By
Obododimma Oha
I am not a
professional on media or on news and newsworthiness in society, but I have read
enlightening articles by some experts on these, for instance, Johann Galtung.
Galtung is very much interested in the politics around news and
newsworthiness, something that those of us who are lay people sometimes take
for granted and accept whatever we are fed with as news. Galtung the expert argues
that the idea of “news” as the narrative of an unusual happening worthy of
public attention is subject to some crucial considerations, such as:
1. What makes
the happening unusual?
2. Who
determines that the happening is “unusual” in social discourse?
3. Who
determines what is worthy of public attention?
He, thus,
draws our attention to the politics in the decision as what is worth bringing
to public attention and what is not or who decides it. At the heart of this, he
says, is the divide between the centre and the margin or periphery and the
attachment of attention to things affecting the centre as important and newsworthy.
The affairs of the periphery that can only make news are terrible things and
those terrible things have to be of a high magnitude or of an unbearable
proportion before they can become news. One could see clearly that
newsworthiness is still as defined by the privileged in society. To focus on the
simple lives of the less privileged (unless they are very nasty and despicable)
is to upturn the order. So, if the ruler farts, it is news, but if the same is
done by a character in the periphery, it is not news. Is that not an
unrepentant Marxist reading? Well, it is obviously a dominant view of
newsworthiness now and it gets one worried about crippled mumuness masquerading as knowldge!
For the
avoidance of doubt, Galtung’s view could be tested and found valid in relation
to the following:
1. Events
involving women as opposed to events involving men;
2. Events
involving Africa as opposed to events involving the West;
3. Events
involving the awfully rich as opposed to events involving the dismally poor;
4. Event
involving (some) rulers as opposed to events involving their subjects.
So, sorry for
the margins. Very sorry for them. The margins could be given the shit, while
the centre is pampered. The margins would pay the tax and the money, maybe
billions, would be given by Father Christmas to those who help to devour the
margins. The margins may be shot fatally at sight, while the centre is begged
for forgiveness for the teargas used on it. The margins may be arrested and
incarcerated, while the centre (actually terrorist) is given a settlement
without going through the normal approval process. You see, we need to be sorry
for the margins. They can only attract global attention if their massacre is
luckily seen as being beyond the local capacity to manage and if the theatre of
entertainment involving mayhem needs to enter Act Two, Scene One. I am so
sorry for the margins.
Now, if one
looks at the idea of “fake news” in this context of newsworthiness, one quickly
understands how fakeness, more than being a weapon against the other,
stimulates serious thinking about news and truth. Is one not already in the
province of philosophy, another frightening zone, in reflecting on it? Ask
Bertrand Russell and others: truth is one of the headaches of philosophy as a
discipline. And why should one rush in in that dangerous zone where angels fear
to tread?
That
notwithstanding, the idea of truth in the news, which may become “fake
news,”makes Governor Pontius Pilate the son of his father. “What is truth?” to
quote him. Did one see with one’s cataract-free eye-balls, or through the eyes
of another? How are we so sure that what
is considered “fake news” is not another weaponization of newsworthiness and
news, or that it is not not another fake packaging, sometimes involving an attempt
at not reading fully or not verifying anything? How are we sure that the label
is not another powering of a mine recovered from the enemy, from a
radio-without batteries, on the battle-field?
Now, when I
hear “news,” “newsworthiness,” and “fake news,” I sit properly and try to count
all my teeth with my tongue, instead of letting my dentist do it, knowing that this may be an opportunity for a false moralistic model to score a cheap point! I try to activate a powerful critical thinking software. I try to be very alert, and to
wait for the shot. The shrapnel of the
explosive may get to me!
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