How the U.S. media can help SE Asia

Kumar Ramakrishna, Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

The horrific bomb blasts in Bali sent shock waves throughout Southeast Asia. Fingers started pointing even before the rubble settled: Al-Qaeda, Jamaah Islamiyah. Still others hinted at shadowy militant nationalists incensed at Australia's perceived complicity in East Timor's acrimonious secession from Indonesia in 1999.

Business people worry that American companies, which contribute a large chunk of foreign direct investment to the region, may overreact. Apparently, one group of foreign investors canceled a meeting in Phuket after the Bali attacks, even though Thailand is not Indonesia.

As someone put it, it's like canceling a trip to New York because of a sniper in Washington.

The powerful United States media can play a useful role in telling Americans that not all Southeast Asian countries suffer from the same risk levels. The only question is whether it is willing to do so.

The global mass media is dominated by a handful of powerful, mainly American-based, transnational corporations such as AOL Time Warner, Viacom and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

These media giants control the entire spectrum, from magazines and newspapers to television channels and networks, film production and book publishing. They have a powerful influence in shaping global constructions of reality.

Control, unfortunately, is not matched by omniscience.

In addition, the U.S. media is not necessarily driven by objectivity. Most of the national print and broadcast media are headquartered in New York City, and most editors would have been affected directly and personally by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, compelling them to see the world through the "prism of Sept. 11."

Indeed, since the attacks, there has been only one big story, "Islamist terrorism", coming out of the U.S. media. The only exception is Iraq, and even that comes with an Islamic connection.

Coverage of Southeast Asia -- seen in U.S. eyes in the pre- Sept. 11 period as rather quaint -- has been affected accordingly.

Some American media observers worry that the region is being viewed as a rather monolithic "second front" in the war on terror, with coverage skewed towards a focus on terror plots, terror attacks and detentions of alleged terrorists with alleged links to al-Qaeda.

Complicating matters is the current structure of the mass media in America, which does not promote a sophisticated understanding of the region.

Prior to the arrival of cable television, Americans had a daily evening routine of tuning in to one of the three major networks for the news. Today, however, there are cable news channels and 24-hour saturation coverage by CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Fox News.

The American mass media has also consolidated around an ever- smaller number of power centers. For instance, AOL owns Time, Disney owns ABC, Dow Jones owns The Wall Street Journal, the powerful Graham family owns the influential Washington Post, while the Sulzberger family owns The New York Times. Editors accept that a certain degree of editorial conformity to the world view of their corporate sponsors is helpful.

Hence, among U.S. journalists, knowledge of Southeast Asia and Islam remains, with several distinguished exceptions, unremarkable. Of course, the media can always turn to the academics for "expert" assistance. But U.S. academia has its own problems.

One West Coast professor notes that there has been a steady decline in area studies in America. The American academic system, he says, tends to reward theory construction. This has tended to produce university professors who are very good at "theoretical musings" but have little knowledge of "the street level".

The upshot of this dearth of genuine area experts is that the personalities whom network television brings on screen are "cable-show screamers", there to "yell and scream at one another".

But it is not all bad. Since Sept. 11 last year, the U.S. media has made a genuine effort to increase its knowledge about Islam and to differentiate it from the more radical strains.

Perhaps American media practitioners should do as their Australian counterparts and consult more with Southeast Asian scholars to provide the necessary area expertise.

Given the reach and power of the U.S. media to shape the perceptions, and by implication the decisions, of Western policy- makers and investors, a little additional nuance in its reporting would be no bad thing.