"New World Disorder" in the Electronic Age   

The Roar of the Crowd: How Television and People Power Are Changing the World
By Michael J. O'Neill
Times Books

The Roar of the Crowd: How Television and People Power Are Changing the World
By Michael J. O'Neill
Times Books
232 pages; $21

In 1989, Czech Communists leaked a bogus report that riot police had beaten a student to death. Their goal: to trap a local news service into running a false story and then shut it down. But their trick boomeranged. The Voice of America picked up the death report and broadcast it back into Czechoslovakia. Though the government denied that the beating had occurred, 200,000 people erupted in protest. Not long afterward the government collapsed.

"Illusions write as much history as fact," observes veteran journalist Michael O'Neill, in retelling this anecdote in his contemplative new book. "Communications are the carriers of revolution, not only in visible finales..but also, more important, in the deeper, earlier stages, when infusions of new knowledge and human contacts profoundly alter social and economic trends and pave the road to political upheaval."

O'Neill amply documents how the gathering power of the electronic age is creating a global mass society with "a new common base of shared sensations, experiences, and information."

This puts people everywhere in constant touch with each other, diminishing the authority of leaders and letting "instant public emotions override reflection and deliberation."

The result is what O'Neill terms a "new world disorder" where old-style political elites can be routed by the force of mass opinion, now transcending national boundaries and amplified by instantaneous communication networks. Communism itself, O'Neill writes, fell victim to this "demystification" when "the whole Kremlin cast was put on screen and instead of supermen they turned out to be a gaggle of ordinary characters."

Not only are virtually all leaders and public activities subject to scrutiny by the media, but the impact of any image can be magnified, and sometimes misshapen, by media repetition.

One stirring act — such as a lone protester's defiance of the tanks in China — may come and go in a few moments; but, caught by the media, it gains icon status through its enduring presence in our field of vision. On the other hand, a foolhardy act — such as a politician's dissembling or uttering an offensive phrase — seems to worsen with each replay, almost as if the perpetrator was remorselessly sinning again and again.

There are many echoes of Marshall McLuhan, Daniel Bell, Anthony Smith and others here (all credited by O'Neill), but he has synthesized and advanced their thinking with a succinctness befitting his role as a former editor of the New York Daily News.

O'Neill can write with epigrammatic clarity, as when he notes that modern journalism "floods the human psyche with sensations that raise emotions but smother thought." Sometimes, though, his pungency verges on breathlessness: "..we see in the light of our own time the paths that have led us to where we are. We are the future of our past."

Newspeople may be most interested in a topic O'Neill introduces very late in the book: "preventive journalism."

Like others, he criticizes the media for glorifying confrontation rather than analyzing change. "The media have flunked this test too often to justify their smug resistance to change," he writes.

His preventive journalism would "search out the causes of social breakdowns before they turn into the failures and violence which the TV shows now celebrate." It would redefine news "to emphasize thought as well as action, harmony as well as conflict, explanation as well as exposure."

"The Roar of the Crowd" is a considered contribution to understanding a true revolution. Unfortunately, O'Neill spends only three or four pages on his proposals for journalism, and he ends with a flaccid "only-time-will-tell" paragraph. He leaves us wanting more insight into how the media can be induced, or shoved, toward change.