Much to Answer For

Just months after the horrific terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the rapid collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan surprised the world. The Taliban's grip on the hearts and minds of the Afghan people dissolved before the power of western bombing and the un-suspected strength of those within the Afghan society who opposed their abuse. Too, the expected rise of Islamic fundamentalism in other Muslim countries failed to materialize. Osama Bin Laden's call for a holy war against the west and its culture roused only a few extremists.

Yet, while we cope with the continuing fear and shock of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the situation in the Middle East seems more intractable than ever, will the world quickly resume its course towards economic and cultural globalization? Will the immense spending on security and armaments be a necessary if irksome investment in maintaining the status quo of western, secular ascendancy?

A group of television broadcasters, who think beyond the images of violence and despair that so often fill their screens, admits that their powerful medium may be part of the problem, by perpetuating our ignorance of the hopes and aspirations of 2/3rds of the world's population; by reinforcing the stereotypical view of the developing world as one of poverty, misery, and now, the breeding ground of terrorism. They have come together in a consortium (see note on The International Broadcasting Consortium below) to challenge our current assumptions about the role of communication in moulding our world-view and to propose some modest solutions.

Television – The Hidden Curriculum

Their ideas spring from a belief that the media, in particular television, has taken on a new and powerful role in society.

Front-line journalists, as well as academics, recognize that modern media have a powerful impact on the way we see ourselves and how others see us. Neil Postman, the influential American educational critic, wrote 20 years ago that television is not only the “hidden curriculum” of our time – as suggested by the Annenburg School of Communication, but “the curriculum” from which the mass of people, particularly the young, form their beliefs, attitudes, intentions and viewpoints.

Television legitimizes what it carries and conveys and “delegitimizes” what it does not. So, some suggest, a form of electronic colonialism spearheads the creation of the mass culture needed to sustain and nurture the values of consumerism.

Jan Pronk, Dutch Minister of the Environment is a special Ambassador for the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, in 2002, and a long-time champion of 3rd world aspirations. He knows what happens when people are deprived of their fundamental right to see themselves and have their hopes and aspirations depicted by the mass media. “The end of the dominant ideological contest in the 2nd half of the 20th century – the battle between capitalism and communism – has unleashed a new cultural dispute: a conflict between cultural diversity in an open society on the one hand and cultural self-containment in closed communities, characterized by static conventional wisdoms, on the other…Harmony turns to discord if local culture seems to be overwhelmed by alien values.” In other words, when you feel your identity – whether religious, cultural or ethnic is threatened – you go and punch someone in the nose, he said. Or you devise a diabolical scheme to destroy whole cities.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 were earth shattering in more than their physical and human destruction. As with any earthquake, the events revealed unseen and unsuspected tensions.

Regional and global peace and security requires a sense of belonging and the ability to express a legitimized identity.

While the motives of Osama Bin Laden and the factors that influenced him to resort to international terror to achieve his ends remain a cause of debate, we cannot deny that many millions of people, especially in developing countries, feel powerless, without control, in the currents of rapid change. Peoples' sense of place and local identity are swept aside as kids in Bangkok, Boston and Montreal rock to the same pop beat in Chinese-made, US-marketed Reeboks.

The collapse of communism signalled, for many, the ascendancy of western, secular capitalism, a good “ism” compared to others. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the miracle of Mandela's installation as first president of a free South Africa, the success of the Gulf War, the technology-fuelled boom of the late ‘90s, assured many that the world was on the road to a new order marked by peace, prosperity and harmony. The troubling “small wars” of Africa and parts of Asia were blips on the radar screen pointing our way to a bright future.

We suggest that “business as usual” is a recipe for further terror, social exclusion and deepening economic hardship for hundreds of millions in the South.

Television has much to answer for it. Firstly, it gives us a false view of the world and its peoples. A review of UK television by the University of Glasgow's Media Group illustrates how television teaches its viewers to “perceive the developing world to be not much more than a series of catastrophes.” The study, carried out before September 11, found that television news of the South focused on dramatic and negative images of the developing world. Colombia was devastated by an earthquake in 1999, the focus of television being on pictures of collapsed buildings, frantic rescue efforts and appeals for help. “But if Colombia was to be seen and understood as anything more than a disaster area, then it is important that its people be shown as having a history, politics, economy and everyday life.” (see: http://www.gla.ac.uk/Acad/Sociology/debate.html)

Focus group research in the UK showed that the images that audience groups recalled of the developing world were overwhelmingly negative, including famine, poverty, refugees, war and conflict. But when the media took the time to explore the causes as well as the results of these events, people reacted with shock and a sense of revelation. When they learned that buying diamonds and oil, that might come from Angola, paid for the land mines that maimed innocents of the civil war there, people became much more interested and concerned.

Another UK survey, by 3WE, showed that for the four major UK TV channels, the number of programs concerning developing countries dropped by one half between 1989 and 1999. The Media Group concluded that most of the remaining programming dealt with conflict, terrorism and catastrophes. Most of the rest concerned sports or the visits of western celebrities.

Television – Setting the International Agenda

Going beyond moulding people's worldview, television has unknowingly taken on another (and to some) frightening role within our societies.

Political parties, in a democracy, set the direction of public policy, deciding what weight to give to public opinion in the light of their chances of re-election. Smart political leaders attempt to use the media to create public support for their positions; and in the aftermath of horrific events the mainstream media quickly assumes the role of cheerleader. The media questions armed response and restrictions on freedom of speech and movement at its peril.

Our observation is that however backroom political leaders may attempt to use the media to mould public opinion, the way events are covered and depicted takes on a life of its own. And even beyond the news hour, the over-all content of television moulds opinion, expectations and values.

The media, in particular television, has taken on the role of gate-keeper in deciding public opinion, and so shaping the response of governments.

Who's to Blame?

Since the dominant purpose of market-driven mass media is profit, we should not be surprised at the result, as exemplified in television: the advertising base of commercial – and increasingly public service – television results in uniform content, perpetrated, repeated and distributed to often prurient interest. Diversity is accepted only if it produced a profit. Disneyfied, industrialised and commercialised fare increasingly presents what is increasingly viewed as a normal depiction of society. So while critics of television may say that it has much to answer for, 50 years after its start, the blame rests not so much with those who have exploited this medium as with those who have power to control it, for the public good.

We accept that technological progress now links all parts of the world through new information highways. What we needn't accept is that these powerful conduits of information should all carry the same basic messages.

Cultural diversity can and is expressed either in a healthy and dynamic fashion, or in the aberrant fashion that inspired Osama Bin Laden.

Cultural diversity is akin to and as important as biodiversity, for health, and sustainable, world development. It deserves an outlet.

Ten years ago, the first World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Rio de Janeiro, recognised that the widespread expansion of information infrastructure would not guarantee pluralistic communication. The Rio Plan of Action, Agenda 21, said,

“Countries in co-operation with the scientific community should establish ways of employing modern communication technologies for effective public outreach.”

One of the products of this suggestion was the creation of a partnership of television broadcasters, NGOs, supported by some far-sighted governments. The founders saw a need to encourage television broadcasters and locally-based, independent television producers, to create programming expressing the diversity of their own societies. It's not an easy task. Public service broadcasters, who carry a responsibility to inform, enlighten and help create cultural identity, are under siege everywhere; transnational cultural industries are driven by profit not the public good, and even public opinion, as interpreted by profit-oriented TV mandarins, may be seen to prefer Bay Watch at prime time to a locally-produced soap opera.

The last notion has been proven false. The audience research of our partners in developing countries shows a consistently strong demand for locally produced programming, set within the domestic cultural context. And curiously, such programming has proven both popular and profitable when exported regionally and sometimes internationally. Locally produced programming deals with themes and issues within a real live cultural context; not that created from the mind of a Hollywood formula scriptwriter.

In his observations on the power of television, Václav Havel equated it with our power to split the atom: atomic energy can immensely enrich humanity, or it can threaten destruction. “Just as our use of atomic energy depends solely on our sense of responsibility, so the proper use of television's power to enter practically every household and every human mind depends on our senses of responsibility as well.”

Our group suggests that a tiny fraction of the immense public spending on security and armed response be devoted to real “peace building.” Helping to create a coalition of public-service broadcasters aimed at giving expression to a diversity of viewpoints on issue of sustainable human development and cultural identity. We suggest it will be a low-cost, high-impact contribution to the healing we all seek in the aftermath of September 11.

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The International Broadcasting Consortium is a project of the WETV Television Foundation which, through a group of broadcasting networks and independent television producers proposes to set up a mechanism for the development, production and sharing of television programs on,

• Cultural plurality and global understanding
• Issues of peace and security
• Self-expression by independent television producers; and training and mentorship of young TV producers, especially in developing countries, whose viewpoints are under-represented in the western mainstream media.

The consortium is rooted in almost a decade of experience led by WETV. Other participants include broadcasters in the Netherlands, Caribbean, Uruguay, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa and several Asian countries.