Media trends feed insensitivity

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.