Television’s Image Problem Is That Its Images Move Us to Stand Still

When Henry A. Kissinger suggested privately to a group of Jewish leaders that Israel ban television in the occupied territories, he assumed that the move would be immediately denounced. But the criticism would soon subside, he predicted, and Israel’s reputation would suffer no permanent damage. Events seem to be proving Kissinger right. Camera crews are finding more and more towns in the West Bank and Gaza closed to reporters, while within Israelpublic sentiment is running strongly in favor of a media ban. (A temporary ban has been imposed as a part of Israeli efforts to halt Arab “Land Day” demonstrations today.)

South Africa, of course, had little reputation to lose when, in 1986, it outlawed the coverage of violence that was brought on by apartheid. The results are impressive nonetheless. An American viewer no longer has the sense of a continuing crisis in South Africa, despite the fact that the violence and repression continue. The recent wave of killings and retaliations in Northern Ireland has prompted calls for a media ban there.

Television people are perplexed. They understand why government wants to control the news, for they realize better than anyone the power of television to move world opinion. But why does world opinion seem to be moving against television? Does TV news have an image problem, or is there some deeper problem with imagery itself, now being playing out in the trouble spots of the world?

It is commonly said that television is a less demanding medium than print, that it encourages passivity with the smooth and certain flow of its images. But in a sense the opposite is true, especially in the case of TV news. Many images that appear on the news demand a response; indeed, they are often excessively demanding in that the response that they call for is an urgent and moral one. When children are throwing stones at policemen, we know that something is wrong, and we feel for the children no matter which side they (or we) support. We think to ourselves, “This can’t go on,” and yet we know that it will.

Dramatic programs encourage us to identify with other people’s pain and suffering, but in drama our interest can be satisfied within the form . At the end of the show we witness some sort of resolution, and, while it may not be skillfully handled, it is never absent altogether--even in soap opera, where the intention is to string us along from episode to episode.

TV news does not string us along; it simply shifts to the next story. The result is that the moral response provoked by pictures from a place like Gaza finds no outlet. We are left with our knowledge that the children of Gaza have been robbed of their childhood, and that someone must be responsible. But the pictures do not tell us who, and we begin to wonder if somehow the guilt is ours.

Aware of this, producers try to end the broadcast with a breezy “wrap-up,” an all-purpose resolution for the dozen or so stories abandoned in mid-course that evening. But the gesture is insignificant. A final dose of good news cannot resolve all the anguish aroused by images of suffering and hate, especially when those images recur night after night. And so we begin to resent television as we resent the homeless of our cities, for each makes moral demands that we are helpless to meet.

Under these conditions the censor may appear as a strangely welcome figure, promising to relieve us of our guilt. We understand, of course, that there will be no relief for the people of Gaza, Soweto and Belfast merely because the cameras are gone. In this sense, whatever cheer greets the call for censorship is irrational. But the alternative--to keep watching the pictures--has begun to seem irrational as well. Perhaps it is time, then, to recognize something perverse and paradoxical about the “dramatic” images that television brings into the home. Watching the violence and grief unfold again, we are simultaneously moved and instructed to remain still.

Television may have a moral duty to uncover suffering in the world. But to show us the proper response to suffering is a moral duty as well, and here television has historically failed its audience. Its idea of mourning, for example, is to cut to a commercial. Mishandled in this way, our emotions turn against the scenes of strife as if they were somehow causing themselves. They are causing themselves, says the censor, who at least has an explanation for the violence that television is content to display.

So if the cameras are one day banned for good, it will signal not some sudden allegiance to the state but a broken covenant with television, which causes us to care but cares so little for us.