The media gets a power lift

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

When the first Gulf War broke out in 1990 and Operation Desert Storm was launched to support the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, a new kind of wartime journalism was born. Cynics said that Operation Desert Storm took place in just the correct time zone for all-American TRPs and the newborn Cable News Network (CNN)struck gold. Having promised 24 x7 news coverage, the channel had been filing the usual tales of small-town crime, big-city business news and sundry stories of human interest to curious viewers.

But when they got a war to cover with American soldiers in the fray, the network became the right news channel at the right time and place. A night time war was breathlessly followed during American daytime with correspondents silhouetted against Scud missile debris and exploding skies. And war and crisis coverage was never the same. In 1999, when India went to the battlefront in the snowy heights of Kargil, Indian journalists scrambled to reach the frontlines and report from there, leading to heated arguments that they were actually giving away troop movements to the enemy.

And yet, once in a while, something happens that puts a surge of power into the media in this age of capsule journalism where news is consumed in sound and visual bites on one’s smartphones and as YouTube broadcasts. On Friday night, viewers around the world watched in grim fascination as America’s two top leaders – President Trump and Vice-President Vance - retired to lick their scratches after failing to bully Ukranian President Zelensky into unconditionally handing over his country’s rare minerals mines to them. I believe that this display of misplaced power by an elected leader against a President of a warring nation has brought European countries to Ukraine’s side. And none of this would have been a reality except that it happened in front of the media and was broadcast by them for the world to see and judge. Let us remember that and respect the press.

(Captain Mahmood Al Mahmood is the Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Tribune and the President of the Arab-African Unity Organisation for Relief, Human Rights and Counterterrorism)