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March 3, 2006
Who’s in charge here?
Professor suggests the media is complicit.
CASSANDRA SAVAGE
How does the media work to influence public life? Does the media
shape us or do we shape the media? How is it that certain media
becomes more popular across cultures than others? And most importantly,
how is it that disruptive news of war and disaster has replaced
pre-planned ceremonial media events designed to unite audiences,
such as royal weddings, world sporting events and presidential debates?
Distinguished communications scholar Dr. Elihu Katz has been wrestling
with these questions for decades.
An eager audience packed the house at Temple Sholom last Sunday
to hear Katz share his latest thoughts on the media and its audiences.
As the guest speaker at this year’s Dr. Robert Rogow Memorial
Lecture, Katz was scheduled to read from his as yet unpublished
paper, No More Peace: How Disaster, Terror and War Have Upstaged
Media Events. Unfortunately, Katz couldn’t deliver his lecture
due to an unpredictable turn of events the night before. At a reception
in honor of Katz leading up to the lecture, he experienced cardiac
troubles and was scheduled for minor surgery. It was a remarkable
twist considering the evening’s core theme: this pre-planned,
rehearsed and carefully promoted event was disrupted by a surprising
medical development.
In the end, although Katz had hoped to deliver his lecture himself,
friends and family conducted the evening in his absence. Rogow’s
daughter, Andrea Kowaz, assured the audience that Katz was doing
well and thanked the individuals who stepped in to bridge the gap
on very short notice. Communications professor Dr. Michael Dayan
agreed to deliver the lecture, with additional commentary provided
by Dr. Mark Wexler. The result was a clear and compelling presentation
of Katz’s work.
Like renowned Canadian communication scholars Marshall McLuhan and
Harold Innis, Katz believes the media shapes public life. He studied
with Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia University at a time when a key
question in American media studies was, “Who says what, to
whom, with what effect?” This experience no doubt influenced
Katz’s own interest in the effect of media on audiences. No
More Peace, co-authored with Tamar Liebes at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, is a sequel to Katz and Daniel Dayan’s 1992 book,
Media Events, which explores a cultural phenomenon that attracts
the largest audiences in the history of the world: the live broadcasting
of television events.
Ceremonial media events are meant to interrupt everyday life, unite
audiences, inspire awe and integrate society. They are peace-making
events that bring friends and families together and transform the
home into a quasi-public space, alive with discussion and debate.
Katz began his paper with an example of ceremonial media: the public
broadcast of Anwar Sadat’s personal visit to Jerusalem in 1997.
“Live television accompanied almost every moment of his three-day
visit to Jerusalem,” Katz noted. “It enthralled the Israelis,
as well as Egyptians; attracted the reluctant attention of other
Arab countries and the fascination of the rest of the world. More
than diplomacy, even more than ceremony, these events are performative
– they actually enacted change.” For Katz, Sadat’s
televised visit was an act of reconciliation that resulted in real
social change and a widespread commitment to end hostile relations
between the two countries.
Since 1992, however, Katz has observed a decrease in such ceremonial
media events. Today, the live broadcasting of disruptive events
such as disaster, terror and war has stolen the limelight. Katz
suggests several reasons for the shift: technology has undermined
the shared experience of broadcasting by distributing audiences
over a larger number of channels; people have come to expect government
or corporate meddling in the media and have developed a more cynical
view of the media; and finally, people have realized that the opulence
of a media event is fleeting. “The live broadcasting of historic
ceremony has lost its aura,” Katz suggested. “Nixon’s
landslide triumph is soon followed by Watergate. Drug scandals and
heaps of corruption have tainted the Olympics – not even to
speak of the tragedy at Munich. The sentimentality induced by the
royal wedding is erased by divorce and death.”
But a decline in media ceremony alone doesn’t explain the growing
frequency of disaster marathons – those days-on-end of gore,
heroic rescues and explanations of what went wrong in the aftermath
of a traumatic event. Katz probes the issue of why terror, war and
disaster enjoy centre-stage in today’s media. Are disasters
more frequent? Is paranoia more prevalent? Or do media outlets simply
need to parade their technical skills in order to capture audiences?
Katz said the live broadcasting of terror allows the perpetrators
to enjoy far more publicity and have a much greater impact. It also
allows governments to mobilize popular support for action against
evil. And if these things are true, can it be said that disaster
marathons aren’t planned? “Who’s in charge?”
Katz asked. If ceremonial media events are co-produced by broadcasters
and event organizers, perhaps terror events are co-productions of
their perpetrators and the broadcasting community. Katz ended his
lecture with this provoking thought: “The script for war may
well be in the hands of the enemy.”
The lecture was presented by Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. The lecture was the third of its kind in honor of
Rogow, a highly respected teacher, scholar, husband and father.
In a tribute to Rogow, Wexler said, “His humanitarian interest
and quest for fairness led him in his grad student days into the
area of labor studies. Bob Rogow was a champion of the underdog,
a man who saw labor and saw minorities as a big issue to be met.”
Like Katz, explained Wexler, Rogow pursued his intellectual interests
after fighting in the Second World War and was particularly intrigued
by the way in which the perceived order of society can be so easily
disrupted.
“What we find in both gentlemen,” said Wexler, “is
a tremendous recognition of what a slim tissue rests between us
and disorder.” ¯
Cassandra Savage is an M.A. student at Simon Fraser University’s
School of Communication.
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