Martin Henry JAMAICA WAS host to a UNESCO international two-day conference to mark World Press Freedom Day, which was Saturday, May 3. The world has just lived through the most media-covered war in history. Last Thursday, this newspaper carried on its front page, from the dozens of available photographs, a telling close-up shot of Finance Minister Dr. Omar Davies examining his eyeglasses before delivering his closing speech of the Budget Debate.
As the Minister examined his glasses through which he views the world in focus, so do we see the world largely through the lenses of mass media. What should we focus on? In what details should we examine particular issues and events? From what angle should we view issues and events? And what are we not seeing?
The conflict in Iraq brought media perspectives into sharp focus. Many felt that American mass media had become merely the public relations arm, indeed the propaganda department, of the US military and government. Many, like myself, settled for the BBC as media of choice and further settled for pretty low dosages of the endless fill time, fill space coverage.
Almost nothing got to us from the Iraqi military side of the conflict. One obvious obstacle was the sheer inaccessibility of the armed forces of a closed regime to Western journalists. But also, of course, the Western media perspective, by and large, was that the coalition forces were 'our people'. The embedding of journalists in the military would have limited their scope on the one hand but also gave them access to operations on one side with security that those who attempted free-roving in a theatre of war could only dream of.
The Arab/Muslim world of the Middle East would have received a very different picture of the conflict.
A FAIR SUMMARY
On the local scene, it would be hard to find anyone able to provide a fair summary of the good news in a difficult Budget. The Minister was keenly aware that his tenth Budget was the most difficult and challenging and that yard and 'broad were tuning in to learn what he was coming with. Fortunately, there was full live coverage on many channels so those who cared to could take the trouble to find out firsthand what the Budget held and draw their own conclusions about its implications. The vast majority, even among those who followed live coverage, would have relied on media reportage and analyses to tell them what was said and what it means.
MEDIA-PRIMED
The country was media-primed, pre-Budget, for a hard tax package. And post-Budget the coverage has been extensively dominated by objections to the less than what was anticipated tax package. These may very well be the most vital issues from the perspectives of citizens/taxpayers/media
consumers. But the question of what falls out of focus, gets little focus, or may not be seen at all through media lenses and thus loses none of its force and relevance.
The importance of a free (and responsible) press for a free (and responsible), democratic society was very clearly understood among the 18th century thinkers about and framers of such a society. Hence the idea of the press (newspapers then) as the Fourth Estate and the pronouncement in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." The free press has political functions and is inextricably part of the political framework of modern democratic societies. It works not only antagonistically against the powers of government but works collaboratively with the public authority in the execution of their respective responsibilities- a perpetual tension which Jamaican-born media and communications scholar, Stuart Hall, has extensively examined in his work.
Back to the Budget Debate for a simple example: The Minister of Finance knows that he absolutely needs mass media to get his message out to his local and international audiences and in the most favourable light possible. But the media has a responsibility to critically assess the presentation. With how much balance, fairness and thoroughness is the question.
'FRAMING'
Drs. Marjan de Bruin, who now heads the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies, knowing my interest in the subject, has kindly given me access to the book, "Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and our Understanding of the Social World". At J$7,000, this has to be the most expensive book that I have read. And it is not even antique; it is a 2001 publication!
"Framing" has emerged as a major concept in media discourse, perhaps a "paradigm" in the language of the business of academic discourse. "Framing", according to one contributor to the book which is a collection of papers, "refers to the way events and issues are organised and made sense of, especially by media, media professionals, and their audiences." Or, in more academic and extensive terms: "Framing is concerned with the way interests, communicators, sources, and culture combine to yield coherent ways of understanding the world, which are developed using all the available verbal and visual symbolic resources."
It is remarkable the degree to which we see the world through media lenses without even noticing that this is so! In the media context, another writer says, "A frame is a central organising idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration."
Two other contributors together discuss the convergence of the older idea of agenda-setting by the media with the newer idea of framing. What are the (real) issues? And in what framework of thought shall we present and discuss them? "The media's agenda sets the public's agenda." "The degree of emphasis placed on issues in the mass media influences the priority accorded these issues by the public". One could easily have thought, for instance, that the only conflict in the world over the last six weeks was the conflict in Iraq. The founder of The Congo Patrice Lumumba's daughter was carried by the BBC earlier this week complaining that the world had forgotten her country. And what's happening in Afghanistan?
To take a different kind of example from the local scene, media has been quietly, almost without conscious notice by the public, but very effectively reframing the agenda item of homosexuality away from the old legal, religious and cultural frame into a human rights and tolerance frame.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
