Peshawar Tragedy: representation in the media and fear of expanding Trauma

The life changing tragedy happening on December 16th has changed the very life perceptions of people living in this city. The show of solidarity from all segments of Pakistani society and the rest of the world is very comforting. The local and mainstream media’s response to the tragedy is laudable. People in the city of Peshawar felt to be part of the larger human habitat after a very long break. Media persons went through a personal trauma while covering the horrible event. This really showed the human side of journalists and journalism, which showed how this professional group owns the audience and how much they are part of it. At this point of our national history it is important to look at the way this incident is being presented and how it will affect the audience as well as the working journalists. The spot coverage of the event has exposed the very weakness of the media to deal with certain incidents. In an era of break neck competition and breaking news, it is difficult to manage live coverage. This has remained a long-standing ethical question, yet to be dealt with by the national media as an intuition. Asking critical questions form the victims, who were waiting to see whether their loved ones were alive or not, added to the grief of the parents and relatives on the spot. It has but also affected viewers across the globe. Then came the next day when media persons asked questions from relatives, mostly parents, in their homes or hospitals. Here again, most of the time, the limits of professionalism were extended beyond the ethical conscience of the journalists themselves. In hindsight, even the journalists covering the unfortunate incident and its aftermath will see that they pushed the interviewees too far. This brings the ethical question of making a clear policy on covering such gory incidences and capacity building of journalists on issues of trauma on a personal level as well as an understanding of the effects of their work on the audience. The second issue that is very important in media representations is “the follow up”. Follow-ups are mostly the repetition of the same day’s images and audio-visual presentations on the media. There is no question about the fact that the media and media professionals mean well and do their best to keep the audience up-to-date on the happening, and its aftermath. The audiences do need these follow ups to know about and deal with the tragedy. But the repetition of graphic presentations has a traumatizing effect on the audience, especially children. In the present case the very victims of the incident were children. This makes it even worse for the audience. Children looking at children, endlessly, seeing their misery, and identifying themselves with them, makes the whole media exposure extremely traumatizing to the worst limits. The media needs to look into this issue. It is not easy to adjust to unending tragedies and the professional requirements, professional and market pressure, and many other seen and unseen pressures on the individual journalists as well as media organizations. But at the same time, it is important to have a serious check on presenting and following up on tragic incidents. An audience-focused media is the need of the hour. It is high time to look into the needs of the audience and see to the effects of the media representations on the audience. An audience-focused media will strive to safeguard the best interests of its audience. Spreading trauma through a well-intended, but faulty, product is not a service. The line should be drawn to avoid any such impact. A debate on trauma and how to avoid its spread through the media product is immediately needed. And immediacy means right now, not any debate in the near future. We don’t have the time for such drawing room decisions.