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.