The Framed World

​​Foreign countries are like well-loved tales. It is difficult to change the tale once it has lodged itself in people's memories; once its edges have gradually been knocked off with every telling; and once it has become a manageable everyday truth. If correspondents want to change such a tale on their own authority, their editors back home react like cranky children being told a different version of their favourite fairy tale.

For years, there has been only one take on Indonesia: when is the archipelago state going to fall apart? Voicing the assumption that it might not fall apart was taken as evidence of carelessness, or worse: ignorance. It took a much more dramatic take to replace the one about the country's suspected demise: is Indonesia turning Islamist? Should we ever see the day when terrorism no longer colours our view of the world, the impending collapse of the archipelago state is sure to become the accepted take on Indonesia once again.

Framing reality

Framing is the term used by media scientists to describe this process: journalists describe reality within a frame that has unconsciously built up over time. Strictly speaking, the image within this frame is not wrong; nor is it distorted, but it has a distorting effect because it only affords a very narrowed view of reality.

What makes this so fatal is that we, the people who use the media – even those of us who consider ourselves educated and critical – don't notice it is happening. No-one is entirely immune to the constant repetition and the power of images. It is only natural that viewers whose only images of Pakistan are of bearded men shaking their fists in the air, consider the country to be intolerant and threatening. What they don't see is that hot on the heels of every group of angry bearded men is a team of camera men.

When the Americans dug Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole in Iraq, Baghdad broke out into spontaneous rapture; anyone who had a gun fired shots of joy into the air. Well, at least that's what they did in the BBC's reports; the celebrations and shots went on for hours and were repeated in every bulletin. A German colleague drove through Baghdad on the same day in search of ecstatic Iraqis and found hardly any. The BBC images showed the reaction of a small section of Iraqi society.

Journalists are also media consumers

The journalists themselves are often completely unaware of the framing. In the cycle of self-confirming everyday truths, they are both the driver and the driven; the perpetrator and the victim. Given the volume of news reports and the speed with which they are turned over, the correspondent is largely a media consumer in the field where he or she is actually producing reports.

Time is a rare luxury for those working as foreign correspondents; and, as strange as it may seem, so is travel. Many correspondents spend most of their time at computers in their offices. The global rush for news demands that they are always ready and on the ball. Reports, which are up-dated by the second and can be called up around the world, are like a raging torrent. In the middle of this torrent sits the correspondent on a tiny raft of exclusive knowledge, fighting to stay above the surface.

Covering more ground

The region covered by a correspondent is growing as a result of the cost-cutting restraints imposed on many editorial teams – a restriction that has also shrunken the budget for research trips. In short, more is being reported faster about things that have actually been witnessed by an ever decreasing number of reporters.

Reporting from Bangkok on events in Afghanistan; analysing in New Delhi the motives of guerrillas in the southern Philippines: this is no longer a stop-gap, it is often standard practice.

Competition results in uniformity

If, however, there are hundreds or thousands of reporters at the scene of a crisis or a war that is considered important, something astounding happens: competition does not generally lead to variety. On the contrary, it leads to uniformity. In places where large numbers fight over rare photo opportunities and sparse information, framing becomes a means of survival.

Who wants to interview the hesitant witness or film the peaceful demonstrators while the colleagues back at HQ can already picture the flames in their mind's eye. Whatever you do, don't play down a conflict. If in doubt, play it up; just to be on the safe side. In this way, the competition advances the worst-case scenario and spreads paranoia among viewers. They all want shots of fist-shaking bearded men; and it goes without saying that they enjoy it. The machos of the world become real war heroes in front of the cameras.

Bombing their way into the world's attention

The assumption that violence is the best way of attracting attention has become a certainty since the unforgettable events of 11 September. A bomb is the quickest way of grabbing the world's attention. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that we are only paying attention to regions and conflicts that have been bombed into our awareness. But those who plant bombs overestimate the durability of the attention they have attracted in this way.

The power of the European and American media and networks is considered overpowering, and those who cannot identify with the view of the world they portray – as is currently the case with many Muslims – may hate purely out of a sense of impotence.

Stories of plight must fit in

The expectations regarding the reversal of this situation can, however, also be inflated. In our media-saturated society, we have no concept of the hopes the appearance of a western journalist can raise in people who are fighting for their interests in some godforsaken corner of the world.

How on earth can I explain to them that my report about their dreadful plight will sit in the editor's office until such time as it fits into the stories being run in the paper and that it will then only be a nano-particle in the global torrent of hurriedly consumed and quickly forgotten information? They see my skin colour, my stout shoes, and the distance I have travelled to get to them as incontestable proof of power and influence.

Importance of local presence in decline

The Internet and satellite television have completely revolutionised the significance of geographical distance. But has it necessarily increased our knowledge of the world? The first thing that becomes apparent is that distances shrink asymmetrically. A correspondent "out there" is supposed to cover an entire continent, while the dimensions of the journalistic hunting ground back home stay the same: woe betide the Cornwall reporter who goes in search of a hot story in Yorkshire!

With the help of the Internet and satellite television, a correspondent in Jordan can outline the consequences of the earthquake in Iran as vividly as if he was there himself. Wailing loved ones and the ruins of a city can be described just as easily from the images on a TV screen as they can first hand. The only thing is: this is second-hand information; framing is unavoidable.

The online edition of an English-language Indian newspaper quotes a nameless man on the street speaking about the Kashmir conflict; he is in fact a rickshaw driver in New Delhi who has been picked at random from the crowd. Within hours, our rickshaw driver has pedalled his way through the world's press as a man with his finger on the pulse of the feelings of the Indian people. It has become fashionable to give reports like this a sort of "as if" authenticity. It has become vital to simulate proximity to events; revealing the real distance between the reporter and the events would be highly suspicious.

The Internet as a new medium

In this way, the Internet is providing new ways of interpreting foreign cultures. As long as it is available online, a single English-language newspaper can have a greater influence on the image of a country than all of its native-language media put together. Who wouldn't like to quote an opinion printed in an Iraqi newspaper? Whether that newspaper is relevant in Iraq, or whether it just prints the opinions of a westernised minority is not revealed to the reader of such quotes.

To prevent any misunderstandings, it must be said that the Internet has made it much, much easier to gather information on other countries. I lived in Malaysia for four years: no decent newspapers, no extensive libraries close at hand; I was hooked up to the Internet like a patient on a drip, exploring the countries in the region first online, then offline. I was astounded at how well I was able to prepare myself with the help of the Internet, and how vastly virtual reality differed from actual reality every time.

The virtual world vs. the real world

In virtual Cambodia, an international tribunal for the remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge is long overdue. But the Internet does not go beyond this little group of activists and convey the massive, traumatised silence on this issue that reigns in this country. You can read the views of the most fascinating people in the country online; once you actually set foot within its borders, however, you find out that hardly anyone there has heard of these fascinating people. They are virtual personalities.

In many countries, the digital divide mirrors an inner divide, a mental divide – or at least a social divide – in the way things are perceived. The world would only appear to be moving closer together and getting smaller in terms of its virtual, shiny side; not in terms of its real, dustier side.

In some places, the only place where political opposition is strong is on the Internet. Some ethnic minorities demonstrate a unity online that they have long since lost. Separatists fighting a losing battle in the jungle present themselves in a victorious pose on their virtual stage. Individuals, groups, entire peoples can create dream identities for themselves on the Internet.

Blind people in a foreign culture

So what do we believe? What do we know? A district that is considered middle class in the Philippines may look like a slum to us. As soon as we leave the cultural circle we know well, a zone filled with familiar symbols, we are blind.

Reading and interpreting everyday life – fences, the size of a field, the width of a road, roofs – is both as simple and as difficult as interpreting a Tibetan tanka. What is poverty? How many saucepans indicate that someone is moving up in the world? What does a good life in a poor area smell like? The standards in our minds that we use to answer these questions can only be gathered offline through observation and comparison. How many of our journalistic judgements are based on incorrect perceptions and false standards?

Two worlds in one country

"And suddenly we find ourselves in another world" – a hackneyed journalistic phrase that is so often used to express surprise at the differences, or even contrasts, that exist in a country, a city, or a culture. Here a skyscraper, there a shack; here a disco, there a veil. How incredibly banal!

There is an unnecessary apology in this unimaginative description of the two worlds: we only irritate the reader or viewer with shades of grey; we are avoiding delivering the clarity that is required of our profession.

Plea for a broader frame

As silly as this hackneyed phrase might be, it rejects an even sillier one: "one world". Some might say that "one world" is a responsible ecological society, while others consider it to be the idea behind creation. Whatever it is supposed to be, in the social and political reality of this era of global images, there is no such thing as "one world"; and there never has been.

I hereby plead the case for a broadening of the frame; let us respect distances and reward doubt. There is nothing as laughable as the belief that we can understand the world by looking at it through our little frame.

Charlotte Wiedemann

© Charlotte Wiedemann/Qantara.de 2004

Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan