The problem with watching the news…
I have watched the news, and wept over the afflictions of nations and rejoiced for their victories. I thought I understood what was happing in tragedy stricken countries, presumed I had a grasp on the facts and events.
Today the news reports from the streets where I grew up. On those streets, that hadbeen perfumed with the smell of jasmine on hot summer days, the streets that I had rollerbladed down with my best friend, and today beyond my understanding the news is reporting from those very streets; and the news reports death. Before this I had watched the news and sobbed for the tragedy of the loss of human life, once upon a time I watched the news, and I thought understood the gravity of what I watched.Today I receive a message from my friend, whom I had once rollerbladed with along those streets, telling me the house next to her has been bombed and that she might die, that she loves me, and to never forget her, and I am beyond tears, I realize, than, I never truly understood.
When the Syrian revolution started last March I admit I was a bit apprehensive. I was, at the time, in Damascus and had many doubts over whether or not the small riots in the border city of Dara’a would ever amount to anything. A year and five months have passed; to say I was wrong would be an understatement of the greatest kind. I moved to Minnesota, a year ago, and have not been able to witness much of the changes to my country first hand. But in some ways I have witnessed it, through the eyes of my grandmother, and the statuses of my Syrian Facebook friends, through a phone call were I have heard the echoes of bullets whizzing through the air, and through pictures sent to me by a boy I grew up with, of his roommate; dead. No matter how many phone calls I get or pictures that are sent to me, I am still ten thousand miles away and so I watch the news, in fact I am addicted to news channels and websites. I flick through YouTube videos faster than ever, and harass my friends to keep me updated on what they have witnessed and heard. The problem is that the more I watch the news the less I seem to know, the reporter tells me that the Syrian revolution is breeding sectarian violence, but the reporter clearly didn’t hear of how the church bells rang simultaneously with the mosques call for prayer, in honor of the fallen revolutionary Basel Shehadeh, images so beautiful and yet so heartbreakingly sad. The reporter tells me that the revolution is breeding religious fanatics, clearly he hasn’t heard of one of the most famous icons of the Syrian revolution Rima Dali who is actually an outspoken atheist. The reporter tells me that the situation in Syria is looking good today, clearly he isn’t friends with about two hundred Syrians who have suddenly disappeared off my news-line because their electricity has been shut down. The more the reporter talks, the less he seems to say.
On the 18th of July the movement took a huge turn and arrived in the capitol Damascus, and my phone exploded with messages from friends and family. Reading their accounts, listing to their shaken voices full of fear and dread. I have felt the most helpless I have ever felt in my life. I sat glued to the computer unable to move or speak except between gasps of tears. My hands shook, and I rushed to news stations desperate to get facts only to find there the reporters dry language and empty eyes. How they enraged me! How could they speak about numbers and figures and how things have not been fully verified? I wanted to yell at them, demand they give me something real. Something beyond the cold readings of death. They spoke of numbers; those numbers were my friends, my family, and my people. How many of them had people like me watching the news, praying that the number is not someone they love? A few months ago I watched a report on the presumed rape of arrested women protesters, while I knew my close friend had been taken as a prisoner and her family and friends hadn’t heard from her for three days. I remember wanting to yell at the reporter to shut up! She was fine! She would be fine! She had to be fine! Now once again I sat there watching and reading reporters talking about statistics and numbers and how the numbers kept changing according to whom you talked to, as if it was a doubtful thing that people were dying, and being massacred. I cringe at the many times I was guilty of watching the news and only seeing a number myself. I have watched the news and heard about 1,833 fatalities from Katrina, how many times have I heard that and thought of it as nothing more than an arbitrarily conceived number. Did I ever stop and think that maybe it was more than a number? How could I now expect people to be up in arms about the genocide of the Syrian people, if I am like them, guilty of separating a number from a face? Isn’t the 18,612 reported dead in Syria just a number to people who don't know that a friend of mine has a little boy with the sweetest eyes and the kindest face? They don't look at that number and become paralyzed by fear that he might be among them. How could they, to them, its just a number.
I have watched the news, and I’m guilty of separating a number from a face. I used to watch the news and take the “facts” the reporter told me at face value. I pray that I shall never be so foolish again.The problem with watching the news is that it makes you feel informed, and knowledgeable. I have bumped into one too many people whom think they are the expert on the “Syrian situation” and want to explain to me how they have the solution that somehow fifteen million people have failed to grasp. The problem with watching the news is that somehow it disconnects from reality, it somehow underplays the travesty behind those numbers. It misinforms and misguides, it underplays certain aspects and events and overemphasizes others.
in watching the news I wonder can something be done to fix this? Or are we doomed to never know the tragic truth until it comes upon us in all its horrifying glory? Maybe in this case, ignorance actually is bliss. and i turn off the television.
The Facebook page of the hero BasselShehadehhttps://www.facebook.com/Bassel.Song.of.Freedom
The story of BasselShehadeh
http://naveen-qayyum.blogspot.ch/2012/06/thanks-for-coming-to-pakistan.html?spref=fb
