Censored 2012 (61 page)

by Cynthia Boaz

In Iran, in early summer of 2009, students and citizens of the Green Movement continued taking to the streets despite open threats of violence from the regime and its security forces. At this point, much of the international media had already designated the uprising a failure. Mainstream news stories started acknowledging the regime’s claims to be “restoring order” and their promise to dispense with the troublemakers and agent provocateurs. Of course, life for the people of Iran has not been “normal” for a very long time, but for the most part, this reality did not seem to concern journalists and editors who continued to rely on the regime for information on events transpiring on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere. On the ground, however, activists had a very different story to tell.

The frames on the story that emerged in international media reinforced several common and hardened beliefs about violence and power. These distortions—which can unconsciously serve the interests of oppressors and those committing the injustices—are sustained largely by the messages media audiences receive when reading or watching news coverage of civil resistance. Although the subject matter to be examined here cannot exactly be described as censored within the mainstream media, it is often so distorted and misinterpreted that the
end result is arguably potentially worse than the outcome full-blown censorship would produce. Deprogramming hardened misperceptions is perhaps the greatest challenge for conscious media practitioners.

Media audiences who observe nonviolent struggles already face a number of challenges in obtaining a nuanced understanding of the dynamics underlying civil resistance. This is because most struggles are confronted by a tenacious conventional wisdom that can hinder an audience’s perception of a movement’s salience. For example, we often assume that certain structural conditions must be met in order for a movement to succeed. Factors such as favorable economic conditions, ethnic and/or religious homogeneity, a history of democratic institutions, and a thriving civic culture with a good degree of political space are all generally considered to be key to success. Additionally, observers tend to assume that extreme repression by the opponent is enough to stop a movement’s momentum. This prevailing mythology—which elsewhere I have called “The Tiananmen Principle” because it is still being used to explain the failed uprising in China in 1989—says that as repression by the regime opponent increases, a movement’s success decreases accordingly. Typically, media coverage of a struggle at this stage will reinforce the conventional wisdom by reporting on the use of violence as an effort by the repressor to “establish normalcy” or “generate stability or order,” when they should be widening the lens and contextualizing both the underlying reasons for resistance and the fact that resistance perseveres despite the violence. These common media distortions run the risk of undermining the morale of members of a movement and diminishing the enthusiasm behind global shows of solidarity.
In other words, media-perpetuated distortions about the efficacy of repression can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the context of a nonviolent struggle
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Of course, this alone does not explain the Green Movement’s inability to bring about a victory in 2009, nor does it explain the lack of success in Burma in 2007, or failures anywhere else for that matter. But while the international audience cannot win the Iranian or Burmese peoples’ struggles for them, it is impossible to envision a scenario where any mass nonviolent struggle can succeed without the sympathy and solidarity of the global media audience—objectives that are attainable only with an accurate and contextualized understanding
of the struggles by the public. And this is a result that is dependent largely on the narratives that emerge in mainstream media.

In this chapter, I will first give a brief overview of the core dynamics of nonviolent struggle (also known as “civil resistance”) and how the phenomenon works to shift power from oppressors to the people. Then I examine several common misconceptions about nonviolent action, and how they are reinforced by media frames on the stories. Next, I look at several types of framing techniques (or media biases) and, using two recent case studies (Burma in 2007 and Iran in 2009), show several examples of how frames can be a power influence on the ways in which meaning is conveyed to the global audience. And finally, I consider the larger consequences of framing stories of civil resistance erroneously and the ways in which conscious media consumers and citizens can insert more truth and context into the stories of nonviolent struggles.

Strategic nonviolent conflict (sometimes called “civil resistance” or “nonviolent action,” shorthanded here as SNVC) is a means by which ordinary people mobilize and fight for their rights using disruptive actions without using violence.
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It is important to emphasize both the proactive (rather than passive or responsive) nature of SNVC and the notion that SNVC means fighting back with nonviolent tools—in other words, it is a means by which conflict is engaged (nonviolently) rather than avoided.

SNVC can take many forms, including protest (the most visible), persuasion, non-cooperation (the active withdrawal of one’s consent—sometimes on a mass scale, such as a boycott), and nonviolent intervention (the most aggressive category of SNVC, which can include actions such as blockades and sit-down strikes.)
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SNVC is an active phenomenon that empowers people by uniting them in a vision and giving them a shared stake in the outcome of their struggle. It shifts power from oppressive rulers to civilian democratic rule in several phases: First, through SNVC, a broad-based civic movement drives up the cost of repression (both material and nonmaterial) and reduces the economic and political support that an oppressor needs to keep control. Next, when the system’s own defenders
begin to doubt whether it can survive (e.g. its pillars of support are undermined), the balance of power shifts to those using civilian-based resistance. Finally, the movement’s (and methods’) legitimacy increases, opening up the political space for genuine democracy.

This is a very basic overview of the sequence and dynamic of civil resistance, but even this highlights some key features of SNVC that are widely misunderstood or underemphasized in media reporting of the phenomenon: namely, that the practitioners of nonviolent action understand that the rulers cannot assert control without the active or tacit consent of the governed. Thus, disobedience is at the heart of nonviolent resistance. And simply rejecting the lie that those in power have a reasonable right to be there can be a very empowering phenomenon. By the time the global audience sees a mass civil resistance pouring out into the streets of a capital city, many other things (which have been largely ignored) have already been accomplished or overcome.

There are numerous misconceptions in conventional media regarding civil resistance. Because of space constraints, I will limit this discussion to five of the most common.
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These misconceptions tend to correspond with—and are reinforced by—the conventional media frames on nonviolent struggles. Because these beliefs tend to be so hardened and pervasive, it is rare that they are challenged in media coverage of stories about civil resistance. And where the stories clearly defy these deeply held beliefs, they are often treated as exceptions or accidents of history.

As mentioned above, SNVC is actually a very proactive phenomenon, one which M. K. Gandhi called “the most activist force in the world,” that uses nonviolent tools rather than violent ones to achieve its objectives. It is not the avoidance of conflict, or passivity; it is the waging of conflict nonviolently.

Additionally, as many movements have discovered, nonviolent action need (indeed, should) not be a last resort. This is for two reasons: First, activists and movements who are attempting to adhere to the Gandhian/Kingian understanding of nonviolent action realize that means and ends are inseparable; a state of justice cannot be manifested from an unjust process. Second, several recent empirical studies have demonstrated that democracies that were established through mass, nonviolent civic action (rather than armed insurrection or external intervention) are much less likely to be susceptible to democratic backsliding and are more likely to result in systems that are healthy and legitimate.
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