Saturday, 12 July 2003

Tinkerbell lives! Well, July 9th has come and gone, and apparently the blogosphere didn't clap hard enough: Iran's mullahs are still in power. The mighty power of a million pens, the force that knocked Trent Lott and Howard Raines off their pedestals… couldn't lead mainstream media to take up a story that lacked an angle. Modern journalists only run three basic stories, which I'll call Watergate, Vietnam, and Pro Wrestling; "civil unrest in Iran" doesn't fit any of those templates, and so it goes on the back page.

Take Burma as an example. Here we have an ideal heroine, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate fighting for democracy and standing up to the thugs who've stolen her country—but the thugs are nameless, faceless non-entities, with too low a profile to make satisfying movie-of-the-week villains. If a member of Burma's ruling junta stepped forward and became the visible leader of the regime, the media would immediately typecast the story into the Pro Wrestling model: Mano a mano, hero(ine) vs. villain, good vs. evil, and we're off to the races. But so far the cabal in Burma has been smart enough to avoid the spotlight, and so the Burmese people suffer in relative media obscurity.

Iraq, on the other hand, had Saddam Hussein—a Snidely Whiplash clone straight from Central Casting—and a President more than happy to play the hero. It was a story a hack screenwriter would have no trouble scripting, and it fit the media template perfectly: It's the Attack in Iraq, with the Butcher of Baghdad vs. the American Avenger! North Korea fits the same Bond-villain profile: SEE the New Cold Warrior take on the Nuclear Hermit! When Dubya says "bring it on!" and taunts the feyadeen, he's only playing to type: I will DESTROY you, Arab Menace! Do you hear me? You will FEAR THE DAY you climbed into the ring with me! To the world of infotainment, this stuff is ratings dynamite; Dubya undoubtedly said a lot of things last week, but "bring it on" got more ink and airtime than all his other statements combined.

In Iran, the "villain" role is played by a bunch of guys dressed like the Ayatollah Khomeini, which in Hollywood terms is like pitching a Red Dawn sequel, and the heroes are played by anonymous students—because anyone over there who becomes less than anonymous is quickly disappeared by the mullahs. The mainstream press doesn't know how to work with this story. They can depict any given American President as a villain, and portray him to be so Evil and Powerful that None Dare Oppose Him—but they can't work that angle with an Iranian theocracy, because if the mullahs are that powerful then there's no story left to tell. Reporting that a brutal and oppressive regime is, indeed, brutal and oppressive, is something the mainstream media only does once a year at Pulitzer time. Give me a Berlin Wall falling, a statue of Saddam toppling, or an anonymous peasant going one-on-one with a tank column, and you're my top story… but generic protests I can only use as filler between the sports page and the Hollywood Minute.

So, as much as the blogosphere crowed and preened when it helped dump a bigot in the Senate and dethrone a petty tyrant in the newsroom, it pays to realize that blogs are at best a useful tool for the real agents of change in Iran. Blogs have been used to prolong the shelf life of Watergate-type stories, but on July 9 bloggers essentially failed in their efforts to pitch an Iran story to the ratings media; Jeff Jarvis acidly suggests that the major media is out of touch with the audience's news interests, as evidenced by Blogdex, but I have to point out that the ratings media have their own systems for measuring audience interest.

One last thought: There's a remarkable scene in the film Sneakers where Ben Kingsley and Robert Redford discuss the effect of belief on reality: That if you start a rumor that a bank is unstable, and enough investors hear the rumor and withdraw their money, then the bank becomes unstable, and the rumor becomes true. A "bank" is more concept than concrete, and if enough people stop believing in the concept, then the bank ceases to exist.

If enough Iranians believe the government of Iran is unstable, then it will be.

Blogs are the most advanced system to date for rapidly sending information to a widely dispersed audience: They make it trivially easy to harness the power of the Internet, and put a megaphone into the hands of virtually anyone. Fax machines helped bring down the Soviet Union in their day; blogs and Freenets and other new tools allow possibilities we haven't even explored yet. If some guy in New York City can organize mobs of people to storm the gates of Macy's and shop for a rug en masse—just for fun—then imagine what will break loose when these tools are widely available in China. For all the overblown hype about the power of the Internet to change the world, there is a dangerous little nugget of truth at the center of that meme.

And so, for now, I'll continue to clap my hands and offer moral support to the protesters trying to topple Iran's theocracy. I may not be able to do much more than keep the idea alive that the mullahs are on their way out—but if enough people believe that, and if enough people in Iran act on that belief, then maybe it comes true.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 3:54 am. comments.