The New Statesman's media columnist, Brian Cathcart, raises some interesting points in his latest article, When journalism is powerless. In spite of the belief that the media wields huge influence, he argues that "when it comes to the things that matter" - such as the barbarity in Darfur and the desperate situation in Zimbabwe - "most journalists are conscious of how little difference they make, rather than how much."
On Darfur, Cathcart asks: "How many times have you read that 200,000 people have been killed and two million more displaced in a vicious campaign, backed by the Khartoum government, against the people of western Sudan?" But the journalists who have written those stories have been unable to effect change.
"No paper has tried harder than The Independent," he writes, pointing to the number of articles, leaders and letters it has carried. "Yet, in nearly four years, nothing, not the stunts, not the editorials, not the eyewitness reports, has stopped the killing."
Then he turns to the Daily Mail's years of coverage of the outrages of Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe. Despite that "mighty" paper's "best efforts" it has made no real difference. It has not troubled Mugabe, nor even persuaded Britain's foreign office to take a harder line.
He concedes that bringing about change is not the job of journalists, but the business of voters and politicians. Journalists are supposed to deliver the news, providing appropriate interpretation or commentary. However, he concludes, when the news you bring is 200,000 dead and two million homeless, and when after you have reported it the killing just goes on, it certainly undermines the view that journalism is all-powerful.
The Cathcart argument appears at face value to be a strong one, does it not? He could have mentioned the Burmese junta too, which has been continually criticised by western journalists for its house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet it has made no difference.
Then again, there are also examples where the media's reporting has played a key role in leading to political and military intervention that did bring about changes. I'm thinking particularly of the various crises in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. So is he right? Are we a power to be reckoned with or merely paper tigers?
