Why we begin to believe what we see
Television will never replace the print media. Certainly not in a physical sense. For example, there is no chance that somebody who is eight years old today will be telling his grandchildren one day that a sheet of paper with various patterns in ink all over it, which is framed and stuck to his wall, was the last copy of a newspaper in Sri Lanka.

But, television will not replace print media, yes, yet that's only in a physical sense. In other ways, the ways of television has been very pervasive. With sound bite size news snippets, newspapers are beginning to look like television, and with Internet, 'print' is actually seen now on the screen.

A South African journalist who also doubles as a lecturer in media studies said "there is a dumbing down of the South African media.'' He said so recently at the Commonwealth Media Conference held in Colombo. Dumbing down is itself a strange word. It sounds almost as stupid and vacuous as what it seeks to describe. Anyway, dumbing down denotes a certain rapid decline in terms of substance.

hen the Australian cricket team arrived in South Africa for the World Cup, as soon as they got off the aircraft almost, and even before one ball was bowled even in the practise nets, the South African newspapers carried articles with front page headlines and pictures of the Australian team in yellow trademark flannels. The headline read: South Africa hit by yellow fever.

But, in a strange way, Internet has also helped in keeping the print media alive. At least there is space for the written word, even though ironically this space is on television size screens that glow.

But, the real 'dumbing down' (dumbing down it is if the pundits insist on saying so) has come soon after CNN in particular started relaying footage of the Gulf War on a 24-hour basis. There is no doubt that this footage can sometimes be interesting. But most of the time, it is more like Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon stuff...
There is hi-tech coverage of on-going fighting, most of which is seen in a blur. As far as continuity goes, this is ball-by-ball. In a cricket match, one can at least tune out the ball-by-ball, wait for dusk, and watch the highlights.

No such thing with Iraq war coverage. The coverage is almost absent of any substantial analysis that covers the real issues. There is something that looks to be analytical -- but all that the pundits on screen discuss is logistics and the minutiae of waging war. Try as they might to hide the fact, there is no concealing the real intentions behind the uninterrupted coverage of the American assault on Iraq. One announcer said blithely once that "CNN continues the converge on the war to liberate Iraq.''

Perhaps CNN has a perverse reverse psychology in having this continuous coverage beamed over their channel. The common sense assumption would be that too much of war coverage will expose the futility and the horror of war. But have the war being shown all the time, and people will soon be thinking that war is after all an adjunct of the human condition.

Anything can soon pass off on television, and that seems to be the single central achievement of the 'dumbing down" of the media in general. Who would have thought that one could be able to see machine gun fire and long range missile bombing accompanied to the sound of a serenade, with the voiceover 'continuing converge on the war on Iraq.''

But enough about the war on Iraq. The fact is that there is a war out there to possess our sense and sensibilities. There is no doubt that this is all money driven. CNN finds that there is money in generating war coverage, because the war is the event of the moment. Who had seen missiles pulverising little children before this?
You can show any of that for some time on television, and the people will get used to it. The best example is how people in Sri Lanka are being sensitized to the war on Iraq.

Every three-wheeler driver, every cook, and every cop around the corner is tuned in -- much the same way that they were tuned into the coverage of the World Cup.
But it was interesting to watch the trajectory of their reactions. First, there was a sense of curiosity tinged with shock and dismay. Operation 'shock and awe' on Iraq generated a lot of gape and gawk.

But eventually three wheeler drivers who got used to gawking at the screen watching the pulverisation of Baghdad, got their hires, went about their business, and tuned into the war only at leisure time, while trying hard to catch the latest updates on poster size front page blow-ups in the Sinhala dailies.

The fact is that eventually they got used to the war -- and started taking it in their stride, recognising it as something that happens out there, along with cricket matches, and other things, which happen out there that ordinary people just take for granted.

Now, it is one thing to make violence on TV commonplace, or to make casual sex commonplace, or to make things like stock markets and fashion shows by Italian fashion designers commonplace, and taken for granted even by the poorest of the poor in the far corners of the world.

But to make a real war, in which real people are dying commonplace and to make it so trivial as to place it in our consciousness at the same level with other mundane things like repeat cricket shows and teledramas is the real achievement of CNN and the Western media behemoth in modern times it also represents of course the ultimate 'dumbing down' of the media.

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