The Age of Disinformation: How Can The Net Overdcome It Better?

["Bala Pillai (Sydney)" <bala@apic.net>]

Friends,

How do you think the Net can overcome this Age of Disinformation?

cheers../bala
bala@apic.net
sydney, australia
http://www.apic.net

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 10:40:42 -0700
From: SH <shamid@bigpond.net.au>
To: sangkancil <sangkancil@lists.malaysia.net>
Subject: [sangkancil] The Age Of Disinformation

Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff,
and then print the chaff. - Adlai Stevenson

The Age Of Disinformation

By Shaukat Ajmeri

As the 'information revolution' spreads its tentacles, the role
of the media becomes all the more challenging. The challenge is
to sift the wheat from the chaff. In essence, to separate the
truth from the propaganda. And it is not easy for ordinary people
to do that.

Because basically it boils down to the question of power. Those
who control political and economic power also control
information. In other words they control the levers of knowledge
and ideology. The literate have an obvious advantage over the
unlettered. So even as we cruise along the 'information highway'
we are leaving behind a large-scale information deprivation.

But the question is not what the information-have-nots do not
know but what the information-haves are not allowed to know. In
this crucial sense, the line between the literate and the
illiterate is very thin. The colloquial expression "educated
illiterates" encapsulates a political truth. It represents a
triumph of kitsch over gravitas.

German philosopher Emanuel Kant was of the opinion that not
everything is knowable. This sentiment is all the more truer in
our times, and at a much mundane level too. In fact, even what is
knowable has become inaccessible to the majority of the public.
But common perception may yet differ. For when the O.J. Simpson
trial or the Nato air strikes on Bosnian Serbs are shown live or
when events as they happen are reported instantly and accurately
we are bound to feel that we are being allowed total access to
everything that happens around us. That the world of information
is at our finger tips from flipping TV channels to flipping
newspaper pages we can know all there is to know.

In fact, we cannot know enough. The human brain and by
implication, the human conscience can only take so much. But do
we need all this information? Or, for example, does it mean that
before the invention of television people were any less stupid
than we are. Or that their lives lacked a sense fulfillment or
purpose. To put it differently, is 'information explosion' about
making our lives better; about the ultimate values of freedom and
justice; about creating a better world?

If it is, then, are the information and knowledge systems at our
disposal helping us attain these goals? For often it happens that
we are appalled by the gruesome pictures of the war-ravaged
children in Afghanistan or read with horror about the cruelty and
massacre in Rwanda and, the very next instant, we get back to our
little lives our supermarkets, our rents and our parties. This is
not a value-judgement but a fact of everyday life.

The massive glut of information and imagery at our disposal
somehow fails to move us beyond the point where we begin to feel
responsible for human misery that exists in our neighbourhood or
thousands of miles away. But, then, it is argued that the role of
the media is to inform us. Not to move us. Still less to inspire
us into some foolhardy crusades.

It's a matter of abiding irony that the media that links up a
scene of massacre with our living rooms functions on the premise
that the two are not necessarily connected. That there's is no
human or moral connection between the place where massacres occur
and where they are reported. In another sense, it is immaterial
that our pursuit of cheap labour ultimately also cheapens human
life. That a habit of profligacy in one section of society
produces hunger in another. That one country's lust for nuclear
supremacy endangers lives of people thousands of miles away. That
a yen for hamburgers in one part of the world generates
devastating poverty in another.

The ancient Greeks in their arrogance declared that the man is
the measure of all things. Today, in our myopia, we've made
profit the measure of all things. And the human being is reduced
to a mere cog in this vast and dehumanized system that reproduces
itself day in and day out. We all play our assigned roles in
perpetuating injustice and inequality in our own little, but not
insignificant, ways. This is not a terribly new perception of
reality.

Yet most of us play our parts unknowingly. Without really being
aware. The whole corpus of information and knowledge at our
disposal essentially obscures awareness. The unstoppable media
outpourings give us loads of information but little awareness.
Indian journalist P. Sainath, who toured rural India in 1993 on a
Times of India fellowship to report on the state of poverty, said
in a magazine interview that what we see or read in the media is
just the news events taking place at a particular instant of
time. But there's a history to those events. There are processes
that lead to those events which the media rarely bother to
report.

The capsules of information we get are often detached from their
contexts and meanings and are essentially packaged for easy
consumption. For instance, before we are told about the real
causes of a riot, another riot plague plane crash war is upon us.

The processes of governance, policy-making and workings of
political power are not mysteries in themselves but are
deliberately kept that way. Ordinary people are not supposed to
know what is it that leads to their poverty or powerlessness or
their absolute lack of control over their own lives. They are not
supposed to know that with their collective will and effort they
have the power to turn their communities around.

The mainstream intellectual culture is of no help either. In
fact, it is there largely to report, analyse and sanctify the
official version. Public debate on major issues in the media is
permitted but only within acceptable limits that stop short of
unraveling the mysteries of private power and profit. American
scholar Noam Chomsky calls this facade of public debate as
"manufacturing consent".

What this means is that private decisions are legitimised by
public ratification. Whatever governments do is made to appear as
if it's done for the sake of the people. Democratic societies of
the West boast about the freedom of speech they enjoy. But where
there is free speech there is thought control. The mainstream
media plays an important role in controlling thought. Pundits and
experts of all kinds talk and write a lot without touching on
fundamental issues. Facts are reported but interpretations of
facts are rare. And obvious conclusions are seldom drawn or even
hinted at.

Schools and universities also play their part in keeping the
faith. They churn out clones that fit nicely into the system and
in turn reinforce it. The pressure to conform to the established
norms starts right from school level. It's not for nothing that
discipline is an integral part of school ethos.

As children move forward through progressive grades, they
internalise the values of hard work, discipline and success. By
the time they are out of university, they are ready to serve the
system and be part of. In an ideal world, hard work and
discipline, for example, must bring success. But in the real
world 'hard work' is often used as a psychological ploy to
discipline people.

Few students can escape from this totalitarian fiction. The irony
is, few parents will allow them to. Parents being parents, they
naturally want their children to be well-off and successful.
Playing by the rules is a virtue greatly admired and encouraged.
In democratic societies this virtue is administered in subtle
ways, in non-democratic societies coercion becomes necessary.

Writer and historian Michael Wood in his BBC series called Legacy
talks about "a habit of civilization" with regard to Egypt. At
the the end of the second millennium, we can label our
willingness to submit to all forms of state power as a "habit to
conform". Within the given range of permissible thought and
behavior we're free to make our choices and crow about "freedom
of choice".

But if our choices happen to fall outside the realm of
established pattern then we must be some sort of deviants. If our
perspective is different from that of the mainstream's or we are
too critical of the unjust state apparatus then either we are
irrational, communists or even terrorists.

No matter how "advanced" the society is, this is generally the
level of tolerance for 'deviants' in the mainstream media and
socio-political circles. Much of the media makes a fetish out of
'objectivity'. But those who work in the media know that this
'objectivity' is largely dictated by corporate and political
interests which are anything but 'objective'.

The conclusion is inescapable, we may have an avalanche of
information and an illusion of being in the know but we're none
the wiser for it. In a world where we live to consume,
information is just another consumer commodity. Attractively
packaged to protect us from the truth.

On second thoughts, maybe it's pretentious to talk about
separating the truth from the propaganda. The happy alternative
is to join the karaoke of talking a lot and saying nothing. Which
is what the role of the mainstream media is, anyway.

Source: dawoodi-bohras

Bala Pillai  <bala@apic.net>
"Networking Minds in Halls Without Walls Since 1995"
Founder, The Asia Pacific  Internet Company
Sydney, Australia
<www.apic.net>



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