News in Your Television

"Giles Rabine, reporting live for France 2 from Sarajevo just after the fall of Srebrenica, on 13 July 1995 commented simply that, after thirty nine months of televised siege, "the Sarajevans have had enough of being interviewed, being filmed, being photographed; they've had enough of us watching them die, live, without trying to do anything to save them. And who's to say they're wrong?" pg 110 Publicity and Indifference (Sarajevo on Television).

This particular paragraph made me stop in my tracks, grab a pen, and write "Wow!!" right next to it.

Just hours before reading "Publicity and Indifference" in my first year seminar, we were discussing the disappearence of over 50 Americans in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, a border town. Not many people are aware of the on going drug war in Nuevo Laredo, let alone the many Americans who continue to be missing. After a long discussion through the eyes of my La Frontera/The Border class, these Americans of Mexican decent were concluded to be seen by the American society and by television networks as not "American enough" to make headline or any type of news in American television.

Of course, that is coming from 20 students who have been studying segregation in the border, and can possibly not think without these facts popping into their heads. Now what if we take the same situation and look at it through the eyes of Screen and Projections? Why isn't this horrible situation making news?

Keenan mentions the cliche that things don't happen unless a camera is there. The images reporters gather around the world "shame governments into action, armies will undertake humanitarian rescue missions for the publicity value alone, and publicity can bring the mission to an end." (108) So I'm left wondering if the underexposure of this situation, makes the situation unexistent to the public?

We could search the web for news instead of our televisions, but how would we know if that information is even real? If it's not regulated by some network, then it's most likely inaccurate in one way or another (not that it wasn't before). Our only hope is Third Cinema. Some neglected film maker must make a movie for us to be exposed and become aware of what is truly happening among us. But then in order to make a movie, won't this have to be regulated?

Perhaps the film maker can remain true to the cause, get the message across, and start some sort of revolution, but if his movie becomes too Hollywood-ized then we can have hope that the situation won't ever reach our televisions and that we will never have to feel guilty about something we don't know is going on.