In our democracies, which are under the sway of the media, humanitarian
arguments now dictate the policies of govemments and prescribe the sorry
"Audimat diplomacy" (Audimat conducts surveys of various groups of TV
viewers - trans.), with the serious risks that this implies. Professor
George F. Kennan warned: "If American policy and the commitment of our
ammed forces outside our countries is detemmined by the commercial
television industry, and if it whips up people's emotions, there will be
no more responsible government." Along these same lines, a high-ranking
official in the US State Department recently revealed that "President
Clinton's strategy is for Bosnia at all costs not to be the headline news
in the major media. Every day that Bosnia is not mentioned on the TV news
represents a success." The aim of this strategy is to head off
intervention in former Yugoslavia under pressure from the media
machinery.
Should we be sorry if the shock value of the news rouses leaders from
their lethargy? From a theoretical standpoint, the answer is No, for
indeed one of the principal functions of the Fourth Estate is to raise
its voice on behalf of democratic values. However, the majority of the
media could not boast as lofty a function; they often become harmfully
sidetracked and are not worthy of it. Immediacy, sensationalism,
fragmentation, oversimplification, intemationalization and treatment of
news as a commodity are the characteristics of information which
structurally does not differentiate between what is true and what is
false. The reporting of some recent events leads us to this conclusion,
such as T'ien-an Men Square, Timisoara, the Gulf War, Kurdistan, Somalia,
and even the attack on the Sarajevo marketplace which the major media
blamed on the Muslims....
The system of information is distorted; it is dominated by television, trapped by illusion and shows things without insight. It in fact excludes what is not shown from the sphere of reality. Here is one example of this distortion: in February, the prestigiousAmerican networkCBS sent a team of journalists toLillehammer to cover the dubious duel between two Olympic figure skaters rather than sending them to Sarajevo to follow up on the consequences of the UN ultimatum....
This unreliable system is now on thc brink of a radical revolution with the appearance of a multimedia system which some compare to Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. The combination of television, computers, and telephones is creating a new machine for communications, which operates on the principle of interfacing and relies on the performance of digital processing. Such a combination of the innumerable possibilities of different media signifies a break with thc earlier system and could well disrupt the entire sphere of communications. T he economic stakes are enormous, and this has been rcalized by US President Bill Clinton, who has launched an ambitious project for electronic networks so as to regain for the IJnited States a leading role in this industry of thc future.
Giants in the domain of telephone communications, cable television, computer processing, video and motion pictures are joining forces. Takeovers and mergers are occurring every day, involving tens of billions of dollars; in five years' time, there will only be a dozen firms left.... There are those who dream of a perfect marketplace of inf`ormation and communications, which will be completely integrated and without borders, thanks to electronic and satellite networks, and which will be in continuous operation; as they conceive it, it will be constructed on the model of the capital market and the continuous inflow of financial resources....
Europe has taken significant steps in order not to be left behind, as happened in the North-South conflict in the 1970s, when the battle (which was lost) of the New World Order was being wagod in the field of information and communications. Here as well the logic of the industrial giant takes precedence over all else; this could be seen in France in February, when control was taken away at Canal Plus.
Nor has the press been spared. Many major newspapers already belong to megagroups in the communications field: the London Times is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and Rome's la Republica is controlled by Carlo de Benedetti's Olivetti Corporation. Others, such as London's The Independent, are a constant target. Are the rare newspapers in France which are still independent, albeit weakened by a drastic decline in revenues from advertisements, safe from the greed of financial moguls? This new mechanism in communications and the return of monopolies is quite rightly a cause of citizen concern. They are mindful of the warnings made by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley about the specious progress of a world which is ruled by thougAt police. They are feartul that a subtle thought control might take hold of'the entire planet. In the great industrial design dreamed up by company executives in their moments of leisure, all agree that information is more than anything else a commodity, and that this attribute takes precedence over the fundamental mission of the media, which is to provide insight and enrich the democratic debate.