The unhealthy relationship between media and human rights issues

Last Monday night, I watched a video. A video which contained the pleas and cries of Indian suffering, cries that had previously reverberated around the world, but now were being ignored. Despite being at the forefront of Western media just a fortnight before, India's COVID-19 crisis has been cut from the news, and become largely sidestepped, in a drastically short space of time. 

News cycles are constantly evolving, picking up the latest story that sells newspapers, gets website views, or captures a reader's attention. The constant demand for new, unique stories leads to a jolted inaccurate story of the world's events.

Maybe that was somewhat acceptable, when news platforms weren't 24/7. But right now, exacerbated by social media, they are constantly churning out information, stories and content that isn't illustrative of what is happening worldwide. They pick and choose what story they care about - and then discard it when it no longer sells papers.

When these issues are basic human rights, this leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. We got a flavour of it last year with Black Lives Matter. Media outlets and social media were flooded with activism, only for silence to replace it within a few weeks. 

The media replaced Indian trauma with the atrocities being committed by the Israeli Defence Force against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. I cannot fully express my anger at the situation, for Benjamin Netanyahu's government are embarking on brutal ethnic cleansing under the exaggerated guise of Hamas' terrorist threat - with the implicit support of the United States government. The agreed ceasefire is welcome, but not a victory, because the underlying problems will not be addressed.

Credit: Adobestock via Daily Maverick

The cynic in me however, recognises that this is not a new phenomenon. The Palestinian area including the West Bank and Gaza has been under Israeli military occupation for what seems like an eternity, and the conflict is rooted in the 1947 UN Palestinian Partition plan. For much of the twenty-first-century, Palestine has been under siege akin to what is occurring now. But it's only become trendy to care now, because news outlets have finally decided it is a problem that needs highlighting.

I have written of self-awareness on these blogs many a time in the last few months, and when writing about this a significant degree of it is needed. I recognise that many of my social media posts are reactive, and I too am undoubtedly guilty of falling for the captivating news stories that appeal to our emotions.

Part of what makes us so upset about these atrocities is the way they are pictured. Social media companies and media outlets manipulate that. An emotive post is designed to keep you on the platform or the website, generating profits for them to invest in the next human rights crisis that they decide will capture our attention sufficiently. 

None of that makes us as consumers innocent. We have a responsibility not to be so reactive, keep up activism for problems that aren't in the news any longer. But our hands are tied because our empathy and compassion only stretches so far. It is difficult to care about things hundreds of miles away, unless they are consistently highlighted.

We tread a dangerous path if we are going to treat human rights issues in the same vein as we treat celebrity gossip. Human rights violations, and the history and politics that come with them, are more complex than can be explained in an Instagram post, or one news article. There have been countless oversimplifications of the lengthy Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are deeper political failings in India that led to the COVID-19 crisis. There are systemic problems that transcend way further than the performative activism shown for racism and feminism at points throughout the last year. 

So what can we do to combat it? As before, a degree of self-awareness is probably useful, because checking what media you are consuming can allow you to treat it with a certain level of scepticism. 

Likewise, there are many a worldwide tragedy that isn't in the mainstream news. This is not to be treated as "whataboutery", but instead a way of minimising the sensationalism of a story or violation. Every article or post will be fraught with bias, but often digging deeper and taking a proactive approach to finding news alleviates it somewhat. 

Perhaps it stings more that I write this in the week which marks the first anniversary of George Floyd's murder. We will, I'm sure, see plenty of headline news coverage about the impact of the tragedy on the world and the determination people showed to change society's prejudices. 

It will appeal to your emotion again. It may make you want to share posts or infographics again. If you do so, please ask yourself where this concern has been when it isn't headline news. 

Because if we're only bothered when it's convenient to, we're not bothered at all. Which makes us a perpetrator of the systemic problems we all claim to fight against.