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Published on Saturday, December 15, 2001 by the Inter Press Service |
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Experts Propose a New Global
Public News Network |
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by Ramesh Jaura |
| BONN - Wary of the unsatisfactory
media coverage in times of crisis, senior editors and media experts from
around the world have stressed the need for a new global public TV that
would be different from the CNN and BBC World.
Such a global news network would serve ''the public interest of the peoples of the world along the lines of a truly independent public broadcaster,'' they said at a seminar this week in Geneva, Switzerland. The seminar was organized by Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) to discuss ''media in the times of crisis reporting on war, terrorism and disaster''. The participants included representatives of the media from Botswana, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Nepal, Peru, Switzerland, South Africa, United States and Zimbabwe. ''We wanted experts to come up with helpful ideas as to what needs be done in times of crisis, at a point in time when many donors are considering ways and means to help Afghanistan,'' explained FES Geneva bureau's director Reinhard Keune. The statement emerging from the seminar said, an international board of trustees, who are representative of the global population, should oversee the new global news broadcasting service. ''Such a service would be credible to the majority of world citizens, create space for global dialogue and help to bridge real and perceived gaps between continents and cultures,'' they said in an eight- point paper summing up their discussions DEC 10-11. Commenting the state of the media in the aftermath of Afghanistan, they said: ''The freedom of the media, the freedom of expression and the freedom of information were worldwide under a new threat in the name of the so-called war against terrorism.'' The statement added: ''Under the disguise of combating terrorism, autocratic regimes are strangling whatever little exists of those freedoms in order to seal themselves from scrutiny by independent media.'' As a result, governments in transitional countries are tempted to put the process of democratization on hold. Senior editors and media experts expressed concern that democratically elected governments in the U.S. and Western Europe were introducing draconian security laws, which betray the very values of democracy they claim to protect. Subsequently, they were increasingly losing credibility with those committed to freedom of the press and freedom of expression, in the emerging democracies in the developing world and the former communist countries in Eastern Europe. The statement added: ''The media worldwide have failed to fight these tragic developments sufficiently, and too many (of them) are even promoting such measures without realizing that they are endangering their very existence as free and independent media.'' Media in developing countries, in particular TV, depend in their international coverage heavily on international broadcasters such as CNN and BBC World. The two enjoy a de facto monopoly in covering news in crisis regions such as Afghanistan or the Middle East. The coverage, senior editors and media practitioners said, was however too often unbalanced and one-sided and did not place news in an appropriate context. In fact, the ''patriotism'' demonstrated by these international broadcasters sets an unwarranted precedence particularly for the developing countries whose leaders demand such a ''patriotism'' from 'their' journalists. ''For journalists in the South, journalism in the North is increasingly losing its credibility and thus its role as a standard for their own practice,'' the Geneva statement warned. Against this backdrop, the high-powered group of media men and women said that ''thought be given to a project to set up a new global news broadcasting service that serves the public interest of the peoples of the world along the lines of truly independent public broadcaster''. They expressed concern that news is widely perceived as a mere commodity, which has to be sold on the market. Therefore, images of crime, disaster, violence and war are preferred to in-depth reports on poverty, corruption, discrimination and a lack of democracy. Stories on peaceful developments, for example those in the interest of women, minorities and indigenous communities are perceived as not saleable and are therefore neglected. ''For all these reasons, it is time to re-examine the concept of journalism as it is practiced presently,'' senior editors and media practitioners said. ''To allow journalism to really serve the public, proper constitutional frameworks for the media, including the establishment of genuinely public broadcasting services, must be maintained in the West and promoted in the South,'' they urged. The Geneva statement also urged International media freedom organizations to be more pro-active. ''They should intervene before suppression of media freedom reaches a crisis point. In particular, they should monitor and highlight developments in countries such as post-Taliban Afghanistan and Zimbabwe to make sure that freedom of expression and media are guaranteed in a meaningful way and not curtailed for 'security reasons'.'' In view of the current crises, which throw the media especially in the developing world into crisis, the international community should substantially increase its efforts to assist the independent media and to promote a favorable political environment for them to flourish, the statement urged. Copyright 2001 IPS ### |
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