by Michelle Thomas
Over the last few months we have probably all seen enough footage of tanks, bombs and injured children to last a lifetime. There are some industries that inevitably thrive on the misery of others, and the news media is one of them. Not that I’m suggesting they all enjoy it (I suspect the frontline correspondents would probably rather be anywhere else when the missiles shake the floor), but you can’t escape the fact that wars equal ratings…
Unless you are like some of us who did everything they could to avoid television coverage of the war in Iraq. I had at least two reasons for doing this. The first was embodied in the reaction of my almost two-year-old when he inadvertently caught sight of a bomb exploding on the evening news and yelled, ‘Pow!’. That was the last he saw of the war coverage. Most parents don’t want their children to be surrounded by images of carnage and suffering, let alone to be excited by it.
The second reason is connected to the first. Television is an emotive medium. It relies on visceral reactions to make its point, and this is both its strength and its weakness. Some of us may never have understood the pain of the victims of war if we had not been confronted with the reality of it via the television. But for many others, the images were unnecessary: the point had been made, and continued exposure only emphasised our helplessness or, worse, made us numb.
I usually rely on newspapers to provide less sensational and more analytical information, but over the last few months I was even forced to limit myself in that regard. The coverage was just overwhelming. Extra sections every day at the start – and then on weekends – meant you needed a spare hour in the day just to keep up. The Internet news services suffered from the same problem: sheer overload.
In the end, news radio provided the best coverage. It mixed facts and analysis, expert opinion and reportage, without sensationalism and delivered it in an accessible format.
We have many media options open to us. As Christians it pays to be critical. We can take whatever comes and suffer the consequences. Or we can think carefully about the best way to stay informed and emotionally engaged with the world while limiting the damage it can inflict on us.
