Media Fear

First broadcast on Ex-Pat Radio, Krakow, August 2007

For as long as I can remember, the media has misused and overused the words ‘fear’ and ‘chaos’, usually in screaming headlines and usually unnecessarily, hyperbolically. And whilst I can only comment on the British media, I am pretty sure the situation is the same in other, principally Western, countries.

This predilection for extreme, scary words can partly be explained by the media’s apparent need to grab our attention, to excite and shock: as our blood pressure rises, so, it seems, does newspaper circulation. In Britain, at least, we are all used to such headlines as “Transport chaos as two inches of snow fall in a single day!” Now, whilst I freely admit that the combination of a little inclement weather and Britain’s inadequate transport system can indeed cause sudden problems, the use of the precise word chaos is nothing more than an over-worn cliché and we, the reader, can usually make up our own minds about the real meaning of the word chaos (the snow causing you to arrive at work an hour late, for example, as opposed to being plunged suddenly into a primeval state of disorder and inherent unpredictability). But then why do the media love this word so much? Is it merely because they can’t help sensationalising news stories or is it also because the word ‘chaos’ unsettles us, frightens us?

The second scary word beloved by the media is ‘fear’. Fear, it seems to me, is quite different from chaos in its effect upon the listener or reader. To be sure, the use of the word ‘fear’ is sometimes entirely appropriate to the article. But usually it is used with the sole intention of generating fear (or anxiety) itself: literal, physiological, emotional fear. Take another sample headline: “Fears continue to grow over the whereabouts of a missing teenager”, or this one: “A group of mountain-climbers are feared to have died last night” (in passing, we may note the media’s use of the abstract noun ‘fear’ as a verb, thus allowing its use in an ever-widening range of situations). Such anxiety-inducing headlines as these are everyday occurrences and we are passively complicit: we hand over our money, pick up a paper and spread the virus in pockets and briefcases or allow these disturbing words and emotions to be transmitted and broadcast onto our TVs and laptops.

And, in the end, are these ‘human interest’ stories in fact fearful? I don’t think they are. Yes, of course I am sorry that a young woman may have been abducted or that a party of mountain-climbers have perished several hundred or thousand miles away but I would argue that many such quote “news items” unquote are of little or no interest to the rest of us. Do you really wish to be notified of every distant abduction, house fire, murder and cot death in the country – or world, for that matter? Yes, knowledge is indeed power and in many ways the global village is a beneficial reality. We may choose to send a loving thought or donation to the disaster appeal fund but, be honest, more often, we don’t. Most of us, most of the time, simply allow a flow of sentiment to wash steadily over us, tut-tutting as we are led by the hand to the next apparently necessary piece of chaos or fear.

And even if we did wish to keep informed of every sad, tragic and fearful global occurrence, we simply don’t have the time or the attention-spans. The media is well aware of this: notice how they all seem to agree upon a certain story to be fed to us: hourly, daily, weekly, relentlessly.

The thing about ‘fear’ is, that like forest-fires and lies, it spreads quickly and easily. It has long been commonplace for fear to be inserted into what would otherwise be a much more mundane news story: for example “It is feared that several hospitals may close this year” et cetera. What’s wrong with using another, more expressive and accurate verb? “It is thought, believed, rumoured” etc. The answer, of course, is that wouldn’t be as sensational, not so … scary. Someone, somewhere, wants you to be afraid.

And yet it would seem that it’s not enough any more to be merely afraid. You have to be terrified. Yes, ‘terror’ is the new word, the new thing. Suddenly, terror is on everyone’s lips. For the media, for politicians and advertisers, fear is … sexy. Open your paper, turn on your TV, check the net: what do you see? ‘Terror!’ Of course, terror’s been around for quite a while. Terrorists. IRA terrorists, for example. Us Brits grew up with that, got used to it, even. And they were real enough, those terrorists. In Northern Ireland alone, there are thousands of gravestones, ruined lives and families to testify to the reality of the terrorist’s bullet and bomb. But the trouble with terrorists is that they can be beaten or negotiated with. The terrorists, at some point, stop being terrorists: they die, grow old, renounce violence or become politicians. History shows that there is always an end to terrorism. But the need for terror - in some minds, at least - is never-ending. The vacuum in our minds must be filled – by those in power, by those with power, by those who want - and are determined – to keep their power.

‘The War On Terror’. Every day for the past four or five years, we have heard about the war on terror – terror which is not an army, not flesh and blood, but ‘terror’, grammatically, an abstract noun. Like stupidity or deceit. Soldiers and civilians die every day. And what killed them? According to your government, according to your media, terror: an undefined, unknowable, unbeatable force. You see, as soon as you defeat terror here, terror pops up over there! And how do you know? Because you’re told, you’re told to know, by the media – sorry, by the government.

There is real fighting and real bloodshed every hour of the day: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in a dozen other ‘terror-filled places’ of the world. In fact, the war on terror begins anew every morning: at every breakfast table, every sitting-room and every tube-train and tram in the land. It’s a mighty battle, to be sure. The Long War. It’s a battle for hearts and minds, principally minds – mine and yours. Every time you read, and accept without questioning, the words chaos, fear, terror, the war on terror, you unconsciously help strengthen the concept, and a concept, if believed in by enough people for a long enough time, becomes and stays a reality.

Terror is a state of mind. Choose your own state of mind. Do not believe in terror and certainly do not believe in the thing called the war on terror. These things simply do not – cannot – exist, unless you, by your thoughts, words and actions, choose to give them life. Remember what the man said? “The revolution will not be televised”. The revolution, the battleground, is in our heads, in our minds, and not, ultimately, on the streets on Basra and Baghdad. What we all believe to be true, what we all believe to be true and necessary things in this world, these beliefs, opinions and attitudes are where the real battle takes place. It began the day you first opened your eyes all those years ago, is influenced by every thought, word and deed and will continue, as long as you are capable of free and independent thought.

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, an elite member of the ruling totalitarian party sets out the desired mentality of the everyday citizen …

Quote. ‘It is necessary that the Party member be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.’ Unquote.

In 1984, there exists a state of perpetual, but carefully-managed and orchestrated warfare between three global power blocs. Such a situation is uncomfortably close to that of ‘The Long War’, George Bush’s short-lived re-classification of the war on terror, a war which cannot be won either by grammatical definition (terror being an abstract noun) or because, in fact, it is not in the interests of a small yet hugely powerful section of global society. And why is it not in certain interests that the war be won? 1984 again: quote “If the High … are to keep their places permanently – then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” Unquote. In a world where foreign forces invade and continue to occupy sovereign nations in breach of international law and on the pretext of what have long turned out to be lies, fuelled in reality by the desire for a consolidation of regional power, well, I think that we too exist within such a controlled insanity.

This article is not meant to be a polemic or rant against the Western presence in the Middle East. It is, rather, a gentle and, I hope, timely reminder: always to think for yourself, to remain alert to what exactly you do and don’t believe to be true, to keep the media, the government and its many systems of misinformation well at arm’s length. And most essentially, I mean to be positive. This is not 1984, this is reality. And in reality, you get to write a new page every day. Choose your words with care.