Mercedes Antrobus considers whether it is the fault of the press that there’s a lot we don’t know about.
As I have insinuated previously in the Mancunion, the press has a certain degree of control over global events.
Over the last year we have all learnt, thanks to the News of the World scandal, that the press is a powerful and potentially dangerous mechanism in society. However, it is not only the means that the press use to gather information that are questionable; it is also the content they choose to publish or ignore.
Back in October (Issue 6, 31 October) I wrote in these pages about Anna Hazare and her anti-corruption hunger strike in India. Some may remember that Hazare managed to be relatively successful in bringing about new anti-corruption laws in India, and that the national and global support he gathered put great pressure on the government to listen to his demands. But how exactly did Hazare gather this support?
Simply put, Hazare’s support was the result of mass global media coverage. Corruption was not new to India and Hazare certainly was not the first to go on a hunger strike in opposition to the government. I now ask when was the last time you heard about Irom Chanu Sharmila?
Sharmila, a political activist from Manipur, has been on hunger strike for almost 12 years in protest of the 1958 Armed Forces Act. Twelve years! Hazare was on strike for barely two weeks. Sharmila is not unknown in the political world and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, yet the average person does not know about her, because he or she has not been bombarded with images and news of her like they were when Hazare’s movement was occurring.
Sharmila is opposing a law that has caused death and destruction which, in my opinion, is a greater social problem than corruption, though some may disagree. The media’s popularisation of Hazare made all of the difference. Without mass media coverage Hazare would have probably slipped into the shadows appearing in one or two articles at most and the Indian government would have never had to respond to his demands in the same way they never respond to those of Sharmila.
What I want everyone to realise from this example is that there is often a great deal more happening in the world than the press informs us about and if you just dig a little deeper you will often find a piece of news that fell into a single paragraph at the back of the paper or one sentence in a daily newsreel which the media decided was not worth our attention. However, if we give it our attention we may be able to help activists such as Sharmila succeed.
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