Financial Journalist

Asia Online: January/February I997

Citizen O’Kane

About a year ago I met Peter Arnett, the CNN correspondent who became the face of the Gulf War while reporting from Baghdad after everyone else had left. I had a bet that I could enrage him and mentioned our mutual acquaintance, BBC veteran John Simpson. Simpson had publicly questioned the morality of CNN’s coverage and the value of information without analysis, wondering if the real questions were overwhelmed by valueless titillation.Countdown started, I sat back while Arnett erupted into a lecture on the public’s right to know, the power of information and CNN’s need to fill airtime. Both men are consummate professionals but in days when technology controls our information, Simpson’s comments are even more important.

A Reuters report entitled Dying for Information reveals business people overwhelmed by information, much of it useless. It also indicates that this “Analysis Paralysis” means you don’t have to be on the frontlines to suffer. Global communications have created a perceived need for information, and increasing numbers of firms are employing senior board level people whose sole job it is to filter and disseminate it.

Reuters’ report looked at the US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, finding that 80 per cent of managers are seeing their information workload increase. Already 41 per cent of managers find their work extremely stressful, another 94 per cent don’t see that improving. And 48 per cent believe the Internet will soon become the prime cause of information overload.

So while CNN bangs on about its 24-hour news, hourly MoneyWheels on CNBC roll on and PointCast hogs your monitor, both workers and management believe this information overload is affecting their health. In the UK, stress-related absenteeism costs an estimated US$3.2 billion a year.

We should remember an apocryphal story of the Vietnam war: With Kennedy’s penchant for political science, companies like the Rand Corporation got to grips with war policy. Information flowed from the battlefield and onto card-spitting monsters in the Pentagon. Washington had data in forests while the generals slashed and burned their way through the real thing. In I970 an intelligence officer asked their computer a question no-one had before.

“Based on the figures you have, when will the Vietnam War finish?” “1968″ said the computer. The guys in the field had enough Viet Cong “kills” to have exterminated the country’s population but the generals were too busy reading reports.

Technology has its place but it’s good data that counts; which brings us back to the Gulf War. During the first Scud missile attack on Israel, CNN had a retired general in Atlanta fearing that the satellite-linked Israeli camera crew should don gas-masks and watch for a rising body count. Meanwhile BBC World Service radio was reporting that “as of this point there is nothing to indicate this is a chemical attack”.

CNN had the technology but the BBC had the facts.

CNN, BBC, information overload, facts vs opinion