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Background Information on the Global Themes
> Media |
Media
In his
autobiography, President Mandela recounts a stopover he made north
of the Arctic Circle at Goose Bay where a group of young Inuit
had come to him:
"... in talking with these bright young people, I learned
that they had watched my release on television and were familiar
with events in South Africa. `Viva ANC!'one of them said. The
Inuit are an aboriginal people historically mistreated by a white
settler population; there were parallels between the plights of
black South Africans and the Inuit people. What struck me so forcefully
was how small the planet had become during my decades in prison;
it was amazing to me that a teenage Inuit living at the roof of
the world could watch the release of a political prisoner on the
southern tip of Africa. Television had shrunk the world, and had
in the process become a great weapon for eradicating ignorance
and promoting democracy."35
The process skilfully described with one single image by President
Mandela is that of an exponential acceleration in the diffusion
of the various media. A little over a century ago, in 1895, Marconi
sent the first wireless message; two decades earlier Edison had
invented the phonograph. Recent decades have seen technical progress
accelerating after the invention of radio and television and subsequently
broadcasting in both media. How this broadcasting is currently
taking place was difficult to foresee when in October 1957, the
Soviet scientists launched the Sputnik, the first spacecraft to
go into orbit, a metallic sphere two feet in diameter that was
designed to determine the density of Earth's upper atmosphere.
In this case, the event was broadcast through radio and the satellite
circled Earth for only three months. Twelve years later the United
States of America would broadcast by television the images of
our planet as one single body and of the first man to set foot
on the moon.
Today, the idea of "one world" and of satellite/parabolic
communication has acquired a central role in addressing key global
as well as local issues. The first international satellite system,
Intelsat, was put in place in 1965. Since then, space-age telecommunications,
information technology, and optical electronics have converged
with conventionally understood "mass media" to give
people an unprecedented array of tools - from the simple cellular
telephone to the Internet - to diversify their perceptions, to
express their opinions, to interact with others and to understand
and react to change.
In the media sphere the simple perception of change is undergoing
a radical transition. It took the radio 38 years to reach 50 million
users, 13 for television and 16 for personal computers, but only
4 years for the world wide web, the dominant browsing mode on
the Internet.
Challenges of a media-rich world |
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The Unesco Commission on Culture
and Development that helps to analyse modern communication trends
and the central role of Western culture within the globalisation
process describes new technologies as offering unheard-of scope
for the media. Traditional forms of censorship have become increasingly
difficult, the media can reinforce a sense of global solidarity
and multi-media technologies are creating new artistic and intellectual
challenges. The ease of reproduction and transmission has made
it much more difficult for any government to control - let alone
censor - the information people receive or send. The media of
today are helping to sustain people's movements as well as to
create a better-informed citizenry. They are also strengthening
the sense of global solidarity, without which no global ethics
could begin to crystallise. "Media images of human suffering
have motivated people to express their concern and their solidarity
with those in distant places by contributing to relief efforts
and by demanding explanations and action from governments."
Negative aspects have to be stressed as well. It is probably
an underestimate to say that at this moment over 100 journalists
are being held in prisons in over 20 countries for exercising
their ostensibly guaranteed right to freedom of expression, not
to mention those who have paid with their lives for exercising
their profession.
The availability of means is another problem that has to be
mentioned. How can the communications revolution reach the billions
of people without electricity in hundreds of thousands of human
settlements in the developing world? They are still the have-nots
of the information revolution. The haves are a minority, mostly
citizens of developed countries and urban residents elsewhere,
who can hope to be connected to satellite television or the international
information networks. |
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Did you know that...
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For developing countries,
the weak link in the infrastructure chain is often the "last
mile" from the local exchange to the household. Some
African countries are indeed so poor in telecommunications
that there is less than a single telephone line per 1000
people. Or, to put it more starkly still, there are more
phones in Tokyo or Manhattan than in the whole of Africa.
The 1999 Human Development Report provides a comprehensive
comparison of the availability of telephone lines, TV sets,
faxes, PC and Internet hosts world-wide. Developed countries
have an average of 502 telephone lines, 595 TV sets, 45
faxes, 204 PC and 35 Internet hosts for every 1000 people,
while poorer countries, for every 1000 people, have an average
of 4 telephone lines, 36 TV sets, 0.2 faxes and no significant
presence of PCs or Internet access. Presently, the radio
remains the only medium which is sufficiently wide-spread
across the globe and responds to the need of oral cultures
as well. |
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What effects
do these rapid changes have on our perception of world events?
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Three crucial dimensions in
the changing nature of media can be highlighted:36
- The rapid development of telecommunications and media technologies
has changed the very nature of the media. In terms of both space
and time they are becoming an integral part of events taking
place. Live coverage itself has been transformed into a new
event. Examples of this are the landing of United States marines
in Somalia and Haiti and the assault on the Beli Dom and the
Ostankino television station in Moscow.
- Politicians have a powerful and crucial influence on the
media in non-democratic regimes and unconsolidated democracies.
In democratic societies, politicians endeavour to influence
the media as much as possible by spin-doctoring. On the other
hand, the media themselves are able to exert an increasingly
decisive influence on the behaviour and decisions of politicians.
- Commercialisation suppresses the diversity of programming,
as well of programmes relating to minorities, alternative culture
and subcultures. The pursuit of higher audience ratings is reflected
in the reporting of news and current affairs. News presentation,
the selection of excerpts from reality presented by media to
their audiences is now characterised by the trivial, the bizarre
and the scandalous. As a consequence of this, hard news now
occupies less space in the media. There is less willingness
to cover the expenses of public service broadcasters which are
now being forced into commercialisation. In the process, the
public has the most to lose - it loses its sources of information.
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Article 11 of the European
charter for regional or minority languages (1992) on Media
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The Parties undertake, for
the users of the regional or minority languages within the
territories in which those languages are spoken, according
to the situation of each language, to the extent that the
public authorities, directly or indirectly, are competent,
have power or play a role in this field, and respecting
the principle of the independence and autonomy of the media:
A. to the extent that radio
and television carry out a public service mission:
i. to ensure the creation of at least one radio
station and one television channel in the regional or minority
languages; or
ii. to encourage and/or facilitate the creation
of at least one radio station and one television channel
in the regional or minority languages; or
iii. to make adequate provision so that broadcasters
offer programmes in the regional or minority languages.
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A need for alternatives
Especially at the time of tensions and violent conflicts such
as those affecting, for example, the Balkan region, "new
channels for the free flow of information could and should contribute
to pluralism, economic and social development, democracy and peace
... Training programmes on journalistic ethics should sensitise
journalists to prejudices and discrimination".37
One of the leading Internet portals promoting information about
human rights, One World (www.oneworld.net),
has summarised in the following way the present four main challenges
to democracy in the media:
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Freedom
of expression - much remains to be done
"Many journalists around the world,
including Europe, are still harassed, prosecuted and sometimes
even murdered when trying to report on matters of public concern,
said Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer in a
statement to mark World Press Freedom Day (3 May 2001)."38
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- Freedom of speech.Traditionally, many discussions of media
democracy have focused on the right to freedom of expression.
Particularly during the Cold War years, Western governments
made much of state censorship in the Soviet bloc as a useful
contrast to the supposed freedom of their own press. Yet, although
free speech is still a right denied in many instances across
the world, concentrating exclusively on that aspect has obscured
issues even more fundamental to media democracy in many countries
today.
- Voice projection. In the media, democracy is much more than
just "being able to say what you like". Media democracy
is about voice projection - making yourself heard. While technology
has made it easier than ever to publish your own magazine (or
record your own video news), it has become ever more difficult
to reach even the smallest audience with that material. Even
if you can find a distributor to take it round to the tiny number
of independent outlets still open and willing to stock it, the
fact that you can't spend millions on advertising each year
means only a hardened few will ever pick it up.
- Concentration of ownership. In its more sophisticated form,
censorship is achieved not through legal repression but through
capitalist institutions working together to maintain the hegemony
of their beliefs. Control of the most powerful new media tools
is still concentrated in the hands of a few (nationally or internationally),
in private ownership or under governmental monopoly. This means
that the majority of media businesses are owned by a tiny number
of industry giants. Whether in individual countries or - increasingly
- on a global scale, these cartels effectively control the images
and stories through which we understand the world. Instead of
a true democratic diversity, we are offered infinite versions
of the same product (with slight variations in the packaging).
- Keep it safe. This lack of variety has serious consequences,
as it becomes increasingly difficult to voice alternatives to
the mainstream media's orthodoxy. How much coverage was given
to the hundreds of thousands in North America and Western Europe
campaigning against their countries' assault on Iraq in the
Gulf War? Restricted media democracy leads to restricted political
democracy, as alternative ideas are deliberately kept away from
public attention (especially if they might offend the advertisers).
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Concentration of ownership
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"Two nuclear power plant
manufacturers own two of the USA national TV networks -
General Electric owns NBC and Westinghouse owns CBS. The
other network is owned by a cartoon company: Disney owns
ABC", alerted USA presidential candidate Ralph Nader.
One advertising group is able to corner today 40% of the
market. The concentration of power as witnessed with the
fusion of American On Line (AOL), Time Warner and the Turner
group raises the spectre of cultural hegemony. |
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Do you think that being subjected to the continuous commercial
propaganda through mass media takes away from us our capacity
to make free choices?
Do you think that youth exposure to inappropriate material with
violent or racist content, for example, on television has an influence
on its thinking and attitudes? |
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NGOs and media |
1. The Baltic Media Centre
is an independent, non-profit foundation (NGO) promoting
democracy, social development, and a peaceful international
co-operation through the active participation of the media,
www.bmc.dk
2. AIM (Alternativna Informativna
Mrea / Alternative Information Network) is a network
of independent journalists in former Yugoslavia and the
southern Balkans, which provides a service of in-depth information
in the local languages and in English. www.aimpress.org
3. Reporters sans Frontières
is an organisation that provides information on reporters
who wrote freely and are in jeopardy worldwide. It organises
petitions and letter writing campaigns in defense of threatened
journalists. For more information, see www.rsf.fr
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Endnotes
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