Media: Shaping our reality of crisis

Media: Shaping our reality of crisis

Lie Hua, Contributor, Jakarta

Media - Militer - Politik Crisis Communication: Perspektif
Indonesia dan Internasional (Media - Military - Politics
Crisis Communication: Indonesian and International Perspective);
Editors: Lukas S. Ispandriarno, Thomas Hanitzsch and Martin
Loeffellholz; Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Galang Press;
Yogyakarta, 2002; viii + 358 pp

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. stunned and shocked
most of the world, which was a witness to the entire catastrophe
through live TV and Internet news broadcasts.

Since then attention has been focused on the outbreak of
conflicts the world over. The United States, which until that
ill-fated day in September 2001 could consider itself safe from
the repercussions of conflicts flaring up in other places in the
world, is now on a constant, somewhat jingoistic state of alert.

The U.S. National Defense Council Foundation, in a report
released shortly after the WTC tragedy, noted that 59 of 193
countries subjected to its evaluation underwent serious conflicts
in 2001 alone, while during the Cold War years the average number
was only 35. Meanwhile, according to the Washington-based Center
for Defense Information, over a quarter of the conflicts that
occurred in 2001 and claimed more than 1,000 victims took place
in Indonesia, India and the Philippines.

As it is very clear that conflicts have, like it or not,
become part of our lives, especially in Indonesia, how they are
communicated is important to discuss. In this context, the media
play an important role.

It is obvious that the media creates a second reality. It is
not the real thing that has happened that comes to our knowledge
but, rather, the reality recreated by reporters and their editors
through a series of criteria that prevail in each media
publication. It is also very clear that it is questionable
whether a media report can be objective at all.

In the context of crisis communication, impartiality is an
important factor as too much of it will only fan the conflict.
Hence the need for peace journalism, the kind of reporting and
coverage that contributes to the creation of peace.

Unfortunately, conflicts, crises and wars have elements that
will sell well as news. When a war breaks out, people are eager
to find out what it is going on, how it happens, how much
destruction it has caused and how many lives have been lost, more
than what has been done to end the war.

Conflicts, crises and wars have the dramatic elements that,
after going through clever processing, will be something
interesting to watch on TV or read in a newspaper.

As conflicts, crises and wars necessarily involve the
military, the role of the military in releasing news about these
conflicts, crises and wars is also important in bringing this
second reality to the audience. At this junction, the media
depends very much on the policy of the military in bringing the
news to the audience.

What comes of the audience is what the military wants them to
watch or read, whatever the reasons the military may cite --
intelligence, strategic importance or whatever.

This book is a compilation 19 papers selected from those
presented in a symposium on crisis communication and democracy
held in Yogyakarta on Oct. 30, 2001 by Atma Jaya University
Yogyakarta in cooperation with Germany's Ilmenau University of
Technology, with German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung as the chief
sponsor.

The book is useful to read, especially by media practitioners
in Indonesia, because when a media publication is aware of its
function as an institution that not only brings to the readers or
the audience a reality -- though only a second reality at that --
but also shape their opinions about this reality, then it will
strive to report to its readers or audience things that are
conducive to creating peace without of course abandoning the
golden rule of 5W+1H.

Only then will a media publication be able to keep itself free
from the influence of power and money, two factors that easily
send the media into partisanship.

In a transitional era toward full democracy, an era that
Indonesia finds itself in now, the media plays a pivotal role in
reporting conflicts that flare up across the country. As the mass
media generally assumes a responsibility towards helping build a
better world for human beings, it is all up to them whether to
benefit from the conflicts in their own interests, or place the
interests of the people above their own so that in their coverage
of the conflicts they help people see and identify the root cause
of the conflicts and encourage them to remove this cause.