GRAPE VINE
Non-Information Overload
Source : Domonic Faulder,Asiaweek
A journalist's work -- reading newspapers, magazines and e-mail -- is never done. Have mercy on us, Burmese
Journalists occupy a very privileged position in the workforce. They are paid to sit around the office reading newspapers. Such seeming indolence might earn others a rebuke, even dismissal. But journalists can bury themselves in the morning paper and honestly claim to be at work. And it actually is work. No journalist can survive without print media. This is our ground zero. I think it was Einstein who said that great minds should not be clogged with thousands of trivial bits of information; these just get in the way of the business of big thinking. Journalists, as we all know, have lesser minds. Like magpies, they peck around for new ideas and snippets of information to feather the nest of their own first-hand reporting.
Thailand is home to the largest print media in Southeast Asia. Not by coincidence, it has one of the biggest press corps in Asia. Five daily English-language newspapers are printed in Bangkok (if one includes the Asian Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune). Multi-linguists can pit themselves against a dozen or so Thai-language dailies, five Chinese and a few Japanese offerings. Suddenly just "reading the paper" here begins to look like pretty hard work. It is.
Then there are all the magazines, and now we're into the realm of a full-time occupation. And that's only the half of it. If I don't shut my office door at lunchtime, an avalanche of paper will crash through. Like any other journalist, I am a soft target for mountains of faxes and press releases, 95% of which I could do without. I keep a shredder next to my door to methodically destroy anything that is irrelevant to my particular interests. This destructive rite of meditation gives me the satisfaction of attending to everything sent to me, immediately.
In executive jargon, we are talking "information overload," or more accurately, non-information overload. With so much printed material around, just keeping up requires overtime. But nobody is going to pay journalists for this if they haven't done a stroke of "real" work -- which, of course, simply adds to somebody else's information overload. Watching television or listening to the radio is passive. We simply consume what we are fed or switch off. Contrary to appearances, reading is highly active; a process of continuous searching and selecting. Exhausting. "Journalist Killed by Paper." It can only be a matter of time.
Now Comes E-Mail
Technology has only made the problem worse. An enormous amount of material now piles in as e-mail that has to be sifted to sort the junk from the jewels from the jokes. Some of my editors in Hong Kong are so overloaded that I'm lucky to get a one-word response to a carefully crafted story suggestion. "Tnx" or "No" or "Never." They must be suffering too. The growth in junk e-mail is phenomenal. Press releases come as tarted up attachments that can take forever to download through Bangkok's mildewed lines. One of the worst offenders in recent years was the ill-fated satellite communications company Iridium. It sent out an animated color release that took over 15 minutes to emboss itself on my hard disk. After receiving it for the third time, I was borderline ballistic. Accumulated junk like that can have my mailbox stuffed and bouncing important messages within days if I am on assignment in a remote area.
The United Nations and governments are not always much better than the worst PR agencies. The cruelest agencies spam every journalist in town with platitudinous speeches and unwanted reports. The correct etiquette with anything lengthy is to send a brief synopsis with information on where the full text can be downloaded. But I dare not strike myself from many mailing lists for fear of missing that one little thing I actually did want to know. The shame of not knowing about something is a much more terrifying prospect than having a nervous breakdown from trying to know too much. Einstein would not have approved.
Save Us From Burma
Some of the worst non-informative e-mail offenders are Burmese. What these good people would get up to if the Internet was not effectively banned in their country is anybody's guess. In their absence, the government and Burmese in exile wage a war of e-mail attrition that spams everybody who signs up for the online version of the less-than- luminary New Light of Myanmar. The government pumps out a steady barrage of non-information that only serves to confirm how little progress is being made.
Its latest propaganda offerings are excruciatingly jingoistic verses - - each a serious violation of people's literary rights -- extolling the greatness of Myanmar, now arguably the sickest man in Asean. The opposition in exile responds with the same old criticisms. It's hard to believe they could ever share a country. Occasionally, the two fall to mutual abuse over something utterly nonsensical -- like who is the more patriotic -- and four-letter words fly in cyberspace. If there can't be some moderated, intelligent dialogue over the Internet, what hope is there face-to-face in Rangoon? Very little, it seems.
If this sounds harsh, compare it to Cambodia which is served by some superb web sites and internet archives. A highlight of my day is receiving a digest of important articles collated by a non-government organization. There may only be two or three items, but they are invariably relevant, informative and intelligently selected. This is a real public service.
Sadly, a very decent online weekly newspaper, the Burma Courier, recently shut up shop. The eternally fractious Burmese who remain would do well to take a look at their non-information overload problem, particularly on the Internet. Journalists are paid to read everything they can -- and the overload downside is an occupational hazard. People with real jobs don't have the time. They'd be fired.