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READING BETWEEN11-IE
Our concept of reality is often determined by
what someone else says reality is. Nowhere is
this more true than in the world of mass-media
print and broadcast news journa/ism. The bu/k
of our news comes to us secondhand, neat!y
packaged on the pages of our morning newspa–
pers or from TV. The news that makes
it
into
the public consciousness often does so because
somebody determined it was
"jit
to print." Only
when we understand the message behind the
medium can we appreciate that news and reality
are often two distinct!y differentthings.
by
George Ritter
to eliminate the entire country. i.e., the "land." "The
authors are to be censured," Grimes wrote, "for ex–
horting people, as they do in their preface, 'to halt the
ongoing annihilation of the Cambodian people and to
spare the world a repetition of their tragedy' " (Louis
Segesvary, "Spiritual Horror,"
Reason,
August 1978,
p. 28).
The reviewer, in assessing one of the most monumen–
tal human rights abuses of this century, could still tind
an optimistic note in it all: "Yes, they (the Khmer
Rouge] have been brutal," he wrote, "but in their own
way the Communists clearly wanted to rebuild Cam–
bodia. In doing this, they felt a need to destroy first, and
their methods were horrible"
(ibid.).
Grimes might also have noted that Hitler wanted a
thousand-year Reich and that Stalin and Lenin in their
Russian bloodlettings did so "for the good of the prole–
taria
t. "
One wonders if the same book reviewer would have
censured writers during the 1940s who might have ex–
horted people "to halt the ongoing annihilation of the
Jewish people and to spare the world a repetition of
their tragedy."
Grimes' rather strange lack of moral outrage was
symptomatic of a glaring double standard that existed
among the major organs of the media. Initial reports of
the Cambodian atrocities were downplayed. Two net–
works even reported that the Khmer troops were well
disciplined. Although the thrcc major networks had
spent 4 hours and 55 minutes broadcast time on Cam–
bodia in the 20 months following "liberation" by the
Khmer Rouge, only seven percent of that total had been
devoted to the bloodbath. This oversight could certainly
not have been attributed to a lack of hard evidence.
Thousands of eyewitnesses were available to be inter–
viewed. In addition, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
had issued two major atrocity reports in 1975. (At the
time. these reports aroused only passing interest.)
The treatment of Cambodia by the electronic news
media typifies one of the problems inherent in a world
where news is edited, managed, and packaged before it
ever reaches the public. l f a news ítem disturbs one's
carefully nurtured image of reality. then the obvious
answer is to suppress, deemphasize, or ignore the un–
settling truth. The si tuation in Cambodia (as noted in an
article in the September
Plain Truth)
has been a prob-
lem for the media because it runs counter to the popular
n early 1977 a condensation of a book entitled
myth that revolutionary movements are supposed to
Murder of a Gentle Land
chronicled mind-numb-
ameliorate social conditions. Obviously in sorne in-
ing atrocities of Hitlerian proportions- the sys-
stances they have. But the recent history of China,
tematic elimination of over one million human
Russia, Cuba and other Communist countries can just
beings by the Khmer Rougc in the nation of
as readily lead to the opposite conclusion.
Cambodia.
Murder of a Gentle Land
was sub-
sequently evaluated by a reviewer for the
New
Preserving a Preconceived lmage of the Real World
~
York Times,
Paul Grimes. While Grimes noted
The coverage of the Cambodian massacre is an example
~
that
Murder of a Gentle Land
was a "book of
of the fact that , while the mass media would never
~
importance," he expressed a few reservations. He
openly admit it, in actuality they control the manufac-
~
objected to the title on the grounds that the extermi-
ture and processing ofmuch ofwhat we call news.
-ª
nation of masses of human beings was not the same
Once a conceptual working model of reality has been
~
thing as saying the Cambodian government intended
established, humans, whether in or out of the news
~~----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------~
The
PLAIN TRUTH October-November 1978
19