Real-Time Technology and Conflict Coverage:
The Ominous Paradox

The developed world has more real-time technology and capability than it has ever had to cover crises and conflicts in the developing world. The contrast with the timescale of conflict reporting, say, 50 years ago, is profound. Notebooks and pencils107 have been replaced by laptop computers with modems and communication cards that can transmit instantly by satellite phone. News organisations have highly mobile satellite TV transmission systems that can broadcast from anywhere. TV news pictures can now be broadcast on telephone lines, albeit slowly and not in real time.108 Journalists from the richer news organisations travel with satellite telephones the size of a briefcase. There is more ability, mobility, and technology to cover and beam back more substate horrors in this world.

As a result, TV news coverage suffers from what this author has christened a "supermarket of war video."109 The proliferation of Hi-8 video cameras (small, highly portable, and easily hidden) and a new generation of low-cost digital video (DVC) hand cameras, means that the information no longer has to be provided by expensive professional sources.110

From a matrix of incoming video on their desktop video-screens, journalists in a TV newsroom can pick and choose, just like walking down the supermarket aisles: One day, Nagorno-Karabakh, the next day, Tajikistan, Georgia, Chechnya, or Afghanistan, then a bit of Angola, Liberia, Yemen, or perhaps Algeria, if we are lucky. On many days, all of this streams relentlessly into the TV news machines from agencies. The task of filtering it all quickly is mind-boggling, given the mass of video and the short time usually available.

As news organisations and audiences become more domestically oriented111 (or is it numbed and dulled to the misery of people in whom they have no interest?112), there is also growing evidence of an inverse relationship between the wealth of raw TV coverage and how much of it is actually transmitted as anything more than a few seconds of subliminal video with no context or detail. There is more video available from more conflicts but less editorial interest in transmitting it, except on specialist, non -- mass market programmes like Channel 4 News in the UK or the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS and Ted Koppel's Nightline on ABC in the U.S.

Although not yet proven conclusively, there may be a further ominous trend. Technology has facilitated the globalisation of the news business. In TV, international news channels like CNN, BBC World, and NBC Superchannel are lined up for battle on what this author has labeled the new Wild West broadcasting frontier via satellite and cable. In theory, this situation should allow comprehensive coverage of global issues. Again, in theory, this coverage should include early warning of conflicts and any efforts at prevention, along with detailed reporting of conflicts that have erupted in defiance of all diplomatic efforts (assuming there were some!).

However, with the explosion of media outlets wiring the world, information technology experts believe we may now be experiencing an unexpected phenomenon, namely, that except for the elites, globalisation promotes greater parochialisation in public perceptions and interests.113 If correct, this is likely to further limit media coverage of conflicts.


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