Security and media perceptions
Mainstream media, Indian and Western, have attacked the trend in politics to convert national security concerns into partisan gains.
Dasu Krishnamoorty
In today¿s extremely troubled world, mass media¿s surveillance function overtakes their other functions, keeping the government and the people informed of brewing unrest. Media can help them understand and neutralize that unrest before it translates itself into terrorism. The success of a nation¿s security effort, in the end, depends on how all the three, the government, media and society, perceive a threat and respond to it. It is this co-ordination that led to the British discovery of a terrorist plot to bomb 10 US-bound jet planes over the Atlantic and demonstrated the gains of a policy that is wedded primarily to national security abjuring partisan and populist politics that hamstring intelligence effort anywhere.
Mainstream media, Indian and Western, have attacked the trend in politics to convert national security concerns into partisan gains. After a few words of mandatory criticism of terrorism, the New York Times devoted the rest of its editorial to Dick Cheney¿s indiscreet reference to Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman¿ defeat at the primaries, claiming, ?In rejecting Mr. Lieberman, who supported the war in Iraq, the Democrats were encouraging the Al Qaeda types.? Point-scoring from either side isn¿t very useful, said the Washington Post. ?Over the past couple of years, as the threat seemed to recede, maybe it seemed okay to shape positions on terrorism based on polling results and electoral prospects,? the Post said.
In turn, the Wall Street Journal ragged the Democrats. Attacking Sen. Edward Kennedy and leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate Harry Reid for terming Bush policies as ¿misguided,¿ the Journal said, ?Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.? Media stances too have become too predictable.
In Britain, the Times, London, and Guardian joined hands in praising the efforts of the British police in cracking the savage plot. While Guardian sounded more protective of civil liberties, the Times said, ?There will also be critics and cynics who are not Muslim, who would like to believe that if only foreign policy would change, the threat would immediately recede and the extremism evaporate. Those who would commit mass murder are not to be appeased by this or that policy fluctuation.? Writing for AlterNet.com., John Tirman viewed the problem differently: ?It is not a religious movement, it is not fundamentalism. These are thin veneers. It is at root sheer violence undertaken by young men resentful of many things (not least the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon) and ready to kill in return.?
We saw what price the people of Mumbai had to pay for flawed security diagnoses. Discussing the British success, the American media have been quick enough to point out holes in the surveillance efforts of the Bush administration as did the Indian media about Mumbai blasts. US media highlighted how counterproductive overkill could be. The Los Angeles Times blamed the White House for using the Iraq war as a cheap political instrument and calling ?a few too many triumphant press conferences that turned out to be little more than amateurs incapable of pulling off the attacks they fantasized about.? Or, as the Baltimore Sun put it, ?There have been too many overblown alarms in the past several years.? Thus, the impressive US record of successfully shielding the country against 9/11 repeating itself lost its shine due to the tendency of the White House to cry wolf too frequently.
The Boston Globe revealed a startling piece of information: aviation security experts have long been aware of the liquid bomb threat but have done little to ensure safety. The New York Times came up with a reminder the next morning, saying, ?Both the government and the aviation industry have been aware of the threat for years but have done little to prepare for it.? The Globe also warned the administration of the danger of casually checking commercial cargo that passenger planes carry in their holds. According to the Globe, just a tiny percentage of these goods are inspected. This is positive journalism.
The Wall Street Journal found it opportune to launch a frontal attack against NYT. The newspaper justified Bush¿s surveillance programmes by the results they have achieved so far: preventing a repeat of 9/11. Referring to NYT¿s disclosure of wire tapping, the Journal said, ?Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.?
But media sometimes forget how amateurish it would be to be too predictable. Terrorist wars---wars they are by their own admission---are different from the conventional. They have no borders and no bases that could be neutralized. As Tavleen Singh said, ?After 9/11 most Western countries realized that they were fighting a war and not a small group of lunatics.? Where, when and why terrorists strike is unknown except to ivory tower stargazers. Operating in such darkness, countries cannot but take measures to maximize the safety of its people. These steps will seem far-fetched in the short term but would have saved thousands of lives in the long term.
Even while appreciating Blair¿s anti-terrorist drive as resolute, the Guardian attached a rider: government should respect ?the defence of principles that have defined this country and served it well.? Implied in this caution is a not finely veiled allegation that it had not been the case. The Washington Post was more explicit and called for a balance between police investigations and civil liberties.
Analyzing the Mumbai blasts, the Indian media too presented a mosaic of views similar in many ways to media responses in Britain and the United States. The Hindu and the Tribune, though carried away by Mumbai¿s resilience, soon came down to earth to stress the need for vigilance. The Tribune complained that the intelligence agencies had miserably failed to sniff out the attackers. The Hindu thought that this was the time for India to leverage growing international outrage to compel Pakistan to deliver on its promises to end terrorism. Very good. But why the cliché ´hat Mumbai¿s residents had denied the perpetrators of terror their strategic objective: a major communal riot? These generalizations befit a magazine like the Readers¿ Digest and not the Hindu.
The Indian media was critical of governments subordinating security to politics. The Indian Express minced no words: ?So nice of the government to admit there¿s a security threat. Now will it do something about it? A lot people in the current ruling establishment join Shivraj Patil in thinking that national security is a matter of adopting the right kind of political tone. For them, India becoming a recruitment ground for terrorists ? as our columnist explains ? will remain irrelevant until a suitable way is found of politically packaging this fact.? The Hindustan Times warned, ?Something needs to be done urgently about the jehad factory next door. Within the country, there is need to confront the growing incidence of home-grown Islamic fundamentalist militancy.?
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