Wednesday, november 29, 1978
page 4
daily nebraskan
opinioneditorial
i
I
Blood, guts stories overlook
rare reporting opportunity
A story like the one in Guyana is thank
fully a rare occurence, but it presents a rare
opportunity for press coverage.
It is too bad the press didn't take ad
vantage of the opportunity it had in cover
ing the past week's events in Guyana.
The coverage of mass suicides and the
return of the bodies to the United States
was an exercise in excess and overuse.
.kent wolgamott
Nearly every story from Guyana des
cribed the stench of death, decaying bodies
and so on, even though the facts were
known by anyone in the world who had
contact with the media.
If the excess in print and by spoken
word cn radio was troubling, the visual
overkill of television reached an ultimate.
Film of the Jonestown village of the
Peoples Temple was repeatedly shown, an
aerial shot of the compound moving into
a shot of the bodies on the ground, then to
the soldiers working to get the bodies into
caskets and onto the planes.
The reporter then would treat us to the
latest body count before repeating the
same story that was presented the night
before.
Crucial questions lost
Repetition was the order of the day for
print as well, with entire stories repeated
after a new fact has been presented.
And, lost somewhere in the blood and
guts stories were the most crucial ques
tions presented by the tragic events.
Forgotten in most stories was the death
of Rep. Leo Ryan and the journalists who
were killed in the prelude to the suicides.
The funerals of the men were covered
and tributory biographies appeared, but
few in the press attempted to go beyond
the surface of Ryan's trip to South Ameri
ca and discuss both the unusual methods
used by the congressman and their success
in the past, the reasons why they were em
ployed and the real reasons Ryan was in
Guyana and the ramifications of the visit.
The entire question of 'cults' also has re
ceived only lip service treatment from the
press.
We have learned all about what the
Peoples Temple is or was, the intricacies
of Rev. Jim Jones' life and something
about temple members.
But, once again, the media has missed
the major point.
Cult growth
Few attempts have been made to discuss
the growth of cults in the country, beyond
the customary mention of the Unification
Church, Hare Krishna and Scientology.
We have seen little about motivation to
join these organizations and about future
Jim Jones' throughout the country.
Rather we get customary repetition of
familiar facts, taking the easy way out.
This should not be misinterpreted to say
that the story and its developments should
not have been covered on a daily in-depth
basis, for they should have.
However, the coverage we received was
traditional on a story which deserved more
innovative and thoughtful press.
The untold minutes of air-time devoted
to repeat showings of film could have been
better used to look at the problem behind
the event.
Discuss the 'why'
The inches of news columns devoted to
repeating known facts and statistics could
have been used to discuss why the events
in Guyana happened, not merely how.
A journalist covering religion should
use this opportunity to discuss the various
ramifications of situations similar to the
Peoples Temple across the country.
Instead, we are getting customary pieces
of journalism which, although they may be
solid pieces of reporting, do not reach the
highest possible level.
The people deserve the best that jour
nalists can produce in a situation such as
that in Guyana. It is unfortunate that we
have yet to see the kind of reporting it
deserves.
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Union Crib prices go up again;
Bennett requests student ideas
The students are being hit where it
hurts again-in the pocketbook.
The Nebraska Union raised the
prices of food items in the Crib over
the Thanksgiving vacation an average
of two to eight cents, depending on
what you buy.
The defense, as usual, is inflation,
and it seems to be a concrete one.
Union Director Al Bennett said
prices have been raised according to
the wholesalers' increases.
The blame, he says, can be seen in
the grocery store.
Of course, we understand that
inflation is rampant. As students, it
affects us no matter which way we
turn. But it seems that union
officials could have informed us
before break of the imminent price
increase, instead of injecting a sour
note into the last three weeks of the
semester.
A common complaint of most
students is their lack of control over
university policy.
Bennett has said that it is frustrat
ing to have to keep raising prices.
Multiply that by 23,000 and you
have student frustration.
It is difficult to imagine that
union officials deliberately did not
inform the students of the increase,
but Bennett has never informed stu
dents. Now, he has expressed concern
that the increases would affect bus
iness and he called for ideas from the
university community on how to
change the situation.
And now is the chance to have
minimal control over a small part of
university life which affects everyone.
So, if the increases incense you, now
is the time to tell Bennett, when he
has said he will be responsive.
It is hard to tell how much good it
will do, but at least he will know
how students feel.
On the brighter side: A cup of
coffee, the major inflation-grabber
in past years, costs the same 24 cents
after vacation as it did before.
At least it did Tuesday.
Mentalhigh priests can't help Americans understand tragedy
Washington-With the same simple trust
with which his hundreds of followers
turned to Jim Jones, we are now turning
to our high priests of the mind -the psych
iatrists and the psychologists-to explain to
us the carnage in Jonestown. Guyana.
It is a ritual we perform after every
major, inexplicable tragedy. And now. as
always, the priest -experts tell us every-thing-and
nothing.
What we want, of course, is justice, a re
storation of order and equilibrium. We
want to set the scales right, to get things
back into kilter.
Under ordinary circumstances, the bal
ancing mechanisms operate more or less
automatically. We sent thieves to jail; we
pack murderers off to prison for long
stretches or, if their crimes are sufficiently
heinous, we condemn them to death.
Balance is restored.
But now and then the scales are
wrenched so far out of equilibrium that the
normal mechanisms no longer satisfy.
William raspberry
Brutal assaults on small children or old
people: assassinations of revered leaders;
senseless mass murders. Nothing we can do
to individual perpetrators suffices to
restore the balance.
It does nothing for our sense of justice
to read that a half-doen suspects have
been arrested in the Guyana killings.
The suspects are too unimportant, too
weightless to balance the scales, no matter
if they are convicted, executed, or even
torn limb from limb.
Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray
are too small to counter our sense of loss in
the murders of John Kennedy and Martin
Luther King. Jr. We will have our conspir
acy no matter what the facts indicate.
Conspiracy theories won't do for the
Guyana madness, so we do our other thing.
We look for explanations, as if to say that
if we understand enough about how these
things come to happen, we can prevent
their recurrence. With the journalistic
equivalent of "Why. oh Lord:'" we turn h.
our experts.
The answers seldom help.
"'They (members of Jones' Peoples
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Temple ) see the world as a hostile one in
which they are rejected," says Dr. Ari
Kiev, the Cornell University psychiatrist.
"This group gives them a sense of be
longing, a sense of purpose in the world.
When the group is threatened, as they
apparently thought they were, the only
thing they have in life appears to be
caving in."
"When people are facing dislocations o'
rapid social changes and the present looks
frightening." adds Dr. Robert J. Lifton
of Yale, "there is often a cry for a return
to absolute simplicity in the rules of
living."
Suicide, he suid . mav be a way of
immortalizing these fundamentalist
principles when they are under attack b
outsiders.
Maybe we would be better off simply
accepting the fact that some tragedies
cannot be prevented.
I don't mean that there should be no
ef fort to understand the dynamics of cult
ism, of alienation, or of group suicide.
These are all "orthy of scientific inquiry.
But I do make a distinction between
scientific inquiry aimed at discovering
truth and ritual questioning calculated to
restore our sense of equilibrium.
The latter strikes me as an attempt to
find order, certainty and security in a dis
orderly, uncertain world. That's what Jim
Jones' followers were searching for. and we
labeled them "fanatics."
Copyright 1978. The Washington Post
Company
