THE TELEVISION MULTIPLIER EFFECT
The media: Paul Johnson
raises awkward questions about coverage of political unrest
TELEVISION is a 'hot' medium, which raises the emotional temperature, particu- larly when covering public events, in a way the press and radio have never been able to do. Because it is hot, it is in danger of becoming a great killer, especially behind the Iron Curtain, where, after decades of unsuccessful Communist rule, the people are stirring and revolution is in the air. We should have learned from the big American race-riots of the 1960s, a lesson repeated on a smaller scale in British inner cities in the early 1980s, that televised mob-violence produces copycat riots in places where roughly the same conditions exist. It also has the effect of encouraging rioters to be more daring and destructive. But so far as I know no one in a position of authority or influence has ever suggested here or in the US that television coverage of such incidents should be limited to avoid this inherent tendency of incitement to riot.
Behind the Iron Curtain, however, they must be thinking quite hard about the problem. Glasnost, which is genuine but limited, could prove a threat to peres- troika, which so far has been totally unsuc- cessful. In Stalin's day, food-riots and protests against the regime's brutality did occur occasionally but nothing was known of them outside their localities until years later. Now such incidents are usually re- ported more or less immediately. But they are not yet televised. The violence in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Soviet Asia has been on a large scale but the Western press and television have not been allowed to cover it. In some cases Soviet dissidents have made videos which have later been seen on Western television, though not in Russia. So the television `multiplier effect' has been absent. But what if a really serious riot occurs in Moscow, where many Western organisa- tions already have television and film crews in place? They have been permitted to film minor disturbances and to interview dissi- dents and opposition members of the new Soviet parliament. What they produce is not seen in Russia but the fact that they are there at all, filming and transmitting, gives a huge boost to the morale of those who want to transform the regime completely or bring it down. If a sizeable fraction of the Muscovites were to make trouble, the Western television multiplier would oper- ate immediately.
That is precisely what happened in Peking. Soon after the students began their protest, they were not merely making their views known to the regime but 'perform- ing' in living-rooms all over the world. It produced some of the most memorable and moving television in the history of the medium and, when the crackdown began, unforgettable moments of heroism on the part of students and workers, captured with great courage and resourcefulness by Western television reporters and crews. All honour to them. But the question ought to be asked: if virtually unrestricted television had not been present, to hot up the political temperature and encourage the students to follow the advice of Danton `de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!' would the movement have ended in mass-murder and the Red Terror that is now sweeping China's cities? After all, the Chinese regime, odious and brutal though it is, had a strong vested interest in allowing the process of econo- mic reform to continue. It was even pre- pared to permit some political effervesc- ence too as its long hesitations and divi- sions about whether or not to go for the students indicate. If television had been absent, and the demos had simply been reported, in print and on radio, it is `I'm getting terrible "evening sickness"....' arguable that they would have continued in a comparatively low-key, have made their point in a way the regime could have borne, and so helped to liberalise it furth- er. As it is, with the television multiplier, the students were encouraged to challenge the regime head-on, the workers joined it, the regime panicked, the hard men climbed right back into the saddle, and thousands died. Now more will be hanged or imprisoned for life, as the repression gets under way, Western television footage — doubtless video-recorded in Chinese embassies — being used to identify them. The cause of reform in China has been put back, perhaps for many years, and the risks of civil war and a return to warlordism increased. For us, in our safe, comfortable armchairs, it was exciting to watch the Chinese political theatre but the Chinese themselves have had to pay a heavy price for our privilege.
Those who believe that television has an inherent right to do anything it likes in the name of freedom of the media should ponder the implications of this tragedy. Television people have not yet learned to think through the implications of what they do when they cover potentially explosive situations or actual violence. Their only object appears to be to get the most dramatic possible pictures, regardless of the consequences: in short, it is ratings rather than responsibility which governs them. They treat any restrictions on their activities, however motivated, as cen- sorship and therefore immoral. But in South Africa, for instance, they have been proved quite wrong. There, the imposition of reporting restrictions, especially on tele- vision, has effectively stopped the large- scale mass violence which was becoming endemic in the townships, and so saved hundreds, probably thousands of lives, nearly all of them black. Equally impor- tant, the process of reform has continued, rather than being reversed. No one, so far as I can see on my periodic visits there, is any less well-informed in consequence. What has been stopped, or reduced, is not so much news-gathering as unwitting in- citements to kill.
Ulster raises similar issues. The overdue decision to stop television providing a platform for IRA mass-murderers has been denounced by apologists for the media as censorship (though with not much convic- tion). The public supports the ban, con- sidering that human lives are more impor- tant than the self-esteem of media people. My view is that limitations on television coverage of Ulster violence-culture, such as IRA funerals and Orange marches, should be extended. It is arguable that, but for the television multiplier effects, those two young corporals who blundered into the IRA funeral and were cruelly put to death, would be alive today. How many more innocent lives must be sacrificed on the Molloch-god altar of media triumphal- ism?
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