Role of Media in Policy Making - Essay Example

Role of Media in Policy Making Introduction Without any doubts, media holds extensive powers to affect and mold our lives. Through television and internet, which are two most popular and impactful forms of media, they can now reach into every corner of our lives. Quite understandably, our culture, thoughts, fashion, cuisines, life style, ethical values, dreams, speech, expectations, perceptions and every thing else would resemblance a striking similarity with what we see through these mediums. Over the past century, as the world has divided into many new nations and democracy has been strengthening at least on paper in various countries, mass media has come into existence (Strobel, pp. 181-185, 1997). Moreover, over the past few decades, the expansion and strengthening of global news channels like CNN, BCC, Fox News, Sky and others have been able to create an environment where viewers are bombarded with international news as it happens (Voltmer & European Consortium for Political Research, pp. 64-69, 2006). In addition, the recent advent of breaking news has further decreased the time that took this news broadcast to reach to the global viewers. Now people receive news as it happens and every important happening spreads like fire everywhere. Quite clearly, people are reactive in nature and since they are living in this world of instant information, quick travel, faster processing, and rapid change and on the spot solutions, they expect the same from politicians as well (Herbert, pp. 159-164, 2000). Media persuades people to put pressure on the government to provide instant solutions to problems that are impossible to solve overnight. However, due to the keenness of their people, governments and policy makers have nothing to do but to keep a track on all the news bulletins and reports, and take immediate and visible actions on the highlighted issues. As James Baker, the Former Secretary of State said, "The one thing it does is to drive policymakers to have a policy position. I would have to articulate it very quickly. You are in real-time mode. You don't have time to reflect” (Jaramillo, pp. 363-367, 2009). Consequently, it would be unwise to say that the media of today has absolutely no impact on the domestic and foreign policies of the state. Therefore, this paper will go on a step further and would try to determine the dynamics, fundamentals, and theories about this impact with looking at some major examples in the same regard. Discussion Quite understandably, the media are populist in nature and it has, and it will always bring up themes that attract and appeal to the majority of its audience, for example, themes like violence, power, wealth, corruption, scandals, inequalities and other forms of dramatization and sensitization (Robinson, pp. 254-258, 2002). Important here to note is the point of ownership of this media. Research reveals that most of the news media in the west, by their origin, were entrepreneurial endeavors by individuals, often supported by many venture capitalists and private investors. Luce of Time, Inc., Paley of CBS; the Hearst newspaper chain; the Chandlers' Los Angeles Times are some prominent examples from the early media (Voltmer & European Consortium for Political Research, pp. 64-69, 2006). To the owners and investors, this was nothing but a business, where the goal is to maximize the profits by providing what the customer requires. Therefore, at times these media people would take people to the direction where these entrepreneurs and owners wanted people to go. Quite reasonably, the rest of the media people had to follow the footprints (Bennett & Entman, pp. 123-125, 2001). It is also important here to note that the potential of media influence reaches to its extreme levels when one looks at the situation of United States. The first Amendment to the United States constitution gives full freedom of speech with minor exceptions. Unlike many other countries, “official or state secrets” are not exempted from this freedom of speech (Norris, pp. 144-149, 1997). Even the government itself has no right to censor or stop the media from broadcasting or publishing something detrimental to state, until and unless it has the strongest possible evidence for the same or else the US judiciary has been very active in this regard and the government may end up facing serious consequences. One of the most profound examples of the same is the Vietnam War that lasted from 1955-1975 (Strobel, pp. 181-185, 1997). Both the countries believed that role that media played in this war was of a “decisive actor”. Despite the fact that initially, the US media was pro-government; however, during the last stages of war, it extensively covered the events of “Tet Offensive and in 1971, the New York Times leaked the Pentagon Papers. In addition, example of the top-secret report prepared by the United States Department of Defense on the political and military actions of United States in Vietnam from 1945-1967” (Jeffords & Rabinovitz, pp. 356-359, 1994). These papers proved that the governments and presidents of the United States had kept their public in dark and were misguiding them about their intentions. Despite the fact that the US had suffered great losses in the war yet the public reaction created by the media officials led to change their policies and approach towards the war and finally led to US lose a war that it could have won otherwise (Norris, pp. 109-118, 2000). Moreover, the United States Constitution also restricts the government from taking legal action towards the officials that leak or those who remain involved in leaking these critical, top secret and intelligence information. Even if the government demands treason for the person then it will have to prove two things. Firstly, that the leakage of material took place with the intention of damaging the state and harming its security. Secondly, that with the same effort actual harm was done to the State (Robinson, pp. 254-258, 2002). Another way of looking at it would be by looking at the nature of journalism. In its purest form, journalism is about reporting first hand and primary observations and events, for which there are proofs that it is true and deserving to become a part of the news. However, as of today, journalism has become an industry, where journalists are offering a product not based on truth and verification but based on customer tastes and preferences. They view their fellow journalists as their rivals, and the one, who provides the most interesting, entertaining and appealing news, would emerge as a clear winner (Bennett, & Paletz, pp. 85-89, 1994). One of the reasons why the American foreign policies appear to be self-centered is because of the fact that they inherit the same from their egocentric media. Quite clearly, the American Media would only give large time to a news story only and only when the Americans are only involved and only to the extent to which Americans have that involvement. The same is very evident in the coverage of South Asia and Middle East. This results in the failure of American policy makers and public to understand the context in which the events have been happenings place. For example, immediately after the attacks of 9/11, the American media focused their energies on portraying that how brutal, dangerous and extremists are the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, their thoughts about the United States, their intentions to harm the United States, their dictatorial governments and inhuman laws (Siegmund, pp. 259-265, 2008). This led the United States policy makers to take an extremely aggressive approach towards these people. However, the media in general failed to portray the other side of the picture of as well. It failed to tell the people of the United States that this attack was direct consequence of the United States policy to police the world and interference in the domestic matters of Middle Eastern, Gulf and South Asian countries. It failed to expose the facts that Al Qaeda and Taliban are not alien to the United States, since it is the United States that created, trained, funded and helped these people to become what they are to damage Russia in the Afghan-Russia war of 1980s (Bahador, pp. 16-19, 2007). Due to this one-sided and egocentric coverage of this event, at least in the initial days, the American public demanded a strong action and this put immense pressure on the Bush administration to work accordingly in the so-called interests of United States. Bush administration had nothing to do but to declare these people as terrorists and announce a war against them. Moreover, under this immense pressure to grab hold of Afghanistan from all possible direction, President Bush had no option but to take control of the Pakistani borders with Afghanistan and invade Iraq with an fake assumption of “weapons of mass destruction” (Louw, pp. 300-302, 2010). Until this point in time, we were looking mainly at the policies shifts in the west. Without any doubts, the media is even more active in other parts of the world as well. Let us take the example of Pakistan, which is a developing country. It was in the initial years of 2000s when under the government of military dictator Pervez Musharraf, media in Pakistan received freedom, and the first two channels independent new channels came on to the scene (Voltmer & European Consortium for Political Research, pp. 64-69, 2006). Prominent of them is GEO TV, which is still the largest TV channel in Pakistan after the state owned Pakistan Television Network (PTV). It all started on March 9, 2007 when due to unclear reasons, the army chief, and the President of the country, “General Pervez Musharraf sacked the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and filled a reference against him” (Norris, pp. 412-415, 2010). However, the full court of Supreme Court while hearing the case dismissed all the charges against him and restored him as the Chief Justice. However, this led to tussle between the two personalities. The dictator Musharraf imposed emergency in the country on “November 3, 2007, sacked more than sixty judges who refused to the take oath under the PCO” (Jaramillo, pp. 363-367, 2009) and banned the transmission of various independent new channels. This led to a mass movement by judges, lawyers, benches, bars councils, civil societies, human rights activists, journalists, reporters, and public to restore the judiciary and exit of Musharraf. The dictator faced a humiliating defeat in the elections of 2008 and Pakistan People’s Party came into power. Soon Musharraf resigned and went into a self-imposed exile. PPP and its coalition partner PML (N) had repeatedly identified in their campaigns that they would restore the judiciary as soon as possible. However, when PPP came in power, it tried to take U-turn from its stance on judiciary since it feared that an independent judiciary would investigate the corruption charges of the past. Moreover, an independent judiciary would also hold them answerable for giving a safe passage to Musharraf for exit rather than punishing him for violating the constitution a couple of times and various other charges. The same happened because of the deal in which Musharraf had previously closed all their cases through an ordinance called NRO (Siegmund, pp. 259-265, 2008). PML (N) took separation from the government and in the meanwhile, the protests of lawyers kept on happening. However, it was in the first few weeks of 2009 when the lawyers gave a call for Long March that would start from the South of country and would end in the capital city Islamabad, located in the North Pakistan, in front of the Parliament house. The government imposed section 144 and put ban on all forms of rallies and protests. This time the Pakistani media accelerated their activities and GEO TV carried out a public service message campaign aimed at reminding people the prior promises of the PPP leadership regarding the restoration of judges. Full coverage of the Long March, discussions and debates and media’s open stance to support judiciary had a profound impact on the people of Pakistan. Many people came down on the streets and participated in the protests. This created so much pressure on the government that they had to rethink their policy. Till the evening of 15th March 2009, many ministers were staunchly saying that the judges would not be restored; however, looking at the number of protestors inspired by the media campaigns that were coming closer to the capital city and the government sat down in the latter half of the evening. Surprisingly, it was on March 16, 2009 around 5:45am in the morning, when the Prime Minster addressed the nation and announced the restoration of judges. This is one of the most recent and clear examples that how media can affect and alter the domestic polices of countries (Louw, pp. 300-302, 2010). Another example that is worth considering here would of the Middle East and the Gulf Region. It was in mid 2006 when a girl who was in her late teens was gang raped by a group of seven men in Qatif, which is the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. This girl was on her way back home in a car with a boy with whom she had a prior relationship, when a group of seven men who had knives in their hands stopped them. They kidnapped the couple and took them in dark to rape the girl. The girl was married to another person and after four months of silence, the girl and her husband decided to bring the case to court. The court heard the case in October 2006 and in its verdict, it announced “varying sentences involving 80 to 1,000 lashes and imprisonment up to ten years for four of them” (Islam, pp. 78-79, 2008). However, surprisingly, the court also sentenced the victims to six months in prison and 90 lashes each. The reason for the same being that the girl was alone in the car with a man who was not her relative. The victims appealed against the verdict and this time the girl admitted that she had an affair with the boy who was with her while this event. This made the court to increase the lashes from 90 to 200 and six months in prison. However, this caught a lot of international media attention and pressure from the United States and other human rights activists. The story took another turn when in December 2007, the King of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah granted pardon to the girl. Important here to note is that the ruling that the court gave was in light on the Shariah law, which Muslims consider being very scared (MacArthur, pp. 287-289, 2004). The pardon reflects immense pressures from the international human rights activists and political leaders fueled by the international media. However, it is important to note that there is another side of the picture. Not all governments act like a plastic bag that would fly in the direction in which its media wants it go. The power of media to influence the national policies decreases with a strong, mature, and powerful administration (Norris, pp. 412-415, 2010). The best example in this regard can be the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the events that happened specifically on June 4, 1989. Seven weeks before the June 4 event, from April 14, 1989, Chinese protestors, mostly young students, took the control of Tiananmen building and started protesting in front of building for abolishment of communism and in favor of democracy, freedom and independence. The government finally came in action on 4 June, determined to crush the 100,000 protestors (Bennett, & Paletz, pp. 85-89, 1994). The broadcast of this event would be remembered for centuries and especially the image of the unidentified lone man that stood in front of Chinese tanks with all the determination and courage. The Chinese government banned any broadcast of these students but through hidden cameras and camcorders, many journalists were able to take images of the Chinese authorities ruthlessly killing and crushing the protestors (Neuman, pp. 141-143, 1996). Hundreds of them were killed, many were put in prison, the city presented as if it was fighting a war from outside and terror took the control of the city. Without any doubts, the whole audience sitting the west was astonished and it was hoping that their government, being a superpower would not tolerate these inhuman and brutal acts and it would try to do something about it (Balabanova, pp. 89-91, 2007). Despite dramatic and sensationalized portrayal by the Western Media over a long period, Republican President George H. W. Bush made it clear that he will not take any serious move against the Chinese authorities in this regard and this is their domestic matter. The reason for the same being that he himself and the former Republican President Ronald Wilson Reagan have made immense efforts to build healthy relationships with them and foster the volume of trade (Rotberg & Weiss, pp. 179-185, 1996). The other option would have been to impose military and trade sanctions on China and the same would result in the end to the intelligence gathering efforts against the Russians that they have been conducting against the Russians. Despite the fact that the event affected a little on the trade of high tech machines and halted some military contacts, however, no evident change of policy came on to the scene. United States still wanted to see China as their close alley and strong trading partner and those heart-breaking images were not able to change the foreign policy of the United States (Norris, pp. 412-415, 2010). Despite the fact of not much events like the one that has been stated earlier, however, it reveals to some extent that media will have little impact on issues of national security and defense given that a strong and mature government is in place. Governments that come to the office with a strong popular vote, like that of George H. W. Bush who was able to emerge as winner from 40 states, and presidents that are well aware of the pressures that this office holds, (George H.W. Bush had served as the Vice President during the term of former President Ronald Regan). Presidents of this stature are more likely not to bow down in front of any other pressures. 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