REPRESENTATIONS OF CONFLICT IN THE WESTERN MEDIA
The manufacture of a barbaric periphery
INTRODUCTION
The reach and influence of the media in the modern world is so pervasive that it shapes, unconsciously, the way we think about foreign cultures with which we have little other contact. The media exerts an enormous power also on these cultures, in its effects on areas as diverse as foreign policy formulation, demand for exports or tourism revenues, or even visa applications to the West. In times of war and disaster in other countries, the media in some sense ‘plays God’ in terms of its influence on the extent and nature of Western responses. This was demonstrated during the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s, when the broadcasting of particularly emotive television images of starving children prompted a massive humanitarian response, leading to the setting up of Band Aid and Comic Relief (1993).
The media has always played a major role in the formation of ideas about foreign culture, first through the press, and, since the advent of film technology, through the more powerful medium of television. This has served to ‘bring into our living rooms’ images of previously inaccessible disasters and conflicts, contributing to the much heralded globalisation of human experience, and increasing the difficulty for the West of ignoring or dismissing such far away events. In recent years the ways in which the media represents such disasters and conflicts has come onto the agenda of those seeking to analyse Western roles in and responses to such events in the rest of the world. The media is under scrutiny in terms of its impact on shaping our cultural interpretations of distant wars, and through this, its impact on broader policy agendas. Its importance lies in its indirect influence in determining the level of humanitarian engagement on the part of the West, and the nature of Western political or military intervention.
At the level of national news, the media plays the role of creating a public forum for debate, and is important in the promotion of diffuse ideas and discussion within the national democracy ( 1996). International coverage, particularly of far-off conflicts, is naturally more limited however, by both space and interest, and thus has a far less positive role. While the media as an abstract institution may be neutral in that it has no intrinsic interest in portraying foreign conflicts in any particular light, in practice it is influenced by a wide variety of different factors. The lack of localised knowledge to inform media coverage of distant events and the tendency towards sensational short-term reporting serve to bias reporting, or at least to reinforce existing biases.
There are no mechanisms to guide the style or content of media coverage, and there is no assurance of balance or accuracy in reporting. That the media should have some responsibility for ensuring the integrity of its product, it is argued, is because of its interactive role in both reflecting and helping to shape public opinion.
It has been suggested that, in the past, intellectual arenas helped to legitimise colonial interventions through their debates on natural selection and cultural relativity necessitating the destruction of ‘barbaric’ civilisations by progressive ones (1997). Today, it is argued that the media is playing a similar role in terms of the manufacture of a ‘barbaric other’, or is at least colluding in the process. Its superficial and biased reporting serves to obscure, in part deliberately, the political and geopolitical realities of local conflicts, by focusing on the unhelpful explanations of ethnic hatred or competition, and on the savagery of those engaged in fighting. This reinforces the political agenda of those in the West whose actions may be in some way contributing to the perpetuation of these ‘peripheral’ wars ( 1997). It is important in helping to conceal the exploitative aspects of Western or free-market commercialism, which is a directly causal factor in many distant wars, as it was in the days of the colonial project. This is part of a broader post-Cold War trend of the establishment of the supremacy of the Western liberal ideology and market-driven culture.
The media that is discussed in this article is the Western media. The aim is not to suggest that it is a homogenous entity, but to highlight its general tendency to reinforce the values associated with Western culture, and thus to perpetuate misunderstandings about the nature of foreign conflicts. This is partly for institutional reasons, such as the structure and market-driven nature of the Western media, and partly because the media can only be a reflection of the ideologies and understanding of its own culture. The media tends thus to reflect the concerns of its Western audiences, and their own internal fears and questions. This is shown clearly in the differential reporting of wars closer to home, such as in Bosnia or even Israel, where an attempt is made to understand and relate to some of the local realities, as compared with reporting about African wars, where images of barbarism and anarchy abound, and where the causes of conflict are portrayed as incomprehensible.
The chapter is in three parts: the first, a discussion of the structural factors that encourage superficial reporting of distant conflicts; the second, an analysis of the new barbarism discourse and its impact on policy; and finally a discussion of the implications of this type of media coverage on Western understanding of and responses to such events.
MEDIA INSTITUTIONS
The media is dominated by Western agencies, which in the 1980s were producing and transmitting over 90 per cent of the world’s news (1996). Some media corporations, such as Agence France Presse, are government funded, and their output thus reflects to some degree the policy and agenda of that state. Most are private corporations controlled by individuals or small groups of businessmen with particular biases or traditions, which thus project their news accordingly. The extent of First World domination militates against the development of a more southern-orientated perspective, and contributes to the lack of depth in reporting of foreign cultures. Western political considerations sometimes have a direct role in influencing media coverage. The coverage of press agencies present in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War was closely monitored by the Allied forces, in an example of direct manipulation of the media by Western political powers. This demonstrates the difficulty for the media of retaining independence when powerful political agendas intervene in a war situation (1991).
The way stories are made and transmitted furthers the tendency towards superficial coverage. Producers are increasingly subject to market forces, driven to put out eye-catching scoops that will attract new customers, or at least keep existing ones. There has been much discussion on the impact of increased competition on the quality of traditional press and television, and the trend towards tabloid-style journalism is continuing. The effect of this is to underscore existing tendencies of superficial and short-term coverage. Disaster stories, for example, will go in and out of the news depending more on the nature of competing news stories, or the extent of existing coverage, rather than on the basis of their intrinsic interest or newsworthiness.
The trend towards directing news to the ‘lowest common denominator’, by using simple stories and easily understandable images, is combined with the nature of news reporting, as fast-moving and predominantly space-filling, to produce a situation where sensationalism rules, and little in-depth political analysis is developed. News producers have to be aware of all stories and potential stories as they are happening, and choose which to cover for various reasons, but above all what they believe will be of interest to the maximum number of people. Their main driving force is to fill space, in seconds or in column inches, and their own understanding of the issues they are covering is, by necessity, limited. Even where specialist reporters are employed, such as by the Economist, or for indepth television documentaries, the writers or producers may only be covering the story for that week or issue. Cost cutting at many newspapers and television channels has greatly reduced the number of dedicated reporters, so, for instance, Africa Editors at the daily newspapers have disappeared. There are notable exceptions to this trend of course, and individual journalists such as Robert Fisk demonstrate the depth of analysis that can be gained through specialisation. These cases are, however, rare.
The use of traditional story-telling techniques by journalists also discourages more detailed assessment of particular situations. The setting of a disaster news story in the familiar language of story-telling helps to render a far-away event more accessible to Western viewers or readers. Good and evil may be symbolised in some form, and the West, or the US may be set in the role of hero or mediator intervening ( 1993:). Complicated events can thereby be transformed into easily grasped ‘soundbites’. The portrayal of wars as ethnic conflicts may be more easily understood than complex political or economic analysis, and famines are explained by drought, so complicated issues of politics again can be avoided. This method of journalism, of a packaged image and message, satisfies both the necessity for timeliness and interest, and the belief that consumers are incapable of understanding anything deeper. It is self-perpetuating, as, for example, once the story of ethnic conflict is established for one war, it becomes the easiest explanation for both the producers of the media and the consumers, and can be applied to other situations, becoming a convenient point of reference. It may also be in the interests of other parties, such as governments or aid agencies, to portray conflicts in a simplified way, in order to make them more accessible to Western donators, for example.
Television imagery is especially powerful, and can establish or set ideas in a particularly insidious way. Television has gradually replaced the printed word as the main source of news for the majority of people, and especially for news concerning overseas affairs (1993). Although standards of technical professionalism are high, and responsibility for stories is diffused among more people than in newspapers, the fastpaced nature of television news as a medium for transmitting images means that, even more than with the press, fashion and novelty are the determinants of what becomes news. The power of the imagery of television means that film portrayals of starving children in wastelands become entrenched in the minds of viewers, who may develop their ideas of foreign cultures purely on the basis of such images. Many people now view Africa as a continent devastated by war and famine. The ‘heart of darkness’ image, used in film and quoted time and again in headlines, encapsulates this perception.
Superficial reporting and journalistic prejudices in terms of simplification or misrepresentation may result in the portrayal of positive or negative imagery, but both are potentially damaging in that cultures are in some way misrepresented. A common image of diverse Third World cultures is that of happy peasants tilling the land or engaging in simple crafts, working hard but honestly, with a backdrop of sunshine and blue skies. This image is often presented through the tourist industry, which seeks to attract Westerners to visit countries supposedly unsullied by the negative aspects of industrialisation. Authenticity is a major selling point, and cultural phenomena such as dances or dress-styles are shown as if they are unchanged over many generations. While there may be little in such images that is inherently disturbing, the portrayal of falsely romantic images strengthens the stereotyped views many hold of Third World countries as simple and backward, and acts to obscure important modern realities, such as political repression or the drugs trade. The tourist trade can help to support repressive political regimes both materially and symbolically, and in some countries such as Turkey and apartheid South Africa opposition groups have campaigned to discourage tourists from visiting.
The imagery that is used, particularly in relation to Africa, is, however, becoming increasingly negative. The tendency for coverage to relate exclusively to disaster stories is becoming more marked. Many African countries will not figure at all in the media, either television or press, unless affected by war or natural disaster. Coverage of other stories tends to be limited to South Africa and Kenya, countries in which the British public is assumed by editors to have some interest. The continent is seen by the media and the public as a mess of ethnic wars, environmental degradation and famine, with little hope of joining the modern world of capital accumulation. That African culture is in some way to blame for its problems is gaining ground as an explanation. This negative imagery is both created and sustained by media portrayals that fail to convey either the complexity of the political problems faced by many African countries, which in all cases have deep historical roots in colonialism and subsequent exploitation, or the reality of local efforts to challenge the problems they face.
THE NEW BARBARISM THESIS
The trend towards simplistic analysis of Africa’s wars and disasters has been examined by some writers in terms of current Western theories of culture and race. , an anthropologist, terms as ‘New Barbarism’ the tendency to portray African wars as anarchic and primitive, and argues that careful analysis is necessary to reveal the rational motives behind actions that on the surface may appear barbaric ( 1996). The New Barbarism thesis, developed originally by the influential American academic and journalist (1994), suggests that African wars are motivated by fixed ethnic and cultural realities, and are thus beyond the reach of Western understanding and help. The title of Kaplan’s article ‘The Coming Anarchy’ encapsulates the emotions of fear and dismissal prevalent in the reactions of many to images of war in Africa and other peripheral areas such as Afghanistan. Kaplan blames ‘cultural dysfunction’, ‘loose family structures’ and ‘communalism and animism’ for Africa’s current problems (1994), helping to reinforce stereotypes of Black Africa as a dangerous and unpredictable place.
This type of superficial analysis supports policy strategies of disengagement and isolationism popular particularly within right-wing Republican circles in the US. By focusing attention on internal cultural factors, broader geopolitical trends are obscured, and isolationists are able to argue that Western intervention can have little positive impact on these wars. Thus both the causal role of the West is denied, and at the same time its potential to intervene constructively is lessened. Media coverage of the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia has contributed greatly to the New Barbarism thesis, focusing as it has on the so-called primitive and bizarre methods of the fighters, and by failing to provide any analysis of the causes of the conflict. It has thus helped to perpetuate the failure within the international community to tackle the realities of the conflicts there ( 1996). With little appreciation of the complexities of the internal and external factors that have helped initiate and sustain the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, reflected in the superficial and sporadic coverage in the international media, it has been difficult for either multinational institutions or interested national governments to formulate informed and effective interventions.
Two recent examples of reporting on the Liberian war will serve to illuminate these tendencies. Cannibalism in Liberia made the front page of the Observer newspaper in April 1996 when an out-of-date interview with a child fighter was recycled during the intensification of the war in the capital Monrovia ( 14 April 1996). The fighting in the streets of the city was totally unrelated to the story printed, which referred to events in the countryside months, if not years previously, and little attempt was made in the article to analyse the current crisis. In June the country reached the main six o’clock news of the World Service Television, with the showing of a scoop ‘cannibalism’ film of fighters removing the heart from a dead man (11 June 1996). There was no new news about the war in this story, and the teenage fighters in the film appeared to be playing to the camera. The newsreader, however, looked appropriately shocked as he related the story to the world. These examples illustrate the kind of false and negative imagery that can result from the media’s tendency to sensationalism, and the lack of any serious analysis. Other reporting of the fighting during April and May came mostly in the first week of the crisis, a ‘quiet’ news week in early April, and focused on the evacuation of aid workers and other expatriates. News coverage of the war in Sierra Leone has similarly focused on atrocities committed by rebel fighters, with little attempt to understand the reasons for the war.
develops critique of New Barbarism in his analysis of developmentalism, and what he calls ‘New Racism’, a trend in commonly-held perceptions of Third World cultures that is subtly informed by postmodern ideas of multiculturalism (1996a:179-86). The perception of foreign cultures and conflicts as fundamentally different from our own experience leads, argues, to interventions by the West that are greatly constrained by their failure to see or understand local realities. The conception of multiculturalism allows outsiders confidently to describe African experiences of war as savage or primitive, because it holds that such things are innate, rooted in African history and culture, and therefore unchangeable. suggests that this type of analysis works to disguise or obscure the actual power relations that obtain in war situations, and which are what influences the outcomes of different policy choices. The glaring omission in New Barbarist stereotypes is the lack of meaningful analysis of the modern African state, which plays a pivotal role as the arena where competition over access to power and resources takes place, and where the nature of links with the international economy are determined. The failure to understand the obtaining social, political and economic relationships in African wars produces policies which may unconsciously work to make the situation worse. Many modern Western interventions in African wars are characterised by this lack of political commitment and understanding.
The apolitical nature of policy analysis may be highly dangerous to those caught up in war and disaster, as it prevents an appreciation of how policies can work to strengthen those who do hold the power, and who are fighting the war (1996 and 1996). Food aid policy for example, is rarely, if ever, informed by any understanding of the local political importance of large-scale provisions of food. Control of aspects of food aid distribution has been helpful to many warring groups, in the Horn of Africa, in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in the Hutu refugee camps in Eastern Zaire. In the last case, control of registration of beneficiaries was delegated by UNHCR and WFP to Hutu ‘traditional’ leaders, many of whom were implicated in the organisation of the genocide in Rwanda. These leaders later took over actual distribution of food in some camps, which gave them in effect life and death control over the refugees, and helped them to prevent the return of the Hutu population to Rwanda (1996). The conventional understanding of the genocide, as reported by the media, as the latest manifestation of ethnic hatred, was in part responsible for informing the decisions that were taken. As long as policy makers fail to analyse wars in terms of the obtaining power relations, in this case, the bid by extremist Hutus to retain or regain control of the Rwandan state, such mistakes will continue. The issue of the growing use of humanitarian relief by the West as a substitute for political intervention ( 1996a; 1996) is an even more fundamental policy failure informed by the same thinking.
Some commentators would argue that the use of superficial images to suggest the inherently barbaric nature of African wars is in fact part of a more deliberate strategy to underplay the role of the global economic and political system in sustaining such wars. In order to avoid a serious examination of the role of international business and political relationships in fuelling war in peripheral areas, it is convenient for the West to interpret conflict as based on internal, sociological factors. Media imagery reflects this concern, reinforcing stereotypes of the distance between the civilised West and the barbaric fringes of the world, where the rules by which we guide our lives are not supposed to apply (1996a). The images projected are similar in content to those of the nineteenth century when representations of ‘primitive’ civilisations as savage and brutal helped in the justification of colonial interventions (1997). This imagery is used today to help disguise the inter-relatedness of the conflicts around the world, and the integral role of peripheral areas in the world economy as suppliers of commodities to the West and buyers of arms products. It further allows for the delivery of humanitarian aid as the main Western response to conflicts, to be carried out in an apolitical manner, with little concern about the political impact of the often large amounts of resources that are thereby supplied.
IMPLICATIONS
The media both helps in forming such perceptions, and is itself informed by them. ‘New Racist’ understanding of foreign cultures and conflicts impacts on policy formation at a number of levels. Western policy makers are influenced directly by the media, and indirectly through the lobbying from the different actors who are themselves informed by media representations. Decision-makers within aid agencies, for example, are subject both to pressure from the public of charity-supporters, as both financial supporters and political activists, and to the decisions of their main donors, the Western governments and government agencies that control aid budgets. UN bureaucrats are less directly affected by public opinion, but play an important role in actually providing information to the media themselves. Government decision-makers are guided by diplomatic and strategic demands, which involve economic interests, cultural or historical ties, and global political relationships, as well as, to some extent, by public opinion. All of these various groups and individuals are affected by media representations, and in turn, help shape the perceptions of those groups which make up the media.
The power of the media lies thus in its influence on the groups of people whose impressions of foreign culture have an actual impact on events in Third World countries through the policy strategies chosen by the West. Its responsibility lies in its role in the provision of information and analysis, as acknowledged by for example in its claim to be ‘informing the world’. The growing pressure of the marketplace at all levels within media organisations and the institutional constraints thereby imposed create many difficulties in the fulfilment of these obligations: the tendency to sensationalism and superficiality; the random forces that determine which disaster news will reach the screens or the front page; the political considerations that influence the way news may be presented-all act to prevent a free flow of informed commentary on far-away events. Underlying these problems, the concepts of New Barbarism pose the danger of biasing the news that is reported through a fundamental misreading of the realities of the power relations at work in conflict situations in Africa and elsewhere.
The importance of humanitarian relief in helping protect the lives of those affected by war has been remarked on by many, including Benthall, who suggests that aid flows have now become the main cash-crop in many countries facing crisis ( 1993). The growing domination of the media by large cable-television corporations and newsgroups subject to market pressures in an unprecedented way makes it even less likely that such crises will be portrayed in an accurate manner, and gives such organisations unprecedented power over the amounts of money that may be raised in an emergency, and the types of policy that may be pursued by the West. Little space remains within these organisations for the individual writers and photographers who have traditionally brought news of disasters and wars to our living rooms, and little time can be found for today’s news journalists to study or appreciate the particular aspects of particular situations. Some attempts are being made, mainly by aid agencies, to work against these trends and improve the quality of reporting on disasters. Some agencies, such as Save the Children, have adopted guidelines to monitor their own use of images in disaster appeals, in attempts to avoid contributing to the negative imagery of helpless Third World populations reliant on the West. Bernard Kouchner, founder and former director of Médecins sans Frontières, has argued that humanitarians must form a close alliance with television journalists, whose images of disasters play such a crucial role in shaping perceptions and raising funds (1991). By working together it may be possible to improve the understanding of journalists, and thus the quality of information reported.
While the danger of misrepresentation could be somewhat lessened by improvements in methods and standards of reporting within Western media organisations, the fundamental issue of misconceptions of the causes of such crises will only be addressed through fundamental change. The most important mechanism for this change will be the support, financial and symbolic, of Third World media. The development of Third World media can play a crucial role in the evolution of a deeper understanding of Third World culture and issues internationally, as well as having an important impact at the national level. Access to, and production of, more and better quality information and comment within the Third World would work to empower local populations at a number of levels. Their own understanding of the issues faced in their societies, and their ability to express this understanding in the international arena, would greatly benefit from the development of local discussion. As mentioned above, within a national democracy, the media can play a vital role in raising and discussing issues, and in airing diverse opinions held by different groups. ‘Preventative’ journalism may be particularly powerful in conflict situations as in Africa in helping to inform and unite people in opposing the war, or in resisting powerful groups. Richards has discussed the potential use of radio in conflict resolution activities in rural Sierra Leone (1996), and it has been argued that local radio in Burundi played an important part in discouraging participation in ethnic cleansing in 1995 ( 1996).
Organisations such as PANOS are playing an important role in this development, by working with existing media in Third World countries and supporting the development of new skills. It has been suggested recently that plans made in the 1970s to develop a ‘new world information and communications order’ spearheaded by UNESCO must be regenerated to redress the present imbalance ( 1996). Under the UN Special Initiative on Africa, US.8 million has been allocated for communications for peace-building over the next five years ( 1996). The Internet may prove a valuable tool in this endeavour, both to assist in increasing the availability of information overall, and as a medium for communication of southern ideas and analysis to a wide audience. In the light of the continuation of the current crises in Africa and the growing importance of humanitarian aid in the West’s responses to disasters and conflicts, it is vital that such initiatives are activated and supported. The inability of the Western media to portray accurately the realities of far-away conflicts, and the dangers presented by misrepresentation, make the development and support of southern media an urgent task.
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