing happens on Tuesdays, the most famous Tuesday of all brought things down to size. On September 11th, 2001 the towers of World Trade went up in smoke and came down in flames. With it went the illusion of freedom from terror and in its place patriotism screeched like a mother eagle. Suddenly Americans found themselves much like strangers in a strange land, we are but eggs.
With the steady climb of technological advancements information has merged into the fast lane. No longer are we content to cruise along the information super-highway, now we want to teleport. From instant messaging to live satellite feeds, the future is now; whizzing by in the carpool lane is the media. It is preceded by the military, which always gets first dibs on the newest great thing. But with great knowledge comes great responsibility, how do you show the world without upsetting the people in it? Is what you see, in fact, what you get or is your vision filtered through the eyes of the reporter presenting the news? In some places they shoot the messenger.
In many ways words can be more powerful than images, a description of a people, a place or an event often has more to do with its defining than any image ever could. For instance the search for “5 Arab men” is much different than the search for 5 foreigners of questionable identity, especially in a place where Arab has become synonymous with terror. In today’s American society the evening news is more of a dramatic series than an informational program. Anchors tend to report about crisis, tragedy and crime rather than what’s really going on in the world. Anyone who used the evening news as a microcosm for the world would believe that African-Americans are criminals and/or poor, as are most Hispanics, and that Muslims are terrorist. Due to gross misrepresentation in the media many Muslims feared for their safety after the tragedy of 9-11. Muslims were racially profiled and discriminated against, not only by law enforcement officers, but also by the general public. Due to the Patriot Act anyone could be held for an undetermined length of time if accused of terrorist activity, treason or not being quite right in the environment. Wearing a turban in America became a crime in the so-called freest country in the world.
Americans rarely consider how the rest of the world views the images produced by the American media. There are people who must use our television programs as a microcosm for our culture. To the East, America is the West, we entertain ourselves by watching programs like “Will and Grace” and “The Sopranos.” The American government is less than comfortable with some of the views expressed on Arabian television stations like Al-Jazeera. The independent station beams out slogans like “An opinion and the other opinion” to about 35 million viewers via satellite. Some Arabs have trouble understanding why Americans watch programs that convey a bad message or no message at all.
Why do we produce so many programs that have no real educational value? At least one of the reasons is that people watch it. “Baywatch” is just as popular (if not more so) around the globe as it is in America. Is it the responsibility of the journalist to provide all of the information: free of censorship, prejudice, stereotypes and unequal labeling, or is it the responsibility of the free public to seek out all sides of an argument and evaluate the similarities? I don’t know for sure but I do know what can happen if information is unclear. For a stranger with a camera lack of information was the difference between life and death. For thousands of people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon lack of information flew an airplane into their workday. Lack of information wasn’t a barrier for the FBI in the search for “5 Arab men”. With the cooperation of Customs, the INS and the American media they enlisted the American public’s assistance. It has been proven that an artist rendering of a rapist can override the memory of a rape victim so that the drawing becomes her memory of her attacker. If you give America a picture can they find a wolf in sheepskin or will they skin a sheep and call it a wolf? A religion has already been turned into a rebel gang by images in the media.
There is an undeniable question of ethics that accompanies any exposure of information. Whether or not the information is factual, relevant and equal is a thinner line than most people assume it to be. Do you broadcast vague descriptions of possible threats to society with the assumption that it will help to keep your country free and your children safe or do you withhold questionable information to protect the rights of an individual? Is the whole more important the sum of its parts or are the parts more precious than the assimilation of statistics? In a country new to the symptoms of war fear becomes a tangible enemy. Something must be assigned to the emotion or it swallows everything in its path. Patriotism has (in many cases) become a Band-Aid over a cancerous cyst, allowing fear to command a stronger grip on people’s hearts.
With the emergence of vigilante camera men and the magnitude of globalization information can become bullets far too easily. Propaganda, although not new to society, has a powerful new avenue to navigate. With advancements in digital technology an image can become fantastical much easier and more rapidly that in pervious years. The Internet is not as reliable as people often expect it to be. One word can show an event in a completely new light and each pixel in an image can be manipulated in a myriad of directions.
Lack of information seams to be a rare occasion in today’s cyber-speed society; unfortunately a side effect of an abundance of instantaneous information is a decrease in its quality. With so many things becoming available to so many people so much faster journalist are less likely to take time out to find the validity in a story. The only solution in sight is to not believe everything you hear, or see, on the evening news, even if it is live and direct.