During the Vietnam War, they used to call them "five o'clock follies": evening press conferences in Saigon where they rattled off the daily scores of killed in action. Two marines, 80 Viet Cong. The reporting of the Maoist insurgency in this country is starting to resemble this relentless bombardment of factoids. Today's tally: Police 3, Maoists 2. The numbers numb the nation, the daily count anaesthetises us. Sterile statistics keep the human tragedy of the insurgency, the misery of thousands of individual lives and bereaved families, at a safe distance so it does not spoil our dinner. It also inures us, deadens our senses, paralyses us as we go about our daily chores in a miasma of fatalism and despair. As long as we don't see ourselves as the protagonists in this crisis, it will continue to be remote and we will be detached. The media critic, Johan Galtung said of another conflict: "Peace is not just the absence of war, it is the absence of the threat of war." The media cannot stand the dull periods of non-events when no one dies. Media therefore becomes a part of the problem, a force that pushes people to view violence as normal, and slants public opinion.