MTV’s Moratorium

I want to put in a few words about MTV’s moratorium on covering “activities that give Lebanon a bad image”. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I suggest you check out my friends’ takes at Blog Baladi, State Of Mind and Gino’s Blog.

I agree with many of the points raised by the bloggers linked above, but there’s an important angle of this story that I believe they’re missing. That angle makes me not only agree with the moratorium, but also wish other stations would follow it.

It’s all about incentives

Imagine for a moment that you’re a bunch of rabble-rousers. You want to attract the government’s attention to the miserable lack of electricity in your neighborhood. You have been watching the news, and you noticed that whenever protestors do something extreme (burn tires, cut roads off), the government tries to accomodate them. Not only that, but now that the news is about “disturbances” instead of “protests”, TV stations will cover the entire thing and interview the saboteurs live on prime time TV.

With such a a broken incentive system (violent protestors get results AND a propaganda soapbox) , anyone who has a grievance or a demand will conclude that the best way to move forward is to break and burn things (Incidentally, I wonder what will happen if a bunch of people cut-off the highway until domestic helpers can swim in Lebanese beaches, but that’s a whole different story).

What MTV is basically saying is this: We will deny you the attention you are seeking in these harmful acts. But if you make your protests civil, we will take our cameras to you and let the whole world listen to your problems. This is a carrots-and-sticks approach that will work best if all other stations follow MTV’s lead. That doesn’t mean that the MTV will stop covering the violent protests. It will talk about them in the news, but no more footage and no more live interviews from the scene.

I have a feeling that this would actually get results. I’m pretty sure that a good chunk of violent protestors are nothing more than attention seekers at heart.