The Tsunami Didn't Wash Away Media Bias
By Richard Davis (01/07/05)
Should Americans trust that media coverage of the tsunami disaster is accurate and unbiased? Of course not. Media bias may be eclipsed momentarily by events, but it reappears quickly. In fact, the media’s fixation with victims and victimhood is a driving force behind their liberalism. In that respect the tsunami relief effort is the perfect story -- nonWestern victims being re-victimized by the apathy and selfishness of rich Westerners, particularly Americans, even more particularly George Bush. That’s a journalist’s wet dream today.
To check for bias imagine a comparable disaster with the same loss and response times occurring in, say, Europe while a Democrat was in the White House. The media’s neocolonial presuppositions would be absent, their self-righteous indignation would be muted, and the president’s response would have been characterized as calm, calculated and unhurried. Just what you want from a leader.
Like everyone else the media love power, and the ability to arouse and control others’ emotions is power in its rawest form. Their coverage is geared for maximum emotional impact. Stories that approach the disaster in a more rational manner are ignored.
For example, if you bother to look at the map you’ll notice there are great modern metropolises with millions of people each just on the other side of these islands or a stone’s throw from the beach. Cities like Jakarta, Bangkok and Singapore.
The disaster was confined to the coastal area in the heart of the most densely populated region of the globe. Yet Americans have been implored frantically by our media to provide water, food and other supplies. Only we can save these people, the media wail. Indonesia has 260 million residents. India has a billion. They have no food? Did they gulp down all the water? Their sex traffickers don’t seem to be having any logistical problems getting to the disaster areas. Nor do journalists.
If a tsunami were to hit Miami Beach or Long Island the loss of life and property would dwarf the Indonesian tsunami. Would residents have to wait for the Japanese military to airlift food and water? Would we even tolerate foreign intervention? There’s more than a little Western arrogance and neocolonial imperialism obvious in the media’s reaction. You wouldn’t even know these South Asians were citizens of countries that had large unaffected populations, let alone governments.
To our media, the story is America’s slow and stingy response to a disaster affecting Muslims on the other side of the planet. But why isn’t the story the apparent inability of the largest Muslim country in the world to provide even the most basic relief assistance to its fellow countrymen just a few miles away?
Unfortunately, American politicians and the public have fallen for the media’s shame-and-blame game and will themselves soon become victims of the fraud and massive waste that is inevitable with a relief effort of this magnitude so hastily organized and ill thought out.
The media-induced hysteria has transformed this disaster from tragedy to charade. Farce can’t be far behind. Abandoning all but the pretense of compassion, nations vie for international bragging rights by upping their aid antes daily like players in a high-stakes poker game. Who will prove the most compassionate? Papers run tallies of who is ahead, and most importantly who is behind, in this unseemly competition. The world has gone temporarily mad with concern for people it didn’t care less about two weeks ago.
In America, the politics of relief has boiled down to just two concerns: 1) Proving to the world that we’re not stingy -- something we must prove because an overpaid bureaucrat at the UN, which has been mishandling and/or stealing our aid monies for decades, says we do; and 2) Rehabilitating our image with the rest of the world, especially Muslims. Good luck with that. Notice the relief worker in the Bin Laden T-shirt? I wonder how he’ll invest his disaster windfall.
Will dumping loads of cash on Muslims rehabilitate our image? Why are being coerced into thinking it will, or that we should even feel a need to try? Shouldn’t Muslims be rehabilitating their tarnished image? Are we saying the hate and fanaticism of the Muslim street is justified? Were we wrong then to pursue the policies that generated this enmity? If we think cash payments will mitigate Muslim malevolence then we haven’t learned anything since 9/11. Why hasn’t it worked before? We send more aid to Egypt each year than we’ve pledged so far with the tsunami, yet is there a country that hates us more?
Because the UN and the media didn’t allow the natural outgrowth of compassion but instead politicized the relief effort immediately and relentlessly, all providers are now tainted anyway. The story became how much, how fast. We’re led to believe that by not rushing headlong to the TV cameras Bush condemned all of America in the eyes of world, especially the Muslim world (which has promised a couple camels and some dates).
CNN has been particularly offensive. How many times did it run its story “Victims in Need” lambasting American selfishness and calling the disaster a “key battleground for hearts and minds in the war on terror.” Suddenly CNN supports the war on terror. Who knew? Their expert analyst? The president of the Arab-American Institute. Apparently Sami Al-Arian couldn’t get time off for good behavior down in Tampa.
To the analyst’s credit, however, after confirming that Americans were indeed stingy low-lifes he added that we shouldn’t expect our relief effort to win over any Muslims. (Not unless our aid planes nuke Tel Aviv on their way to the Indian Ocean.)
But for the first time in over three years, CNN couldn’t accept a Muslim’s word as final authority on America‘s shortcomings. His realistic and honest appraisal might dampen the hysteria. So another analyst had to be recruited to say that, yes, the US effort so far was a travesty but America still “should step up and lead” this opportunity to reach Muslims, “even to the point of sending copies of the Koran.” And maybe some more of those Bin Laden shirts.
Now that relief is arriving we’re being shown long lines and “victims” fighting for food from our helicopters. As someone who experienced the brunt of two hurricanes in Florida last year let me tell you something about relief lines. If it’s free, you’ll fight others for it, whether you need it or not. We could have flown these missions into these areas six months ago and gotten the very same video.
That isn’t to say there aren’t suffering victims who need help. Nor am I criticizing the superb job being done by our military. It’s only to say these images by the media are manipulative and meaningless.
And where is all the money going? Soon we’ll be asking, Where did all the money go? Everyone’s talking about massive rebuilding programs. Apparently the earthquake fault has agreed not to act up again. Maybe it needs to rehabilitate its image with the Muslim world too. Good luck.
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