Media Reform

Philip Lee

The classic anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), directed by Lewis Milestone, has been restored by the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Centre. Based on the best-selling novel by Erich Maria Remarque, the book and film tell the story of a group of German students who volunteer to fight in the 1914-18 War. It is not a story of heroes, but of ordinary young men trapped in a terrestrial hell; a bitter critique of war that resonates as powerfully today as it did before the next ‘war to end all wars’.

Ashish Sen

While the direction of media reform in India has often been viewed in the context of demand and supply, its exclusionary and piece meal characteristics would appear to have been relegated to the background. These have significant fall-outs in terms of media democratization in the country. Even a cursory look at the pace of decentralization would take cognizance of its selective and reactive characteristics. If the first is predictable under a ‘market is the mantra’ regime, the latter is worrying as it raises a larger question: Does the course of the reforms conform to a larger and cogent media policy, or are they symptomatic of a crisis – management and reactive culture? While there are no easy answers, community would appear to have paid the heaviest price in an ambivalent and unlevelled media playing field.

Larry Hollon

Respected journalist Bill Moyers was not exaggerating when he recently told an audience that ‘the very soul of democracy is at stake’ with the increasing concentration of ownership of public media such as radio, newspapers, television and the Internet. United Methodist Communications, responsible for the denomination’s four-year, $20 million advertising campaign, recently engaged in a skirmish over paid speech with Reuters after the international media giant initially refused to place our ads on its giant Times Square electronic billboard. While the church won this engagement over the Times Square billboard, this confrontation with a huge media company shows we are living in dangerous times governed by an evolving social policy that severely limits public discourse.

Robert A. Hackett and William K. Carroll

Democracy has never been a gift handed down from elites. It is a hard-won prize, perennially threatened by attempts at economic, cultural and political enclosure, as in the commodification of biogenetic knowledge, the concentration of media ownership and control and the securitisation of the state (McNally, 2002). Whether defined around gendered, ethnic, national, class, environmental or other interests, social movements have long been the carriers of liberatory social change. Critical social movements (CSMs) – movements committed to empowerment of the marginalised, movements that challenge the hegemonies of dominant groups and institutions – are key to revitalising democracy today.

Regina dos Santos

Communication media in Brazil - TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and periodicals in general, and all the media including the most recent phenomenon, which is the Internet - reproduce stereotypes solidly ingrained in the national mentality. Members of the African-descended population are kept from watching themselves positively reflected in the media mirror and whenever they are shown their image is presented with traits built upon racial prejudice ideals, reinforcing distorted and stereotyped images of our reality. This perverse situation of racism and discrimination, both within and from the media, especially on TV, reflects not only historical and psychological aspects of racist practices in Brazilian society, but is also the result of a series of economical and political elements which have privileged only non-blacks in every section of economic, political, and social life in the country in the last decades.

Aliza Dichter

There is much excitement in the U.S. over the resurgence of a people’s movement against the corporate media juggernaut that is dominating culture, commerce and the future of communications. Can the NGOs that are taking leadership build a movement that is as democratic, diverse and community-oriented as the media system they promote?

Cheon Young-Cheol

South Korean society was under military dictatorship from the 1970s to the 1980s. In those days, many journalists protested against the military authorities. Some of them went to jail and some lost their jobs by the actions of a dictatorial government. They launched a progressive daily newspaper, Hankyoreh. The funds for establishing Hankyoreh came from a fund-raising campaign by the people. Citizens supported Hankyoreh, because they strongly wished for such an alternative newspaper. Today, Hankyoreh is just one of many major daily newspapers in South Korea. South Koreans have lived through industrialization, dictatorship and democracy in a short period. We have learned that if we participate, we can change society for the better. The case of Hankyoreh is an example.

Sally Burch

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), whose first phase took place in Geneva 10-12 December 2003, proposed to ‘address the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society’ and to ‘develop a better understanding of this revolution and its impact on the international community’.1 As such, it was the first global multilateral forum dedicated to discussing governance issues and policies in relation to communication, since the so-called digital revolution took centre stage. The far-reaching societal implications of the present reordering of the communications, technology and media sphere might lead us to assume that this Summit would have high-profile media coverage and launch a broad public debate on the role of information and communication in society and the corresponding policies. Yet the Summit came and went almost unnoticed by the public, and much less as something of concern to them.

William Bird

The Media Monitoring Project (MMP) is an independent NGO that has been monitoring the media within a framework of human rights since 1993. The MMP has conducted research into the representation of a range of critical human rights related areas including, race and racism, Africa, gender, children and HIV/AIDS in the media. In 2004 South Africa will celebrate ten years of democracy, a wonderful achievement considering our brutal history but it is only ten years and some of the greatest challenges still have to be overcome. Before addressing how the MMP has intervened in the formation of new media policy in South Africa it is important to consider the context of the media in the country.