Storytelling #3

The narrow Eurocentric perspective that permeates our news reporting and our government policies comes with serious consequences. Take for example two of the major world stories that are dominating our news and the thoughts of our politicians. 

The Middle East feels as if it just careens from one political disaster to another. At present ISIS's actions and activities dominate the news from that part of the world. It is not that the Palestinian question has been resolved or that the injustices and cruelties of the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assadare have by some magic disappeared, they have just moved from the front pages of our various news venues and apparently from the short term memories of our politicians. Without question ISIS's activities are horrendous and obscene. Contrary to their claims that they have some historical validity, and that their actions are based on the Koran, they stand alone, fabricating their rationalizations out of whatever insanity or desperation drives them. The fact that they appear to have reasonably quickly become the predominant danger in the Middle East is both a result of the West ignoring much of what has been happening in that area for the past six or seven years and our inability to follow two or more plot lines at the same time.

A cynic might wonder if someone decided five months ago that we would need to bomb and then attack them on the ground and therefore orchestrated the ever increasing anxiety required to produce the desired results. To achieve the heightened level of awareness and concern required for us to agree that action is required, we become inundated with hyperbole and exaggeration to the saturation point.  At some point it becomes very difficult not to agree that we need to bomb (and thereby kill some civilians) both because we have not been told any other side to the story and to not agree makes us appear unpatriotic. 

It is not that ISIS is not a problem, it is just that it is not the only problem. Until we are prepared to see the Middle East as a complex world with rich stories going back long before the Christian era - as a society with values and political agendas that are different (different does not mean bad) than the West's, our little interventions will only serve to meet someone's short term goals and create more chaos for everyone else. When we shape someone else’s narrative based on what we think it should be, we can be sure that only we will benefit.

A potential international disaster that could affect Canada's health and wellbeing and perhaps even its economy, is the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The Canadian government and the news sources talk about it - but if one listens closely to the rhetoric, we are helping because those countries most affected by the outbreak do not have the resources to fight the disease by themselves. But we don’t really need to be concerned about it or the consequences for the people affected by it. Unlike the ISIS “war” in the Middle East, the Elbola outbreak is not being made our problem, we are not being told that our lifestyles and our security is being threatened. It is happening somewhere over there.

So we will give them a little bit of help, slowly and when we get around to it. The government has the capacity to ship six jets, a few tankers and all of the related personnel to Iraq within a few weeks but it can't figure out how to get some face shields to West Africa in a month. The government can plan on spending over $300 million to bomb the dessert, but can only find five million to help out Africa.

Sociologists discuss something they refer to as moral panic which can be “defined as an episode, often triggered by alarming media stories and reinforced by reactive laws and public policy, of exaggerated or misdirected public concern, anxiety, fear, or anger over a perceived threat to social order” (Krinsky). In both the case of ISIS and of Ebola, the narrative that the media choses to tell shapes our concern. In one case we, as a collective, become concerned and if past history is any guide are prepared to bomb (murder via collateral damage) harmless civilians and perhaps become involved in an endless excursion into another foreign country; one in which we have blindly refused to learn about or understand.  In the other case we have equally as blindly refused to accept that (1) we may have some need to be concerned about our own health and safety and (2) that there are potentially thousands of people going to die because we have not reacted fast enough.

My only question is: who or what “guides” the media to decide what narrative to focus on?