notes on personal profiles

Philip Bennett notices a trend in journalism. At one time it was common for major publications to present "profiles" of individual victims of natural disasters; wars; and armed attacks. These pieces would relate the experiences of the people that were on-the-ground at the time of the news-worthy story, and would therefore give the reader a sense that the victims were not abstractions, or statistics. They were real people with real lives that were torn by the surrounding events. But, in Bennett’s eyes things have changed. And for the worse. With the current focus on the war on terror and the various conflicts in the middle east (Iraq; Iran; the Lebanon war; Israel and the Palestinians; Turkey) personal profiles have decreased and civilian victims have become, as Bennett puts it in the mouth of terrorists, “ciphers” (which, incidentally, originated as an Arabic word for “zero”). These civilian victim ciphers have become invisible people: a pretty good example of insult to injury.

Bennett suggests some reasons for this drop in personal profiles in middle east coverage. One reason is quite defensible: It’s simply too dangerous in certain places, especially Iraq, for journalists to go in any depth. With regulations on their length of stay in certain hot spots, they barely have enough time to relay the facts of any one conflict, let alone to sit down with civilians to draw out some sort of personal profile. He also includes the “fatigue of readers, the overpowering urge to avert the eyes, the numbness caused by repetitive exposure to violence”. This sounds a lot like what some people call “compassion fatigue”. It’s a genuine, and justifiable, feeling that there is simply way too many people dying, that the numbers of dead and injured are just way too big, for us to do anything, and so it’s best to just ignore it all. “Forget the personal profiles.” Another reason is much less defensible. As Bennett puts it: “The general lack of deep understanding in the United States and the US media of Islam, or Arab cultures, can lead to a shallow level of identification with civilian victims.” This leads editors of publications to believe personal profiles simply won’t sell because most American readers don’t care enough about the stories of these civilian victims. They just can’t put themselves in their shoes.

But this is perhaps where personal profiles are most relevant, paradoxically. If the western public is bombarded by personal stories, if they are told the names, the backgrounds, the daily activities, and the personal relationships of far-away victims, they may eventually develop some affinity with them. People who at first seemed so alien may soon become understandable. The western reader may for once see an analogy between themselves and these civilian victims. And, perhaps, a more gentle foreign policy towards the people of the middle east, and of Africa (let’s not forget them), would be the product.

My assumption is that sympathy for a people need not come before their personal profiles are effective. The reverse may be true. If enough personal profiles are published regularly, perhaps new found sympathy will come about.