Keep up the good work!

There is plenty of reporting out there. Reality is talking to us 24 hours a day. But this blizzard of information, news reports, data, surveys and statistics is so heavy that ordinary people may be blinded to what all the reality emerging from the silence actually means.

At the moment there is what journalist and educator S.A. Schleifer calls ‘a dangerous shortcoming within mainstream media’ which he characterizes as ‘the limits of empathy’. According to Schleifer there are two ways one can cover news – the first is detailed, general news coverage of many aspects of society which forms a multi-dimensional, holistic picture of a nation or region that depicts the society in human terms that elicits empathy. This is the kind of media exposure the developed world – North America, Europe, Japan and now China – routinely gets. The second way is what Schleifer calls Catastrophe Coverage – natural disasters, riots, assassinations, revolutions, wars, plagues, famines – which is what the rest of the world gets. This kind of unbalanced, editorially selective approach to newsgathering and reporting militates against the extension of empathy. In the rush to cover catastrophes there is very little time spent in looking at the religious, social, cultural, ethical and economic nuances and implications of a place or situation that can give the public real understanding of what is happening. Whole cultures are reduced to alien, exotic, forbidding and one-dimensional places, composed of villains and victims. There is no way for outsiders to grasp the meaning of what is actually going on in these places. There is no way of seeing an ongoing process at work. We only see flashpoints. There is no basis for empathy.

A War on Terror is, by definition transnational and trans-confessional. It cannot be a war against a specific religion because then it is no longer a war on terror. It is a war to win back the sanity. In order to win back sanity it is absolutely necessary to extend the limits of empathy. The news media is now almost totally owned by corporate interests. This is why New Media has assumed an increasing importance. Blogs like yours and mine can serve as platforms to encourage understanding and dialogue. These discussions are a small contribution but can be the beginning of something larger.