Media: The step-child of WSIS?

source: OneWorld South Asia

13.Nov.03 - In his 1992 book, How the World Was One, Sir Arthur C Clarke described a bizarre vision of the near future: Ted Turner is offered the post of World President, but he rejects it - because he didn't want to give up power!

Well, the founder of CNN no longer runs the network and spends time popularising bison burghers and supporting the United Nations. But Clarke was once again uncannily perceptive when he prophesied the emergence of media moguls whose power far exceeds that of nation states or political leaders.

The media has always been a manipulator of power, in both politics and commerce. But it is only in the past two decades that this power has been amplified by new information and communications technologies - ICTs for short. These, and deregulation policies that opened by many national markets, enabled a handful of trans-national corporations to build truly global electronic empires that press barons of the past could only dream about.

Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch are only the best known faces of this industry that runs wide and deep. And it is no longer a western monopoly either: countries like India, Thailand and Mexico have produced their own mini-Murdochs.

The implications of this have been slow to sink in, and not surprisingly, these issues are hardly discussed in the media itself. We in the media love to turn the spotlight on everyone else - except ourselves.

Take television, for example. Viewers across developing Asia were euphoric when, in the early 1990s, trans-boundary satellite television ended the monopoly of dull and propagandistic state owned television. Not even the Great Wall of China could stop satellite television transmissions from 36,000 kilometres above the Earth, cooed one advertisement for STAR which ushered in this change. (China found ways of coercing STAR, but that's another story.)

Shortly afterwards, many of our countries allowed private sector participation in the media - which transformed the entire mass media landscape in a very short time. Most parts of Asia moved rapidly from an average of 2.4 television channels in 1990 to several dozen by the decade's end.

A similar proliferation has happened in radio, where a cacophony of FM channels now crowds the airwaves.

Good news and bad news A decade on, there is good news and bad news. As the 2002 Global Civil Society Yearbook, published by the London School of Economics and Political Science, noted: "Liberalisation and diversification, particularly in Africa and Asia, have transformed both print and broadcast media from a largely government-owned, monopolistic and uncreative media environment to a more dynamic, popular, democratic, creative, commercial and complex one."

That good news is also bad news - for some. Media liberalisation has not been matched by a corresponding increase in the public sphere - the area that accommodates and nurtures wide ranging discussion and debate on matters of public interest.

Commercial media tend to ignore both poor people and those living in rural areas. Broadcasting has become a market-based activity where profits are being made - mostly in cities, attracting advertisers and audiences with a mixture of music and light entertainment catering to lifestyle needs of the middle class. Even in South Asian countries with widespread malnutrition, such channels would much rather talk about how to lose weight.

News has taken a particular beating in the business plans of media empires run at a profit. "Infotainment is a commodity and today's news coverage reflects market forces and the desire of media moguls to rule the airwaves," says Kunda Dixit, editor of the Nepali Times and leading media commentator. "The public service role of media is being usurped by businesses for whom the definition of news is very simple: news has to sell, otherwise it is not news."

Meanwhile, the former monopolies have fallen on hard times and completely lost their way. State-run broadcasting systems have found their audiences migrating to newer channels and government subsidies reduced or withdrawn.

Struggling to survive, they have abandoned their earlier remit for public interest broadcasting, and are trying to outdo private competitors in their own game. If they have to reduce transmission capacity in rural areas or cut down on programmes on health, education, environment or agricultural topics, so be it.

Media ignored by WSIS? For many who are poor or living away from cities, there is now less information, fewer programmes on their concerns, and less chance to make their voices heard. As the Panos Institute has warned, without the capacity to seek information, to debate issues, and to make their voices heard, poor and rural people risk becoming more and more marginalised from their nation's and the world's economies. The 'dot com' has not come to them - and is unlikely to arrive anytime soon either.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) provides an important opportunity to raise these critical issues about North-South and rich-poor gaps in media ownership, content and access. Unfortunately, the official preparatory processes - and even civil society consultations - have focused too much on computers and Internet, ignoring the fact that the mass media have far greater outreach and power over people's lives and choices.

In fact, the widely accepted definition of ICTs - also used by the United Nations - covers the conventional communications technologies of telephone, radio and television as well as the newer ones - personal computers, mobile phones, satellite and wireless technologies and the Internet.

The reality is that we have far more radio and television sets on the planet than computers. The electronic media still provide the most effective - and often the only way - that people can access information to make sense of their lives, livelihoods and the choices they have to make in the complex and globalised society.

The crux of the matter is not technology but information itself - how much of information is available, in what relevant and timely manner to how many people at any given time. Immersed in digital hype, governmental and civil society participants at WSIS risk missing this crucial point.

They cannot afford to do so. The media are likely to remain the principal source of outside information for a majority of humanity for years to come. Media are also a critical way through which the people can, in turn, express their views and concerns in national discussion and debate. Consequently, the current status and on-going changes in the structure, content, ownership and access within these media is of equal, if not greater, importance in any discussion on how the Information Society affects the majority world.

Media pluralism in the globalised world A key concern of the 'Information Society' is media pluralism - a situation where all people in society have access to information on issues that affect their lives and have a way of making their voices heard in national public debate.

Genuine media pluralism implies: diversity of ownership, including media which explicitly serve a public or community interest; media that are accessible and intelligible to all citizens, particularly in relation to literacy and language; and media that reflect diversity of public opinion, particularly of the marginalised in society.

When these criteria are applied, the global trend is that we are moving away from, not towards, real media pluralism. Media freedom is necessary, but not sufficient, for media pluralism. While the past decade has witnessed many advances in media freedom and a growth in the number of radio and television outlets, they have not necessarily enhanced media pluralism.

This is because media ownership - at the global, regional and national levels - has been concentrating in fewer hands, squeezing out independent players. This now threatens to replace the earlier governmentally controlled concentration of media with an increasingly narrow commercial and political one. This has serious implications for the diversity and accountability in the media.

WSIS is not going to resolve these major concerns, but it can draw attention to them. Media globalisation is not just fodder for academics to churn out papers - it affects us all, every minute of the day. We ignore these issues at our peril. One day soon we might wake up to find - on the morning news, where else? - that we do have a World President whose arrival we never noticed.

Nalaka Gunawardene worked in print and broadcast media in his native Sri Lanka before pursuing a career in non-profit media organisations in the region. He is a director of Panos South Asia and heads TVE Asia Pacific.