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Sept. 30, 2005
Everything is relative
There is no reality, only journalists: professor.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
In a world saturated with information – from radio, television,
newspapers, the Internet and many other sources – the question
is generally, how do people process it all? The issue is infrequently
examined from the other side: how do the various media decide what
information to make public? This was a question addressed by Prof.
Dov Shinar at an intimate gathering last week at the Jewish Community
Centre of Greater Vancouver.
Shinar is dean of the School of Media Studies at the College of
Management in Tel-Aviv and professor emeritus at Concordia University
in Montreal. He was a member of the task force that established
television in Israel and has served as a media consultant in developing
countries. His academic and applied work on the media aspects of
international communications, war and peace, socio-cultural development
and other areas has been widely published in scholarly books and
articles.
In his JCC lecture, entitled Current Issues in Israeli Media and
Society, Shinar emphasized four key concepts that apply not only
to Israel but to all countries. He offered many examples to support
his arguments.
First, the saying, "There is no history, only historians,"
can be altered somewhat to read, "There is no reality, only
journalists," meaning that everything is relative and each
person's vision of the truth depends on his/her perspective. There
is no such thing as objectivity, said Shinar, including in journalism.
Second, Shinar contended that "the media is the only channel
to know what is going on around us." He said that we are so
used to messages being created for us. On the one hand, the media
paint a number of different realities, but we have no choice but
to wade through them.
Third, Shinar said that "a fact is not a fact until it appears
in the media and, even then, it depends on the context." One
example he gave of this point is that the building of the settlements
in Israel had been going on for a long time before it was reported
in the media, but it was only after it became widely publicized
that it became a fact in most people's minds.
Finally, "real life changes much faster than social institutions,"
said Shinar, including in this point that it is often hard to tell
whether the media is reporting the news or creating it. Sometimes
speculation about a possible event is difficult to discern from
the event itself, if it does end up happening – did the speculation
result in the event or would it have occurred anyway?
Elaborating on his four main premises, Shinar discussed some of
the political and economic pressures that come to bear on journalists
and described how these influences are changing as Israel moves
from being an ideological society to a civil society. In the pre-state
days, the press worked as speakers for each social group (socialist,
Orthodox, etc.) and a lack of objectivity was accepted at the time,
said Shinar. With normalization, he said, media tell the truth but
not always the whole truth, committing sins of omission and sometimes
spinning what is said or what has happened into an "improved
truth" that makes someone look better.
According to Shinar, the only censorship that exists in Israel regards
security matters. However, he did express concern for the balance
between "freedom of expression versus social [national] responsibility."
He spoke of how the media are constantly determining, "What
has better news value?" In addition to figuring out ways of
dealing with the various attempts at manipulating them, they juggle
the need for high ratings with serving the public interest. Shinar
said the media has real problems reporting on a multicultural society
and ensuring that the voices of minorities are heard: "The
media have trouble reporting, like everyone else, what is happening
outside the mainstream," he said.
Shinar gave his Current Issues in Israeli Media and Society talk
twice at the JCC, in Hebrew on Sept. 12 and in English on Sept.
21. The events were presented by the centre's Adult Jewish Studies
Institute. For more information about the institute's offerings,
call Betty Nitkin at 604-257-5111, ext. 711, or e-mail [email protected].
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