Tv News Miracle: Knowing Less Faster

June 19, 1986|By Steve Daley.

Television and the press made note of a grim anniversary in South Africa this week. It is 10 years since the uprising in Soweto, the black township near Johannesburg--10 years since a protest by black students erupted in violence and set the country on a collision course with history.

There were old pictures of the Soweto riots, new pictures meted out under a press embargo by the beleaguered government of South Africa and pictures of protests in America and Europe.

There was talk of American economic sanctions against South Africa to more actively protest the policy of apartheid, talk of Ronald Reagan`s

``constructive engagement,`` and talk of the national state of emergency declared by the South African government last week.

In short, the coverage of the situation in South Africa was as complete as we`ve come to expect in a major, breaking, international news story. It was laden with live pictures and vivid accounts, with perspectives from Pretoria to Paris to the State of Illinois Center in Chicago, with the words of Winnie Mandela and Desmond Tutu and South African President P.W. Botha.

With satellite linkups and the various electronic miracles at the disposal of the news media in 1986, what is left for us to know about South Africa?

Almost everything, as it turns out.

For example: What is the capital of South Africa? Is it Pretoria or Johannesburg or Cape Town?

The Soweto riots in 1976 began as a protest over use of the Afrikaans language in schools. What is the Afrikaans language? Who uses the Afrikaans language? What does Soweto mean?

The problems in South Africa are almost entirely matters of color. What is the difference then, in that racist society, between black and colored?

Between mixed-race and colored? Between mixed-race and Asian?

In what year was apartheid, the South African government`s policy of racial separation, made official? 1848? 1948? How about 1968?

The point here is not simply that we are ignorant about the rudiments of a story that dominates the front page and the evening news. It is that we are ignorant in an age when we are swamped with information, an age in which more and more television time is devoted to the notion of news, in an age when we ought to be getting smarter rather than dumber.

It could be argued that we have no rational excuse for sublime ignorance of the basics of a story like the one being played out in South Africa. News is all but instantaneous these days, with satellite technology shooting pictures of the day`s events into our living rooms. We may know less, but we know it faster. The now-dusty notion of the global village applies during the evening news.

A vast array of technological wonders slake the great news beast in up-to-the-minute fashion, and yet we seem to understand less and less about Soweto or SALT II or the wacky electoral adventures of Lyndon LaRouche`s followers.

Somehow, the news washes over us without adhering, a study in 30-second bites of videotape, a sensation disguised as information and seemingly incapable of holding our interest. In part, it is the nature of the news we are given, the delivery of news, which keeps us in the dark.

Because we are persuaded that we don`t have time for more, that 2 1/2 minutes of words and pictures before dinner is sufficient on any subject from contras to tax reform, we are trapped outside the context in which all these events take place.

Polls have repeatedly found that a runaway majority of our citizenry has no idea which side the American government supports in El Salvador or Nicaragua, or why. The faction fighting in Lebanon, the breakdown of interest groups and terrorist groups, is an impenetrable mystery to the most literate society on the planet, despite our very real stake in the Middle East.

In recent days, Americans have gotten word that their individual retirement accounts may be at risk in service to the current notion of tax reform, but no one seems entirely certain what will happen, or why, or when. And finding out seems too much trouble.

The information explosion has blinded us. We are bombarded with pictures and chat and designated experts; the natural inclination is to process all this information the same way, whether it`s Marcos or Madonna.

Television provides us with headlines, with winners and losers when available, with immediacy at the expense of understanding. Somehow, the idea that we are being shown the news, that we are on the scene when the cars are being overturned and the shots are being fired, has come to suffice.

What it means or how it got started or how it might end no longer holds any fascination for us. Television believes we don`t have time. Whatever the story, whatever the consequences, a couple of minutes at the top of the hour will have to do.

By the way, South Africa has three official capitals, one each for the administrative, legislative and judicial arms of the government.