Media, Cultural Studies and Human Rights

Lecture delivered at the UGC Sponsored Course on Human Rights

What does ‘cultural studies’ refer to as human rights?

Human Rights as commonly referred to the rights written in both national and international constitutions, memoranda and some achieved by conventions otherwise, are those categories/structures which an individual associates with his/her identity. So it may include any extent of individual association with any event up to his/her satisfaction.

‘Human Rights’ beyond national or international declarations therefore is that ‘unconscious category’ of [an] individual[s] that comes after the immediate conscious or experience at the time of communication. So ‘human rights’ is that mental affair or judgement which an individual gives verdict on any act of communication in social peripheries. ‘Human rights’ therefore largely reminds those rights which are only in problem or crisis and precisely easy to measure and understand through empirical methodologies and can be represented through statistical figures. This easy-to-measure approach helps authorities and NGOs to initiate proper legal action.

But the problem with Human Rights academic approach is that the measuring of ‘events and primary experience’ are being regularly performed empirically through lots of survey methodologies which can only set some cases for further investigation. This would largely identify the perpetrators under the purview of law.

But compared to the violators of human rights there are many more victims remained undernourished and undertreated in all respects which empirical studies can identify but cannot represent properly. The above so called behaviourist approach of human rights discourse cannot move beyond that keeping the rest to be performed by the state despite being aware that it won’t do anything for some stray cases unless it gets huge mass attention. So ‘mass attention’ becomes an imperative to validate and arrange proper representation for any such case of violation in social space.

So there is an inevitable gap between the human rights violations as empirically determined facts and statistical figurations and those affected identities that suffer huge pain and loss through a profoundly ‘unconscious route’ which people or any institutions are largely unaware of. On this construction ‘human rights’ is such a process that behind our backs, produces and structurates our consciousness in such ways we are not really aware of. Human rights then are those rights which are enlisted in all declarations of statements to be violated by the perpetrators but do not in real terms include my autonomy to make a judgement on it.

The common route to handle or describe ‘human rights’ is the cases and experiences so far been acknowledged either by the state, human rights organizations and NGOs. Now to analyze further those acknowledged cases of violations of human rights which has already been taken care of by the judiciary means to make a critique largely on whether the agents democracy have performed their duties or not.

So even after exploring the factual incidents and a mapping of human rights violations in different nations and also internationally, the empirically driven information and judgements on that, the whole human rights studies or academic approach becomes largely insufficient to catch up the real foundation or the reasoning of that in terms of heavy loss of individuality.

The ‘idea’ behind this approach is not to invoke any unnecessary commentary against the performances of the agents but to establish the insufficiency of empirical approaches that would hardly say the ‘sociology’ of the ruled and victims. The state and NGOs and their people must take some initiatives to discover that unconscious route of pain and loss of human rights of an individual even if it appears difficult to implement. It would then form a new politics and a new dream of movement that may locate the broader area of human rights violations and the notion of at least what our human rights are, under whatever professions and identities we work and live.

Anyone therefore may learn how to acknowledge the human rights violating acts, and international guidelines of what human rights are but he/she has also to learn the ideology of human rights which human being lives life within. For that, some traditional processes and views must be reshaped and revised so that a real alternative human rights movement can be started not just to launch protest against the perpetrators but to discover and address the unconscious route of human sufferings and loss which statistical figures and other forms of empirical information do not really represent.

Media and Human Rights:

Now when we attach or install media in human rights academics it would give you a further mode of representation of your society that originally represents the same arguments and empirical impositions of aspects of human rights violations and also to investigate whether agents of democracy have performed their duties properly.

So installation of media in human rights approach would therefore appear to be just a mode of representing not the society only but they have also to establish some amount of integrity to the ruling establishments for their own sustenance.

Media are supposed to perform certain degree of representation in general:

(a)  To investigate the acts of human rights violations;

(b)  To investigate whether agents of democracy have performed their duties;

(c)  To represent the victims objectively as per information or representing voice available;

(d)  To represent both agents and institutions to prepare opinion of the civil society; if so, public opinion;

(e)  To cover in favour of or opposition to the establishment;

(f)     To safeguard the culture industry, in terms of the ruling entertainment market, as much as possible; because for majority of cases people and civil society members often hold entertainment boom as responsible for human rights violations on the other side of traditional problems like illiteracy, ethno-religious superstitions, economic underdevelopment etc. etc.

(g)  Finally, to establish the claim of representing the unknown and undifferentiated mass;

But apart from the above mandatory representations media are also supposed to be critical to the social inequalities among masses in general. So despite keeping the side of advertisers and culture industry media have enough space to criticize any violation of ‘human rights’ in terms of news, soap operas, reality shows, talk shows, and news magazines such as ‘Satyameva Jayate’.

Media and its behaviourist approaches:

Media in the contemporary phase of international political alignment under US-led version of democracy and growth of human rights concepts largely promote US behaviourist approaches. These mass media approaches basically promote a common axiomatic condition, i.e. people’s consent. People both in individual and mass forms are considered to be assertive and proactive to everything that media promote, propagate, initiate, formulate, show, and represent.

Media therefore perform certain functions:

(a)  Priming;

(b)  Framing;

(c)  Agenda Setting;

(d)  Gatekeeping;

And in every step of media operation media houses generate enough space to cover certain amount of human right awareness reports in terms of its violation and also certain initiatives or human rights movements. But before this empirical information let us know a bit detail of the above mediation activities. While performing these functions media treat individual people firstly as audience; then mass audience and nothing more than that. So media can create a powerful opinion representing certain empirical data of human rights violations and clips of some moves but can never be a ‘partner’ of the suffering till that ends. Instead media would prefer to be partner of any programme representing culture industry.

Growth of Human Rights and Journalism:

In this all pervasive behaviourist approach of media operation and analysis journalism profession almost becomes a complementary category of the authorities across disciplines. The statement does not entail any quantitative survey to establish that there is no sign of independent journalism anywhere in the world. But it is also a fact that journalism particularly covering human rights violation issues faces a massive political and authoritarian challenge across national boundaries. The so called independence of the profession becomes a less debated topic nowadays— very few are interested to initiate a startling debate on it, as it intrudes unknowingly interests of immediate authorities.

The very first paragraph of report on ‘Journalism Media and Challenge of Human Rights Reporting’ reveals interestingly the base of human rights reporting. ‘International Council of Human Rights’ grounds certain questions:

How well do the media report human rights issues? How should journalists and editors

themselves judge the quality of their reporting in this area? What pressures and constraints do

they face and how might they be managed better?

The basic three questions focus ideological queries on media operation which, I consider, give us any suitable answer. The perspective on which these queries are being put forward is also very interesting:

Human rights have become increasingly prominent in recent years. Governments and political

leaders refer to international human rights standards more frequently, both in formal definitions

of policy and in public speeches. Public awareness has similarly evolved. Human rights are

understood to be near the heart of many international news issues, from Afghanistan to

Palestine, Colombia to Sierra Leone — and increasingly linked to discussions of international

debt and trade, education and health. Coverage of human rights in the media is therefore likely to continue to grow — and it is appropriate increasingly to expect journalists and broadcasters to

report them accurately.

Courtesy: © 2002, International Council on Human Rights Policy

You can add some more countries in the list as we are all aware of basic political reason why or the politics behind the listing. Now we are supposed to re-explore human rights in those regions on the debris on human rights where human beings are denied of getting basic needs of life almost a decade ago. Palestine people are still denied of getting food and shelter, and we are talking about sending relief there and not initiate a movement against the US-Israel pact that causes such a blockade for years.

The relief is the conscious route of political development; but the movement against the reason is the unconscious route of politics where sufferings and loss ask for the real foundation of relief. You can measure empirically how many relief operations are being held there or any other areas but it is really difficult to measure the suffering and the real cause of it. Journalism seldom does this operation. If it does we all remember those reports, like Watergate scandal, Tehelka, Wikileaks, Bofors Scam etc. Some other revelations like 2G scam, Coal mine scam are also to be remembered.

Media however operating in different regions often disclose many issues that cause serious harm to the human rights like infant foeticide, child marriage. These revelations get hardly any mass appeal unless any popular category like Amir Khan renders his presence for these.

Findings of the Report:

(i)                  Media, since 1990s, make reference to human rights in their coverage more often and more systematically;

(ii)                Many human rights issues are underreported by the media; although journalists have expanded coverage of human rights issues;

(iii)               Media do not explain and contextualize human rights information as well as they might; In general, data on human rights violations and on human rights standards are not lacking. However, the impact of this information on the public is not as great as might be expected. The media miss human rights stories because they do not pay attention to the specific legal and policy implications they have. Often, they do not have adequate knowledge of human rights and its relevance to the material they are covering. The media frequently also miss the context of human rights stories. These shortcomings diminish the professional quality of reporting, and hamper the communication of information that is sometimes essential for understanding.

(iv)             News is all-pervasive. The news output of the dominant providers is standardised. There is little difference in content between the information given by different providers. In practice, the large media corporations do not question one another’s journalistic values or priorities — even though they are in fierce competition for audience. Newsgathering operations have reduced serious analysis. Programmers adapt programme content to appeal to the largest audiences.

(v)              Human rights issues become ‘human interest stories’,forced to adhere to certain emotional clichés. Since the content of news programmes is very similar, competition between providers leads them to focus on presentation more than content.

The Editorial Process:

(i)                  Reporting is essentially reactive. The breaking news culture undermines editorial and ethical reflection, which is crucial to human rights reporting.

(ii)                The selection of news is event-driven.the news-driven information culture focuses on political and military events rather than social and economic processes, and as a result ignores or under-reports many human rights issues.

(iii)               The media determine what is newsworthy where press freedom exists.

(iv)             The editorial environment is information-loaded. Human rights news competes for the attention of journalists and editors with vast amounts of other information.

(v)              The relationship between reporter and editor is crucial. Reporters and editors are both involved in deciding what stories are identified and selected, and how they are covered.

Conclusion:

The conclusion of this lecture is thus again to explore the unconscious route to reach the core of the real foundation of human rights reporting so that real public awareness accompanied by a real movement can rule the order of the day.