Minding the gap

I have to time to read these days. The pile of books that's within my reach contains a variety of writings. There is one with short stories that make you smile because of their plain innocence (little people and their little things) written by a Dutch author called Carmiggelt but also historical novels, books about Africa and their dictators, and about media. The last book highlights the reality of the way media works. Reading it was both a bit unsettling and re-affirming.

The book ‘Het zijn net mensen’ (“They’re just like people”) is written by Joris Luyendijk, a former foreign correspondent for a few major Dutch newspapers, radio and television stations. For five years he tried to cover the bizarre world of the Middle East, working from Egypt, Lebanon and Israel. In his book he looks back and describes the gap between what he encountered while living and working in that region and what he saw and heard back in the media. Daily life is so much more complicated, has so many more perspectives and colors than the media does want us to believe.

The unsettling bit was where he explains how difficult it is if you do want to get the ‘real’ stories out and not just one perspective. He talks about a number of ‘filters’ you’ve got to get through.
For example, editors back home decide what news is and base their judgment on what press agencies like Reuters and CNN are communicating as ‘news’. Their definition of ‘news’ however does definitely not cover anything like the daily life of people under a dictator, under occupation. In order to remain news something needs to be moving. “We’re following this story closely”. And then, a story without ‘pictures’ is no story. You can have the best material, but if there’s no footage, there’s nothing to tell.

Living under a dictatorship confronts you with other filters as well, like fear. People are afraid to talk, they are vulnerable. And under oppression it’s hard to check facts and put the story in a wider perspective with information provided by statistics and other sources. And what to think of the agenda-setting by different parties and governments?

So according to Luyendijk there are a lot of “white spaces” in news coverage where media should be honest and say “we don’t know; we can’t know”. But instead they present their foreign correspondents who then use a lot of words to basically repeat the facts that are already on the newspaper’s desk back home. I find it challenging to think of what would happen if the media would start to say "We don't know because we can't". Or if there would be space for correspondents to place news events in the wider context, from different persectives.

Anyhow, it was quite sobering reading material for someone like me who tries to establish herself as a journalist in a foreign country. But then, here’s the re-affirming bit: I recognize a lot in what Luyendijk writes and the questions he asks. My situation is different, but still. I am faced with some of the filters. And with my own impatience to go for – what I call – the second line.

Reading this book challenged me. In the way I do my work, but also the way I look at the world around me and where I'm on the receiving end of 'the media'.