Stephen Brown
Amid the welter of coverage of the Paris attacks it is easy to wonder whether in this age of 24 hour news and wall to wall reporting, we are any better informed than we were in the past when it took time for news to travel.
When we consider that the main purpose of any media organization is to grab the attention of its target audience, is it in any way a surprise that reasoned, considered investigation is pushed aside in favour of the simplified explanation, the fast tracked, the easy to digest. In the face of the complexity of events, the mainstream media is a blunt instrument indeed.
Nassim Taleb writes:
…Journalism may be the greatest plague we face today — as the world becomes more and more complicated and our minds are trained for more simplification.
I watched the Paris attacks unfold. The multiple perspectives on any event can be bewildering. But we also know that the report of the event becomes the event. As the playwright Brian Friel once wrote, ‘It is not the “facts” of history that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.” What else can the event be but what he hear and see of that event? And if we are not present what else do we have but the report.
One moment in particular in the past few days illustrates this for me. On Thursday 19th November on the 9pm news, Al Jazeera played the audio of the exchange between Hasna Aitboulahcen and the special forces besieging the apartment where she was staying. The exchange is reported in The Guardian in this way: ‘officers shouted to Aitboulahcen “where’s your friend?” and she replied: “It’s not my friend,” there was heavy gunfire followed by a large explosion.’
The problem lies in the partial nature of the report. Partial in both meanings of the word. For in the Al Jazeera audio we can clearly hear Aitboulahcen go on to shout what is translated as: ‘Let me get out of here please?’ These final words are deleted from the Guardian report. Strangely, they were also omitted from the Sky News report of the same incident and the BBC’s report of the incident. Both news stations played or reported the audio within 5 minutes of the Al Jazeera report. Both omit a line that could be crucial to understanding what happened.
It is curious that a suicide bomber would go to the lengths of denying her involvement with the alleged ‘mastermind’ of the plot and then go on to plead for her life with the Swat team. A suicide bomber who is pleading for her life? That is a complication too far.
Why would three major news outlets censor their report? There can only be two possible reasons. One is that their own source provided them with partial information. (This leads to the conclusion that their sources are one and the same). Or that this was a deliberate attempt to colour the story in a certain way.
Some might argue that it makes no difference what Aitboulahcen cried out in her final moments or that it does not matter how she met her end. But the reports are contradictory and partial. And if we cannot trust the major news outlets we should say so and apply this to everything else we read or hear from them.
Perhaps we will never know what happened in and around the apartment on that night. Perhaps it does not matter. Perhaps we are safer in the knowledge that an alleged terrorist is, in the appalling language of the media ‘neutralised’. But if we want to feel safe, would it not be better that the terrorist is captured if possible and then the potential for extracting more information is presented, information that may prevent further attacks? Is this not reason enough to be curious about the way the night panned out?
In the face of such complex events, do we allow ourselves to accept more and more simplification in hope that if will offer us a way of coming to terms with the seemingly incomprehensible, do we allow journalists to self censor, to save us from having to come to terms with that complexity? The answer seems to be firstly to stay alert when tuning into MSM and also that we ourselves take the trouble (if we have the time and resources) to do the reasoned, considered investigation that the MSM appears incapable of carrying out.
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