(lo siento que es solo en ingles)
I don't know why he would make this statement with no mention of CRIS,
APC, AMARC and their many participating groups in Latin America-- or
any of the hundreds of community media and media democracy activists.
The reporter makes no effort to reference them either...
Perhaps I am wrong here but it seems too often that important leaders
and thinkers of progressive/left activism issue important "calls" for
activism, saying that it's urgent and people need to take action but
rarely mention the important organizing and activism and
movement-building that is already happening on the ground.
"Nobody in Latin America is discussing the democratisation of the
media," Italian-Argentine journalist said Roberto Savio, the founder of
the Inter Press Service (IPS) international news agency, durng the
three-day seminar on Democracy in the Media: From the MacBride Report to
the Summit on the Information Society".
===========================================
From http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31266
Media Democracy Must Sprout From the Grassroots
Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Dec 1 (IPS) - Civil society must lead the democratisation of
the media, an issue that was barely touched on at the recent World
Summit on the Information Society, said participants at an international
meeting in the Chilean capital.
"Nobody in Latin America is discussing the democratisation of the
media," Italian-Argentine journalist said Roberto Savio, the founder of
the Inter Press Service (IPS) international news agency, durng the
three-day seminar on Democracy in the Media: From the MacBride Report to
the Summit on the Information Society".
"Nobody is taking up the subject, none of the governments, neither on
the left or the right. Politicians tend to see the media as an
information system through which they can talk at the people," he told
IPS.
The Wednesday through Friday seminar is organised by the Institute for
Communication and Image (ICEI) of the University of Chile, which has
under its aegis the School of Journalism and the Chilean Association of
Schools of Journalism and Social Communication, and sponsored by the
French Embassy and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
The director of ICEI, Faride Zerán, underscored the importance of the
report written 25 years ago by a special United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) commission presided over
by an Irishman, Sean MacBride. She said there was an ethical imperative
to re-examine the contents of the 1980 report because its call for a New
World Information and Communication Order remains highly relevant in
today's globalised world.
"Roughly one billion people on this planet, the equivalent of one-fifth
of the world's population, have access to the Internet, while a large
proportion of the rest have never even made a telephone call," Zerán
stated.
"In Norway, more than 50 percent of the population are Internet users,
whereas in Sierra Leone, the poorest country in the world, only two
people out of every 1,000 have access to the 'information superhighway,'
" she added.
Savio, who was the principal media adviser to the MacBride Commission,
recalled that the 1980 report particularly emphasised the concentration
of the media in the hands of a few, the gap in technological development
between the industrialised North and the developing South, the imbalance
and distortion of the flow of news and information, and the erosion of
cultural identity that goes hand-in-hand with a monopoly on information.
The commission called for a communications policy for Third World
countries, the creation of more news media outlets, the rejection of
censorship, and a reduction in the degree of concentration and monopoly
of the press.
This last point, according to Savio, triggered a campaign against the
New World Order proposals, led by then British prime minister Margaret
Thatcher (1979-1990) and then U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1981-1989),
"to the point that the United States, Britain and Singapore withdrew
from Unesco."
The United States withdrew from Unesco in 1984 and re-joined in 2003.
Singapore and Britain left the organisation in 1985; the latter
re-joined in 1997.
Nearly "three decades went by without any discussion of the issue, until
the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Geneva and Tunis,"
Savio said. In his view, the language at the Summit was very similar to
that of the MacBride Report, with regard to its view of the media as an
essential tool which must be accessible to all in order to build a more
just world.
However, the Summit on the Information Society (the second phase of
which was held in Tunis in November) did not deal with "the dangers of
over-concentration of press ownership, the question of non-commercial
media, and the issue of access to technological services," nor did it
discuss any practical mechanism for reducing the digital gap, he said.
According to the president of the Chilean association of journalists,
Alejandro Guillier, also taking part in the seminar, technology opens up
multiple new options, but well-educated, determined people are needed to
develop alternative media projects.
Guillier told IPS that it was also important to change the way in which
democratisation of the media had traditionally been perceived.
"It used to be thought that media democratisation was a process that
would largely be carried out by international bodies, politicians and
governments, but experience has shown that the expected results have not
come from that quarter. Today, civil society is seen as fertile ground
for those options to be put into practice," he stated.
The speakers agreed on the fact that changes must be initiated from
within civil society, so that they may eventually find political
expression.
The Internet explosion is contributing to the creation of a more active
citizenry, which will definitely have an impact in the world of
politics, said Savio.
The challenge for the new generations of journalists is to use the
advantages of new technology and develop their capacity to comprehend
the new cultural realities, thus becoming persons who can facilitate
more horizontal - rather than vertical - ways of doing things, said
Guillier.
Other speakers at the seminar include Argentine journalist and writer
Mempo Giardinelli, French journalist and former diplomat Pierre Kalfon,
University of Paris 3 - La Sorbonne professor Divina Frau-Meigs, and
sociologist and political scientist Valeria Betancourt, a specialist in
information technology and communication at the Association for
Progressive Communications (APC). (END/2005)
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