Media trends feed insensitivity

By Akhmad Zaini Abar

JAKARTA (JP): Goenawan Mohammad, one time chief editor of the now defunct Tempo magazine, says "blank spot cultivation" has become a major objective of politics.

This strategy causes people to become unmindful of past incidents, behavior, activities and mistakes. Its purpose is to eradicate common knowledge of historical slights, so that the public loses its sensitivity to the significance of events and thus its analytical memory.

Goenawan, who quoted heavily from the writing of Milan Kundera, said it is imperative to fight the blank spot strategy because its leads to disregard of important objectives and an impervious insensitivity in society.

Traditionally, the printed media functioned as memory aids, ways of focusing public opinion.

In communication terminology, the theory of "agenda setting" exists in relation to mass communication.

This theory has it that the media can list various subjects that are, broadly speaking, close to the public. Focusing on these subjects means that what is important to the media, the view the media take of events and situations, will soon become vitally important to the public. On the other hand, what the media deem unimportant will sooner or later become insignificant to the public.

This has made the media a powerful shaper of public opinion, a force to be reckoned with from the political point of view.

However, a new trend has developed which, surprisingly, has its roots, not in politics, but in the field of multi-media, which covers both the press and the electronic media.

A problem to be confronted if this trend continues is that the focus created by the traditional media list is lost. Reports appear in newspapers, magazines and on television and radio, which hop from one issue to the next without pause or much analysis. Incident after incident, personality after personality come into the spotlight of the media only to fade and be replaced by some other topic.

For instance, for well over a year we have been assaulted with a rapid barrage of subjects in the local media. We have read reports on both cement and paper price hikes, immediately followed with news of the demise of a famous star, then reports of murder and gang rape, as well as the illegal distribution of the drug Ecstasy.

Then more reports, each on a vastly different subject in rapid succession, such as the release of political prisoners and the revival of the old revolution fund rumors. Then there was the media uproar over "formless organizations" and the new left, not to mention the news of promotions and other changes within the structure of the Army, reports on the political atmosphere among the elite and the degeneration of sports nationwide.

Then there were reports on natural disasters, corruption, the fertilizer crisis, daily workers' wages, the conflict within Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia's largest Islamic organization, the introduction of a "national car" and the formation of the Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP). The list is endless.

Note the sudden switch from subject to subject, giving the public hardly any time at all to digest the news, or to evaluate the significance of issues, or incidents. Note also, the lack of consistent concern about these events voiced in the media.

The periods of attention and concentration spent on any subject by the public are equivalent to the time spent on compiling the story. The media gauges the public's attention and concentration on a given subject. This is then reflected in the intensity of story coverage.

The above illustrates that the media no longer functions as a news channel and opinion maker. Instead, the media has been transformed into a mechanism, which creates and nurtures blank spots in the collective mind and memory of the public. Issues emerge and fade, information is widely available, but there is no focus or analysis and, thus, no solid memory of major problems, issues and incidents. People no longer find their concerns voiced on the pages of daily newspapers and they lose focus on important issues.

To quote Goenawan Mohamad again, the social implication of this trend is that the media will no longer be capable of creating social solidarity. On the contrary, it will feed the sense of indifference in society. The view that the media is a meeting ground for various individuals, living geographically apart under different socioeconomic conditions, should be reconsidered.

The media, which used to have a positive hand in molding the opinion of the people, is now creating a public infested with blank spots in its collective memory, a public which does not focus on or remember problems, issues, incidents, nor concerns. In short, the public opinion being formed by the media now is apt to be a vacuous one, holding no memory of history. The public will grow ahistorical.

People who exist on an elevated economy level, and those who enjoy a higher education and belong to an affluent society, have more access to the media. They are well read, they own a radio and television. Part of this group has access to Internet. It is a group that could be called "media people" due to extensive, immediate access to all sorts of information.

They are categorized into the middle level income range and are often said to be strategically vulnerable to change. But, can this presumption be maintained if this group of people, wittingly or unwittingly, has become ahistorical?

Now it seems that no political knowledge is necessary to create a blank spot infested public. All that is necessary is to widen the media's opportunity to file reports on an endless stream of topics, issues, incidents, or prevailing concerns.

The result will be a mockery of liberated mass communication.

The writer is a researcher on press affairs at the Yogyakarta Institute for Research, Education and Publishing.