STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

Perspectives: the debate is open 259- Thanks to their increasingly powerful international networks, mediashave power over time and space. This situation will undergo yet anotherrevolution in coming years when new technical resources become available,such as direct satellite transmissions sent from a lightweight film camera,thereby making television as flexible as radio (and making officials morequickly and more deeply vulnerable, even below the top decision-makingcenters, in the intermediate hierarchy).- Last of all, the journalist as news reader comes into our living roomsevery day. As analysts noted during the gas explosion in Mexico City, thisapparently intimate relationship gives journalists a degree of credibility thatno official could ever hope to attain.These advantages can render tremendous service in times of crisis, bygiving information, advice, and instructions to the population; by explainingthe phenomena at work; by reporting the thoughts of the various partiesinvolved - in short, by making information work. But in a crisis situation,even more than in a calm one, the press (like all the other actors) can add itsown problems to the turbulence. It is important to identify these problems,not in order to join the chorus of critics tirading against the press, but todevelop a lucid view that will be useful to everyone, and to the press itselfabove all. Indeed, not doing so would be more dangerous, since it wouldleave the media open to "condemnation without trial" in a crisis situation,which is hardly a propitious moment for thoughtful reflection on the subject.We will look here at a few points that deserve to be examined - but first itshould be established that at least in theory, those in charge attempt, in timesof trouble, to reduce confusion, to avoid polarization and abusivesimplification, to lower the anxiety level, to show that the systems do indeedwork, to begin the healing process, to stimulate coherency, to distinguishbetween what is essential and what is accessory, to separate current eventsfrom what is already past, and to shake off excess imagination, fantasy, andso on. By the way they operate, the media can create problems on all thesefronts.- The media system actually creates a formidable echo chamber on anational or even international level. It necessarily amplifies what it presents,when, at the same time, one of the very sources of crisis comes from thedifficulty of finding self-correcting phenomena and bringing things back intobalance.- Certain inherent media traits can be seriously called into question whenit becomes necessary to explain complex phenomena, which are inevitablypart of any technological crisis. "Make it short and sweet", for one: what isthe minimum time below which it is no longer possible to get a complicatedmessage across? Similarly, the need to "make it simple" (spots and catchphrases are emblematic of the media world) is not adapted to handlingsubjects that can't be simplified. But since simplification is necessary, at whatcost can it be accepted? The same goes for the constraints imposed bytelevising images: doesn't this provoke a distorted choice in the subjectshandled? What will happen as readers and listeners become transformed into