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THE
BOMB
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The news channels in USA used to fascinate me. The channels are ever ready to find and dish out the news. They have a panel of experts in almost every field to comment on the turn of events. Be the incident be about a dog or cat, gun or rose, economy or technology, every channel has a panel of experts to comment about it. One wonders if these channels seem to hire every retired US Military personnel. They parade four-star generals like Norman Schwartzkoff and Wesley Clark and countless lesser officers and non-officers in their panel. I was amazed at this epitome of free press. But within a very short time my fascination gave way to disillusionment and it very soon denigrated into an aversion towards these channels. When Kennedy’s son was drowned in Nantucket the amount of frenzy the news channels created drove the country crazy. From the moment the news came that the plane he was flying was missing, the channels made it a point to make it as the news of the century. Every news channel rallied an array of aviation experts ranging from pilots and controllers to innocent plane watchers to speculate on how the crash could have occurred. Kennedy’s wife, her life style, his wardrobes, his preference on cologne were all discussed ad nauseum. Within a day, I almost felt, “God give these guys a new disaster, they are driving me nuts with the Kennedy news”. I knew it was cruel but several of my friends felt it too. The Columbine disaster gave these channels an opportunity to play community therapy sessions. A panel of psychologists, schoolteachers, mothers, fathers were all asked for their opinions and what they thought as the cause. Everyone became a Freud and immersed him or herself in psychobabble. The hapless listeners were relieved of this torture with the arrival of the next disaster. If there are no major disasters to cover, the news channels switch into overdrive on self-righteousness. They make judgment on culture, values from their self-defined American paradigm. They take sides during interviews and try to nail the interviewee. A CNN newscaster accused the Indian Foreign Minister of aiding and spawning terrorism for his actions in trading the release of his citizens from the hijackers for the release of a few terrorists held in Indian jails. Recently Bill Shepard of Fox News channel threw tantrums at a Palestinian spokesperson when would not answer yes or no for his question, “Is Arafat a Terrorist?” And he arrogantly cut off the interview. The news channels have ceased giving news as news but wraps the actual news in their own version of commentary, which many times completely obfuscates the actual news. The magnitude of September 11 elevated all the TV channels in USA to a different plane. Almost every channel turned into a news channel. All of them repeated the same news again and again ad nauseum. They managed to bring in a dose of boredom and irritation in spite of the shock and stupor every American was feeling. Despite their acquired mastery for analyzing any news item to its colossal boredom through their panel of experts, these channels miserably failed with the most important news of all, which is the post September 11 actions in Afghanistan. The channels could never have a single expert who could fathom why the world’s greatest superpower with its smart bombs, daisy cutter bombs, superlative air power could not smoke out the primitive tribesmen armed with very basic weaponry from their cave hideouts. What actually went wrong? Brilliant planning, unlimited budget, great global support and the weakest of the weakest enemy and still the expected result of catching the main criminal has eluded Uncle Sam. Bribes of twenty five million dollars to turn in Bin Laden went begging without takers. None of these News Gurus from the news channels could analyze the cause. The reason for this debacle is the “Frog Syndrome”. When a frog is held in a beaker of water and heated on a stove the frog will slowly die of heat. It will not have the sense to jump out of the hot water. On the other hand, when you drop a frog into a pot of hot water, it would jump out in an instant. The news channels have essentially suffered this fate in their inability to analyze when the news was too close to them. In my humble opinion, the single biggest cause for this debacle is the use of wrong weaponry against the enemy. Uncle Sam should have unleashed his N-Bombs as their weapon of choice. N-Bombs are not nuclear or neutron bombs but the News Bombs. USA instead of raining bombs in Afghanistan should have beamed all over Afghanistan both on the caves and in the cities the Newscast of the News Channels 24 x 7. Consider the scenario, CNN’s Christian Amanpour gloating over the “Burka-Oppression” of women and Larry King talking to an old school teacher on education system in a country where formal education hardly ever existed; Fox channel worried sick about quality of governance and interviewing the deaf village chieftain, its ace political correspondent Sheppard Smith blowing his top with the girl friend of Bin Laden on an yes or no answer for an incriminating question on Bin Laden’s potency; MSNBC’s Soledad O’Brien interrupting anyone she is interviewing with her lightning speed talks; countless interviews with any life form that moves in Afghanistan; panels of experts in each channel psychoanalyzing Bin Laden and deducing his current behavior is directly related to his brother’s refusal to give him a chewing gum when he was 10 etc.- the very thought is nerve racking. I am sure, in less than a week the desperate Afghanis would have culled out Bin Laden from wherever he was hiding and handed him over to USA and would have even traded the reward of 25 million dollars for the withdrawal of the news service. Don’t you remember the advertisement for Kellogg’s Honey Nut Cereal? In that advertisement a Sheriff is trying to flush out a wanted man from the mountain hideout. He announces in PA system that the hill is surrounded and the culprit should give himself up. He is greeted with gunshots from the culprit. The Sheriff says to his assistant, “Get it out and let us flush them out”. His assistant brings out a bowel of cereal and milk. As the Sheriff chews the crisp cereal, the culprit could not resist the sound of the taste, he gives himself up, not only him droves of other bad men hiding in the hill come out to surrender. In the very same manner, Mullah Omar and Bin Laden would have walked out from their caves pleading Uncle Sam to stop the newscast. Without wasting money, losing lives, trashing the fragile mountain ecology, Uncle Sam could have smoked these guys out of their hideouts using these all-powerful N-Bombs. Even now it is not too late! President Bush could finish the unfinished business of his dad by bagging Saddam too with these N-Bomb attacks! |
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