Images of terror
"Isn't it terrible about Mumbai?" said the man in the BBC canteen, just hours after the first news of the attacks on Wednesday evening.
"Are there any pictures yet?"
Pictures. Of course. He wanted to see the pictures - and the attackers wanted him to see the pictures. They wanted us all to see the pictures: pictures of people, dead and dying; of security forces rushing about, not knowing where to turn; of great iconic buildings in flames.
The IRA used to talk of their major attacks on the UK mainland as "spectaculars". They were, literally, spectacles. We live in the age of the image, so those who seek to become globally visible must create global images.
Here's a (partial) list: 11 September, 2001. The Twin Towers in New York, smoke billowing from the upper floors before they come crashing to the ground. In your mind's eye, you can see the images now, can't you?
12 October 2002: The Bali nightclub bombings. Destroyed clubs, dazed tourists. More images.
11 March 2004: The Madrid train bombings. Mangled wreckage and twisted tracks. More lasting images.
7 July 2005: The London bombings. A red, double-decker bus, its roof ripped off by a suicide bomb. More images again.
And now 26 November 2008: The Mumbai bombings. The Taj Mahal Palace hotel, one of the most recognisable buildings in all of India, with flames and smoke billowing from the roof. Another image that our minds will not erase.
Approximately three and a half thousand people were killed in those five attacks. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the other hand, an estimated five million people have died as a direct and indirect result of conflict. In Darfur, an estimated 200,000 people have died. In Zimbabwe, we don't even have an estimate.
Do you have an image in your mind from Congo, Darfur, or Zimbabwe? No, nor do I.
And I'll tell you why. We journalists are good at reporting sudden events. We're good at surprises, the bigger the better. We call them "news".
We're not so good at things that happen slowly, or over a long period of time. We're also not very good at things that happen in places that are dangerous or difficult to reach, where there's no reliable power supply to recharge our cameras, mobile phones and satellite transmission equipment. In other words, we're much better in big modern cities. Cities like New York, Madrid, London and Mumbai.
I don't say you should blame us for it; it's just the way it is. And those who plan terrorist attacks know it. (They also know that they get a lot more coverage if they attack Westerners than if they attack "locals". Nearly twice as many people died in the Mumbai train station attacks in 2006 as died this week, but they were all "locals".)
(UPDATE: As of 29 November, the provisional death toll in Mumbai has reached nearly 200, approximately the same number as those killed two years ago.)
India has the third largest Muslim population in the world, after Indonesia and Pakistan. But unlike in Indonesia and Pakistan, India's Muslims are a minority, and many of them feel they are systematically discriminated against by the Hindu majority. If it turns out that the Mumbai attackers were Indian (I hate the label "home-grown"), that may be relevant.
If it turns out that there is a Pakistan connection, we have reason to be seriously worried. The not-very-experienced Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower, has been trying to improve relations with India. If someone in Pakistan is trying to stop him by killing scores of Indian citizens, he's in big trouble.
It may take a while before we know who was behind the Mumbai attacks. We may never know for sure. But when we remind ourselves that both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, we have to hope that cool heads will prevail.
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Your colleague on the News Hour this morning (at 9am New york time) spent valuable news time trying to tie the American religious group at Chabad House to the Israeli government.
Does it ever bother you that your fellow broadcasters are so blatantly anti-Semitic?
(and will go out of their way to turn BBC 'news' into obvious bias speech)
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It's not only the "reliable power supply to recharge our cameras, mobile phones and satellite transmission equipment." It's also the "glamour" that keeps the averge hack reporting from the big centres. And not only the glamour, it's also the feeling that they are "cutting edge" and "relevant."
We see through it all. Many of the news media, including the BBC, don't have the slightest idea of what good journalism is about. Take the war in Lebanon in 2006, as an example. The BBC and other media saw themselves as grimly and heroically bringing us the "facts" of Israeli "aggression" and Hezbollah "resistance," while anyone who knows anything about the subject is aware that Hezbollah is an Iranian-supported terror group sworn to the destruction of Israel. The BBC in particular quickly transformed itself into a propaganda machine pumping out PR for Hezbollah while writing about the Israelis with something approaching contempt.
And how romantic it is to have an image of oneself as the tough correspondent hammering out one's condemnation of Israel on a laptop in Beirut with Israeli bombs falling everywhere. (Except that they were pinpoint attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in the city, but hell, why mention that? Spoils the image one is trying so hard to present.)
Your Orla Guerin was so keen to join the action that she left her post in South Africa to report from Lebanon on an allegedly destroyed village. It was not dstroyed but why let the facts get in the way of anti-Israel spin?
BBC reporters may or may not be anti-Semitic. But there is no doubt that many of them are obsessively anti-Israel - which often amounts to the same thing.
And the BBC typically did its utmost to minimise and distort the impact of the terrorist atrocity in Bombay.
Here's the World Service on Friday:
…where "Islamic militants" have taken hostages…
…these "young men" came ashore….
…"determined gunmen" struck…
I find those last two absolutely unbelievable. So is the fact that the BBC has a caption to a photo on one of the website articles with the words "Audacious Attack." If the BBC wants to use adjectives, how about murderous or barbaric? How about a term that actually describes the attack?
Yes, Mr. Lustig, the media is deficient. But the rot runs a lot deeper than you suggest.
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Did the man in the canteen ask "Isn't it terrible about Mumbai?" or was he brave enough to say Bombay?
I'd dearly like to know whether it is a banned name in the BBC. It seems we are being brainwashed into discarding Bombay for "the Indian city of Mumbai".
I dare you to say Bombay, Robin, on air!!
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I hope that cool heads will prevail in Pakistan and India too.
The Ambassador of Pakistan was quick to deny that the terrorists came from Pakistan on Newsnight which doesn't bode well for any co-operation between India and Pakistan.
There is a possibility that the terrorists came from or were trained in Pakistan.
Pakistan did little to solve the problem of Al-Qaeda networks under General Musharraf, one of the possible reasons why was because it was thought that the military aid that they were receiving from the US would have stopped if they had any success.
Has Tariq Ali been asked to comment on these events on the BBC recently?
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Robin,
Not sure if you remember me, I met you at Uni Sussex a few weeks ago. I wanted to say that it feels good to hear a professional admit that important events and situations sometimes don't make it to the surface of the news because of the lack of imagery, immediacy or 'proximity.' I decided I really wanted to be a journalist when I realized that I could use the career to help reinforce just how connected we all really are. Thanks for your work, it continues to encourage and motivate me.
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Mr. Lustig raises an essential point: terror is usually done for publicity- thus decapitation and other charming acts are performed for cameras.
Should the proper media reaction be tabloid or factual? For respectable media, it would be beneficial to print the facts and downplay the gory details.
On the positive side, one might interview revolutionary leaders who are not known for violent actions.
His secondary topic involves the relations between Muslims and Hindus in India. This is a story of many centuries. Hindu nationalism is making the former rulers a scapegoat for their fascist program.
Here, we have illustrated the long, grinding and unwinding of policy that requires journalist backgrounders.
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