MARCH 2007

Web censorship spreading globally

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

Published: March 14 2007 22:03 | Last updated: March 14 2007 22:03

Internet censorship is spreading rapidly, being practised by about two dozen countries and applied to a far wider range of online information and applications, according to research by a transatlantic group of academics.

The warning comes a week after a Turkish court ordered the blocking of YouTube to silence offensive comments about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, marking the most visible attack yet on a website that has been widely adopted around the world.

A recent six-month investigation into whether 40 countries use censorship shows the practice is spreading, with new countries learning from experienced practitioners such as China and benefiting from technological improvements.

OpenNet Initiative, a project by Harvard Law School and the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford, repeatedly tried to call up specific websites from 1,000 international news and other sites in the countries concerned, and a selection of local-language sites.

The research found a trend towards censorship or, as John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, “a big trend in the reverse direction”, with many countries recently starting to adopt forms of online censorship.

Ronald Deibert, associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, said 10 countries had become “pervasive blockers”, regularly preventing their citizens seeing a range of online material. These included China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Burma and Uzbekistan.

New censorship techniques include the periodic barring of complete applications, such as China’s block on Wikipedia or Pakistan’s ban on Google’s blogging service, and the use of more advanced technologies such as “keyword filtering”, which is used to track down material by identifying sensitive words.

Methods such as these are being copied as countries new to censorship learn from those with more experience. “There’s a growing awareness of best practice – or rather, worst practice,” Mr Deibert said.

Ken Berman, head of technology for the US state department arm that broadcasts Voice of America, said some countries were learning from China, which has the most experience in internet censorship, with Zimbabwe appearing to use the same technology.

While internet censors are learning to apply new technologies to expand their efforts, activists wanting to circumvent the controls are using the latest internet methods to advantage.

The Financial Times Limited 2007

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LONDON (EJP)--- The art critic of London’s main evening newspaper has come under heavy criticism by Jewish community leaders after saying that the Holocaust has been used to “whip guilt into society”.

In a column published in the Evening Standard last week, art critic Brian Sewell came out against a new exhibition commemorating the end of the slave trade currently on display at the Victoria and Albert museum in central London.

While Sewell clearly deplored the slave trade he said he believed the exhibition, which features artistic works inspired by the years of slavery, was unworthy.

But in a sentence described by Board of Deputies Chief Executive Jon Benjamin as "apalling", Sewell accused Holocaust memorials as well as those remembering the horrors of the slave trade as being used to make people feel guilty.

“The historical slave trade was a business at least as appalling as the Holocaust, with many, many, more victims, and like the Holocaust its memory has been hijacked by the descendants of those victims and turned into a scourge with which to whip guilt into society,” Sewell wrote.

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Published: 06 March 2007

A military correspondent for Russia's top business daily died after falling out of a window and some media alleged yesterday that he might have been killed for his critical reporting.

Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, according to officials; his body was found by neighbors shortly after the fall.

With prosecutors investigating the death, Kommersant and some other media suggested foul play.

"The suicide theory has become dominant in the investigation, but all those who knew Ivan Safronov categorically reject it," Kommersant wrote in an article.

According to the newspaper, the 51-year-old's hat was found on the landing between the fourth and fifth floors, along with a spilled bag of oranges. His apartment was on the third floor.

Independent on-line

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...IRAQ

MEDIA LENS: Correcting the distorted vision of the corporate media

February 26, 2007


MEDIA ALERT: IRAQ CIVILIAN SUFFERING - THE MEDIA SILENCE


Introduction - The Surge

In all the endless coverage of the American "surge" committing 20,000 extra troops to the war in Iraq, there has been barely a word about the likely consequences for the civilian population. A report in the Lancet medical journal last year estimated that, as of July 2006, 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the US-UK invasion - one in seven families had lost a household member.

In the Independent earlier this month, Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet report, suggested that Britain and America may have triggered "an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide" in Iraq. (Roberts, 'Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit,' The Independent, February 14, 2007; http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2268067.ece)

In an exchange with a Media Lens reader, Roberts explained his reasoning:

"The Fordam University assessment put the [Rwandan] death toll at ~6-700000, that is the only quantitative assessment that I have seen... and I was there so I do not use the comparison lightly." (Roberts, Media Lens message board, February 18, 2007)

The media's response to Roberts's claim? Complete silence. No other national UK press outlet has since mentioned his comparison with Rwanda. And yet, as we have noted elsewhere, when Roberts made similar observations on mass killings in Congo in the 1990s, he was widely quoted by press and politicians.

Is it too much to expect that this vast death toll might give journalists pause for thought when discussing likely outcomes of the current intensified combat in densely populated areas? Apparently so. Over the last three months, we have found a single article containing the words 'Iraq', 'surge' and 'civilian casualties'. This was limited to one sentence in the Daily Mail:

"Analysts believe that hand-to-hand combat is inevitable and large numbers of civilian casualties are expected." ('U.S. gears up for Battle of Baghdad,' Daily Mail, February 5, 2007)

Over the last month, some 2,340 articles in the national UK press have mentioned the word 'Iraq'. Of these, seven have also mentioned the words 'civilian casualties'. Over the same period the words 'Iraq' and 'Matty Hull' have appeared in 128 articles. As most people will know, Matty Hull was a British soldier killed in a 'friendly fire' incident. 

This is hardly a scientific analysis, but it gives an idea of the relative silence surrounding the issue.


The Price Of An Iraqi Child's Life - 3.5p

It is an awesome fact that the war has so far forced one out of every eight Iraqis, more than 3.7 million people, to flee their homes, according to the United Nations (http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/08/iraq.refugees/index.html). Of these, 2 million have left the country while another 1.7 million have been internally displaced. Some 40 per cent of the professional middle class has left the country since 2003. It was recently estimated that of the 34,000 doctors present in 2003, 12,000 have now emigrated and 2,000 have been murdered. (http://web.mit.edu/CIS/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf.)

Antonio Guterres, former prime minister of Portugal and head of the UNHCR, said earlier this month "we are facing a humanitarian disaster". ('UN warns of Iraq refugee disaster,' February 7, 2007; http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/6339835.stm) Guterres is attempting to raise an extra $60m in emergency funds - the same sum the Pentagon spends every five hours on the occupation. The money is sorely needed. According to the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources, just 32 per cent of the Iraqi population has access to clean drinking water, 19 per cent has access to a functional sewage system. (IRIN, 'Water shortage leads people to drink from rivers,' February 18, 2007; http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=70243)

Dr Abdul-Rahman Adil Ali of the Baghdad Health Directorate warned of the dire consequences:

"As the sewage system has collapsed, all residents are threatened with gastroenteritis, typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhoea and hepatitis. In some of Baghdad's poor neighbourhoods, people drink water which is mixed with sewage." (IRIN, 'Iraq: Disease alert after sewage system collapses,' http://newsite.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=64375)

A February 9 Financial Times editorial commented: "what we should all be scandalised by is how little the two countries most responsible for the Iraq misadventure - the US and the UK - are doing to alleviate this crisis". ('Iraq's refugee crisis is nearing catastrophe,' The Financial Times; http://www.ft.com/cms/s/aa8d01c8-b7c3-11db-bfb3-0000779e2340.html)

The US has budgeted a mere $500,000 this year to aid Iraqi refugees, of whom it has accepted 466. According to the British Home Office, 160 Iraqis were accepted by Britain as refugees in 2005. The applications of another 2,685 were rejected. By contrast, Syria has taken more than 1,000,000 Iraqi refugees, Jordan more than 700,000, Egypt 20,000-80,000 and Lebanon more than 40,000. The Financial Times noted of Britain and America: "Iraqis fleeing Saddam Hussein were in the past well received". But today's refugees are a political embarrassment and are not welcome.

Silence also surrounds the plight of Iraq's children who are dying in hospitals for lack of the most elementary equipment. Save the Children estimate that 59 in 1,000 newborn babies are dying in Iraq, one of the highest mortality rates in the world. Up to 260,000 children may have died since the 2003 invasion. (Colin Brown, 'The battle to save Iraq's children,' The Independent, January 19, 2007; http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2165470.ece)

On January 19, nearly 100 eminent doctors, backed by a group of international lawyers, sent a letter to Tony Blair describing conditions in Iraqi hospitals as a breach of the Geneva conventions requiring Britain and the US, as occupying forces, to protect human life. The signatories include Iraqi doctors, British doctors who have worked in Iraqi hospitals, and leading UK consultants and GPs. The doctors describe desperate shortages causing "hundreds" of children to die in hospitals. Babies are being ventilated using a plastic tube in their noses and dying for lack of an oxygen mask, while other babies are dying because of the lack of a phial of vitamin K or sterile needles, items all costing just 95p. Hospitals are unable to stop fatal infections spreading from baby to baby for want of surgical gloves, which cost 3.5p a pair. The doctors commented in the letter:

"Sick or injured children who could otherwise be treated by simple means are left to die in hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated." (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2165471.ece)

They added that the UK, as one of the occupying powers under UN resolution 1483, is obliged to comply with the Geneva and Hague conventions that require the UK and the US to "maintain order and to look after the medical needs of the population". But, the doctors noted: "This they failed to do and the knock-on effect of this failure is affecting Iraqi children's hospitals with increasing ferocity."

A delegation of these doctors asked to meet Hilary Benn, Britain's Secretary of State for International Development. Stop The War reported the results:

"They [the doctors] have been told that Mr Benn cannot spare the time. He has refused their request for the UK to organise an immediate delivery of basic medical supplies for premature babies to just one of these hospitals, the Diwanyah Maternity Hospital located 80 kilometres south of Baghdad." (Stop The War, press release, February 3, 2007)

This story was mentioned in the Independent on January 19. A Media Lens database search found one other mention in the same newspaper on January 20. There was then a two-sentence letter on the subject to the editor published in the Independent on January 23 - and that was that. There have been no mentions in any other national British newspapers of this attempt to draw attention to the suffering of Iraqi children who, to reiterate, are currently "left to die in hundreds". Press coverage of the doctors' letter totals 2,837 words.

THE PRIME MINISTER OF ENGLAND

Meanwhile, Tony Blair declaims of the Middle East:

"The poisonous ideology that erupted after 9/11 has its roots there, and is still nurtured and supported there. It has chosen Iraq as the battleground. Defeating it is essential. Essential for Iraq." ('Blair: Statement on Iraq and the Middle East,' February 22, 2007; http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0702/S00329.htm)

Iraqi mass death is a price worth paying, in other words, in the considered opinion of the man who defied global public opposition in bringing disaster to Iraq. The answer to Blair's words was provided by an Iraqi rescuer, Abdul Jabbar, attempting to save victims from yet one more bomb attack. Jabbar was trying to help pull the wounded from collapsed buildings, the New York Times reported, but he found "mainly hands, skulls and other body parts":

"I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and kill us all, so we will rest and anybody who wants the oil - which is the core of the problem - can come and get it. We can not live this way anymore. We are dying slowly every day." (Damien Cave and Richard A. Oppel Jr, 'Iraqis Fault Pace of U.S. Plan in Attack,' NY Times, February 5, 2007)

This is what is "essential" for Iraqis - to stay alive.


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you decide to write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk

Write to Observer editor Roger Alton
Email: roger.alton@observer.co.uk

Ask them why the Guardian and Observer have not so much as mentioned the doctors' open letter to Tony Blair on the mass death of Iraqi children.

Please send a copy of your emails to:
editor@medialens.org

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Thursday, February 15th, 2007 @ 17:00 EST

Arabisc: Are the Americans Bribing Arab Journalists?

Middle East & North Africa, Iraq, Jordan, U.S.A.,
Weblog, Arts & Culture, Economics, War & Conflict,
International Relations, Politics

Are the Americans bribing Arab journalists? And how should Arab journalists react?

These are the sensitive questions posed by Jordanian blogger and writer Batir Wardam in his blog, Jordan Watch, this week as he discusses the merits of familiarisation trips for Arab journalists, paid for by the US State Department.

Wardam is careful in bringing up the issue for discussion and apologises in advance to his colleagues in the media, who may have benefited from such trips in the past. He also invites them to debate the matter in mainstream media and see what works best for them.

“I will write about a sensitive topic and I hope that none of my colleagues in the media will take the matter personally. My main aim in bringing up this matter is to open it for discussion in our media circles. I respect all the different opinions without having to impose one view and point fingers at random. This is a topic which should be discussed in the Jordanian media,” he writes. “What I am talking about is the programme sponsored by the Amercian Embassy in Jordan which invites media personalities to visit the United States and learn more about its culture and politics. Those trips are fully funded by the US State Department. In addition, the Embassy also invites media personalities to the embassy for discussions over dinner or during training sessions,” he explains.

While the US is a friend of Jordan, Wardam is quick to point out some of its policies, which aren’t being viewed with ease by the general public in Arab countries where people after question the world’s superpower’s motives.

“The United States isn’t an enemy to Jordan and it contributes to our economic development through financial subisidies in different areas. As a result, dialogue with it isn’t a national crime. In return, the US is a country which provides full support to Israel in its crimes against the Palestinians, occupies Iraq and steals its resources as well as engineers economic and political confrontations against other countries which it also threatens with military action. It also intervenes in the cultural and political specifics of the Arab world and tries to impose its views of the world on us all,” he says.

Journalists, challenges Wardam, should be wary of the US’ policy since it was directly responsible for the killing of journalists and bombing of television stations in Iraq.

“What is more important for us in the media is that it has a bad record in protecting journalists. The American forces have purposely killed Jordanian journalist Tariq Ayoub and Palestinian journalist Mazin Da’ana in Iraq. They also bombarded the offices of a number of Arab satellite channels as well as continues to exert pressure on Arab media in a manner which goes against democracy. Therefore, our stance as journalists with a profession and conscience towards the US should stem from these negative practises,” he adds.

Instead of enlightening the Arabs and preaching to them the American democratic model, Wardam says it is the Americans who need reschooling.

. “This is why travelling to the US at the expense of the US State Department is not something wise for Jordanian media personnel. The excuse repeated by some about the importance of dialogue and opening up to the US to overcome the crisis caused by September 11 is wrong as those attacks were not the result of a misunderstanding on the part of Arabs of the US policy. It should be noted that the attacks are the result of a correct understanding of this wrong policy. What is required now is not enlightening the Arabs of the advantages of the US democracy as this doesn’t matter to us a lot. What is more important is how to change those policies to make them just towards the Arabs and their causes and this can only become possible through enlightening the Americans,” he writes.

Wardam also suggests ways to teach the American public more about what Arabs think.

“Information about the US policies are widely available for all those who can read English. They are found in documents, studies, the Internet and other sources for the serious journalist. The matter doesn’t warrant a visit to the US at the expense of its State Department to get such information. Dialogue is necessary no doubt but it should take place according to Arab priorities, including enlightening the American public who is more in need of such information. This makes the role of media personalities, especially those with solid written English skills vital, as they can publish articles in American newspapers explaining Arab opinion. They can also coordinate their efforts with Arab-American organisations and independent research institutes by not the State Department and the US Embassy,” he warns. “In conclusion, the US should open up to us as they are the ones who misunderstand us and not the other way round. This dialogue should happen through independent Arab or American organisations and different media channels, and not through financial support, travel, dinners and training at the expense of the US administration - which isn’t a neutral party but the one responsible for all the bad American policies towards the Arabs,” he says.
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USA AND JOURNALISTS
In a case that could have repercussions for free speech and press freedom in the United States, the U.S. military has subpoenaed two peace activists and a journalist in its case against Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to serve in Iraq. "I'm alarmed," said Olympia-based activist Phan Nguyen, who moderated a Jun. 7th press conference that marked Lt. Watada's first public opposition to the Iraq war. "When I was first contacted by the lead prosecutor I was questioned as to conversations I had had with Lt. Watada and how this press conference had come about," he said.

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Press freedom in Iraq has plummeted since the beginning of the occupation. Repression of free speech in Iraq was extreme already under the regime of Saddam Hussein. The 2002 press freedom index of the watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq a dismal 130th. The 2006 index pushes Iraq down to 154th position in a total of 168 listed countries, though still ahead of Pakistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, China and Iran. North Korea is at the bottom of the table. The index ranks countries by how they treat their media, looking at the number of journalists who were murdered, threatened, had to flee or were jailed by the state.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/2814.shtml

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Feb.28th:

Israeli raid 'will not keep TV station off the air'

By Donald Macintyre in Nablus

Published: 28 February 2007

The wife of the owner of a popular television station in Nablus's old city vowed yesterday that it would return to the airwaves despite the arrest of her husband and the seizure of vital broadcasting equipment by Israeli soldiers.

Sanabel TV went off the air after troops took away computers, digital cards, cassettes, DVD, video and other equipment early on Monday during a three-day operation to hunt down militants and explosives caches in the West Bank city.

Nabegh Braik, 44, the owner of the station, which is the only one in the old city, specialises in grassroots programming that criticises the Palestinian authorities as well as Israel, and says it is not affiliated to any faction, was still in detention last night. His wife, Raida, 41, said she did not know why the station had been raided but added: "We will come back even if we have to buy new equipment piece by piece."

Mrs Braik said the station regularly interviewed Palestinians whose houses had been targeted or occupied during the frequent incursions into the old city. She said the station had not filmed Israeli military operations in progress since a raid in 2002.

Israeli military sources said last night the army had made a number of arrests and "those suspected of involvement in terror activities" had been detained.

Sanabel is financed by commercials and paid-for broadcasts of family weddings or birthdays. It carries news from Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya but focuses mainly on local social issues.

Thank you Angry Arab News Service, JB,editor

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WHAT NEXT FOR MEDIA REFORM?

By Danny Schechter
ZNet Commentary January 19, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-01/19schechter.cfm



Memphis: I felt the presence of Dr King this past weekend in Memphis. Of course, this is the city in which he gave his life, and as America marks his birth, it was hard not to be reminded of his death when you visit the scene of the crime, the fully restored Lorraine Motel.

 It was there that he was shot down by a cowardly sniper. Was it James Earl Ray?  Did he act alone? There are more conspiracy theories on that than eyewitnesses but it almost doesn't matter because most of the people who studied the matter remain puzzled by so many contradictions and unanswered questions.

That hotel is now part of the national Civil Rights Museum which honors the legacy of the Movement he helped lead. I visited this Mecca to his memory and mission in the company of its founder D'Army Bailey, a local Judge and a former civil rights worker who I remembered fondly and worked with in the "mooovement" 35 years ago. He couldn't be warmer and told everyone with him, including FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps that I was "the real deal," a comrade in a struggle from back in the day, a struggle that is far from over.

Jesse Jackson, who was with Dr. King that dark day, did some reminiscing about the internal debate in civil rights circles at that time while speaking at the Media Conference. He was talking about the poor peoples/worker's campaign that MLK came to Memphis to support. He reminded us that some of his closest aides were skeptical of even going to Memphis. King himself was then even openly musing about retiring as his base began to splinter when he added economic issues and opposition to the Vietnam War to his agenda.

The media was becoming less enamored with him. His future was uncertain. He was depressed, down on himself. That bullet in his head would, ironically, guarantee his future as an icon and martyr, as our "drum major for justice" for all time, but no one would choose that passage to glory.

That's not an outcome I would want either but I could relate to what Jesse said King was thinking. He was tired, and felt abandoned, His movement-like the media and reform movement I helped start but and now feel increasingly estranged from-was getting factionalized with some preferring a total focus on civil rights while others wanted to march on to transform America in deeper ways.

I was struck some years back by a review of King aide Andy Young's book by Garry Wills in which he wrote about that movement's in-fighting, callousness and "dirty laundry,"

"We no longer see the serene picture of Gandhian saints but flawed people up against every effort of a surrounding society to destroy them, people with few supporters (and those under constant FBI sniping, branded as Communists, anarchists or homosexuals, people often angry at each other, always depending on each other, despondent, praying, hoping that good would prevail-as it did over their dead bodies and broken lives."

Our media reform movement is not coping with these types of extreme pressures-perhaps because we have yet to really threaten power--- but there are flaws and fissure that weren't really addressed at any of the somewhat clicky Conference sessions I attended,

Aside from personal frustrations at being excluded from participating on all panels, and with no acknowledgement or support for Mediachannel anywhere, I felt that Media Reform has a concept has been narrowed in scope and focused on legislative lobbying by lawyers and professionals inside the beltway, narrowed to a series of buzzwords like "net neutrality," turned into a support group for two good but potentially co-optable FCC Commissioners and "pragmatic" members of Congress, "big names" in show biz and politics but with only a handful of grass roots leaders. Here was Dennis Kucinich, for example, asking activists to tell him what to do about media as if he had no ideas of his own.

Shouldn't we debate what we are or are not accomplishing? Was the recent net neutrality compromise acceptable---a guarantee on the part of AT&T's least used platform and, then, only for two years? Was that really the big victory it was hyped as? One activist engaged in that fight says scholars have documented a long history of Telecom companies making promises to win rate hikes and then never fulfilling them. Is this more of the same? Are we being deluded in hopes that a Democratic Congress will somehow save us?

And if we are talking about technologies, why no discussion of the implications of a changing web-the so-called WEB 2.O? Or of social networking? Or the new mobile technologies?  Most of the discussion of the internet had a dated quality to it. I would have liked to hear from the folks at Buzzflash, ZNET and Common Dreams et.al. to learn what their experience has been, and of course a panel of all the competing media sites. What about channels like Link, Free Speech and International World Television?

There were many panelists attacking the media coverage of the war. "Press Scolded on Iraq War Coverage" was how the Memphis Commercial Appeal headlined their report. But were we there just to scold-something I have been doing with books and my film WMD for years? Where was the action-a march? a confrontation?-any plan for a activist campaign to try to change the disgraceful media coverage?  That was, in military parlance, AWOL-Absent Without Leave.

How do we get other issues more attention in the news-especially Election reform? It was not discussed.

Are we building a movement or an email list? Are we still trying to build bridges between media makers and media activists? Where were the criticisms of funders like the MacArthur Foundation which announced last week it was cutting off support for documentaries, pending one those interminable internal "reviews?"  (They used to be the biggest funder for filmmakers.)

Where were the demands on other funders to invest in progressive media the way the rightwing foundations have with generous long-term commitments?  Why aren't we lobbying them and not just to promote one institution? There seems to be no shortage of funding for holding conferences but sustaining Indy media is not really on the agenda. (We at Mediachannel,org are urgently trying to cope with that!)

Where were the U-Tube Kids, or My Space addicts or the leaders of citizen journalism initiatives? Where were the journalist organizations, and media freedom groups or were only radicals allowed? Where were the panels debating  what's really happening in the media-how to assess the appeal of Jon Stewart and Comedy News and the failure of Air America and even concepts like media justice? 

And what about the global media movement?

Why no presence from the Al Jazeera English Channel that can't get on the air in the US?  I was glad to see a rep from Britain's Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom but there were so few activists from abroad.

What about publishing-I was told that Publisher's Group West, a major distributor of independent books closed just this past week. Any response?  Public Access may be on its last leg. Where was the announcement of a national campaign on that front?

How can we have 3000 people assemble in one place and leave with no clear focused plan of what we do next, how we work together, what's the next step?  I felt the same way when I left earlier conferences in Madison and St. Louis. They were cool events-and heady networking opportunities, but now what?

 Enough shmooze-its time to make some news!

 News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. He showed a new film,  "AWORK IN PROGRESS" about his own media career at the Memphis conference. See: http://www.newsdissector.org/workinprogress/ Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

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Venezuela’s new model of communications media
is the path to follow for the Americas
Interview with Mexican author Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez on the Venezuelan Media
By María Mercedes Cobo and Emilce Chacón, Caracas

Introduction: Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez, PhD, is a degree-holder in Communication Science and has a Master's degree in Political Philosophy. Currently he is vice-president of the Open University of Mexico (Universidad Abierta of Mexico), the country where he was born in December 1956. He is the author of "Communication Philosophy" (Filosofía de la Comunicación), which was published by the Venezuelan Ministry of Communication and Information and presented to the general public in Caracas past June 23, 2006. We have taken the opportunity of his visit to Venezuela to gain insights from his academically-informed understanding of new media experiences in the framework of the revolutionary process being under way in Venezuela. (See more about Dr. Dominguez from Aljazeera at the end of this article).

MMC/EC: What is your opinion of the behavior of the mass media in Venezuela?
 
Dr. Domínguez: From a worldwide analytical perspective, Venezuela does represent a special case. Together with the Mexican Institute of Image Research (I.R.I.) we've made a series of analyses of the changes taking place in Venezuela. We observed that this country is the product of a great phenomena of communication.
 
The events  of April 2002 (1), when an entire people took to the streets and millions of people managed within just a few hours to organize themselves in favor of a revolutionary transformation process, are a real watershed. We still do not know for certain how this occurred, people informing one another, they call it "Radio bemba"  here in Venezuela, a popular tool of communication just kept growing and it eventually snowballed. Motorbikes became the lifeblood of the process, people went up and down by motorbikes spreading essential information. It's a great communication experience that we need to study.
 
We need to learn what the Venezuelan people put into practice in the streets that day to organize themselves, to tell the President, the coup plotters, and the world what path the country has chosen, against the most authoritarian and most despicable forms of treason committed against a people.
 
For us, it’s important to know that apart from the many things this transformation process is representing in Venezuela, a transformation of communication itself is taking place, but that's not all: we also note that against everything the privately owned mass media -- using slander and insults -- had done and said, the Venezuelan people did manage to resist intellectually, they did not fall into the trap in spite of the fact that 90% of the country's radio and TV broadcasting spectrum and the majority of the mass media are privately owned. In spite of all this, they were unable to defeat the emotional strength, the culture, the tradition and the free will of the Venezuelan people. We think this is what has to be studied in terms of a social phenomenon of mass communication. It's unprecedented in human history! And we had never seen, ‘til then, a president return to power after a coup d'état, and the people come together so quickly to achieve this.
 
MMC/EC: Is Venezuela throwing monopoly media power off balance in both Venezuela and on the continent as a whole?
 
Dr. Domínguez: I would say that Venezuela is beginning to do so. I think the country is starting to feel that need every day more and more; Venezuela is reaching the conclusion that one cannot have an indulgent attitude towards media powers that are in the habit of lying, because this would mean tolerating a permanent process of criminal offense using the communications media.
 
I don’t even think it's the state that needs to intervene, but there should exist something like juries, people’s courts with conscious specialists participating at the side of the people and helping them understand that it’s no laughing matter if a someone on morning television happens to shout at his guests, shaking his fist in their faces, but that it’s an act of disrespect towards the free will of the people, towards the personality of a President who is a Latin American and world leader. We are aware of the fact that the ongoing process is a gradual one and that there's still a long way left to go.
 
The role of communities
 
MMC/EC: In your writings you state that a type of communication that is different from the one we are accustomed to needs to be built; this is quite a complex issue. Based on your own academic and personal experience, how could we advance in the building a communications model that is coherent with the revolutionary process?
 
Dr. Domínguez: One way to change the discourse is to change the actors in the discourse. One good way would be to ensure that it is not always the same people always saying the same things. What I mean by discourse isn’t the words, but rather the media-generic sense, the aesthetic discourse, the kind of camera angles, the type of music, the modulation of voice, where some newscasters on commercial television speak in precisely the same way, one after the other, making vocal inflexions, exaggerations, accents, modes of speech, modernizations of the tone of voice.
 
In my opinion, by changing this kind of discourse we are already starting to think of other alternatives, because instead of having intermediaries explaining to us what reality is, we allow reality to speak for itself. In the Mexican media, what they do is to interpret for us what another person said; they are in a factory with workers, with the peasants, with the social organizations, and the reporter tells us they’re saying this and that and goodness knows what else. The atmosphere is tense, they never allow the people themselves to say what why they have come, what they are doing, what they want to say, what they are thinking, what they are feeling, what's disturbing them, what concerns them, what inspires them, what enthuses them. We never find out! They’re shown as some kind of decoration, as a background prop; this is nothing new, it's the format that is being applied on a global scale, and it can be transformed.
 
Communities themselves can now grab hold of the microphone. And the cameras too, let’s hope they learn how. Because taking the microphone isn’t enough, there are numerous elements and conditions to be taken in consideration so as to achieve a fairly sensible, orderly handling of the means of communication; it's not easy, it's a vocation that needs its due time, time to mature, that demands a learning process like with any other new set of tools.
 
Communities can start to find their own languages, with their own accent, their own emphasis, their own priorities and their own interests. We’re not used to watching this kind of television, we are not accustomed to listening to this kind of radio, we are not used to reading this new press, we are learning anew. We have not yet seen the best kind of communication, up till now we've seen commercialized communication, which has turned time into a commodity, turned women into a commodity, turned the family into a commodity, the kind of television that turns the entire world into an object of consumerism. As soon as we can to surpass all this conceptually, philosophically and poetically, the moment we take this qualitative leap and raise the quality of the discourse and the narrative quality then we’ll see another type of television, a different type of journalism. We'll need to learn new principles, including narrative ones.
 
MMC/EC: The mass media can serve as an instrument of peace; they also can be employed as a tool to fan the flames of confrontation as in Venezuela in April 2002 during the coup d'état: they called government supporters "Chavista hordes" and those who supported the opposition the "civil society in struggle ".(2) What is your interpretation of this handling of the news?
 
Dr. Domínguez: I think that’s a disloyal use of communication. A use which is not faithful to what the people themselves are saying. You can’t have that sort of chicanery in the mass media! If we look around and see how people who have been excluded for decades are now developing both individually and collectively, because they are living in a country that is engaged in a process of transformation aimed at improving the quality of life of each one of its inhabitants, then there is nothing else to do but to support this and take the side of human progress.
 
Nobody must obstruct the development of a society, and if someone does so with the help of a means of communication, then it is even worse. I think that sort of thing is absolutely malicious, I think this should be discussed in terms of a lack of ethics, as a lack of human solidarity. The truth is that Venezuela, for years now, has set a good example to many countries in diplomatic tact, even though some countries, like Mexico, have been utterly rude. We are also dealing with a problem that’s political and ideological in nature; this country is waging a fantastic battle, that is, the battle of ideas, where people are becoming aware of their right to think freely, and hardly anyone likes that.
 
Coming back the mass media, you have an immense challenge because in addition you have a President who is an exceptional talent when it comes to communication. President Chávez is a rebel in every respect, I wrote some articles about this, on the program Aló Presidente ("Hello Mr. President") (3). The program has become the most impressive school of political education ever seen on a worldwide scale, here’s an instance of powerful communication. Through this program many people have learned to analyze international oil problems, become acquainted with the nation's economic structure, amongst other important issues.
 
MMC/EC: Is the program Aló Presidente communication for social development?
 
Dr. Domínguez: Without a doubt. It goes without saying that this does not suffice, because if we stick exclusively to this form of communication, then we would saturate the audience with a single source. Therefore, we would propose "Hello Communities", "Hello Workers", "Hello Students" and "Hello Peasants," so there would be discursive and narrative vigor. 
 
MMC/EC: In your opinion, what sort of communications strategy would be coherent with the transformation process we are living in Venezuela?
 
Dr. Domínguez: Before replying directly to your question I'd like to mention that a couple of months back I was at the TV station Al Jazeera in the Middle East, and we were starting to talk to a group, and they asked us where in the world could you find a space where people could take to the microphone and speak freely, immediately, and we thought of Venezuela and communicational experiences like Vive TV and TeleSUR created by the Bolivarian process.
 
Vive TV is a new project but it’s already on the cutting edge, and TeleSUR is a project in full flight. TeleSUR is a tool for integration and communication that should come into its own, given that its guiding principles are both the south and socialism. These are two children of revolutionary communication in this country, these are the spaces where revolutionary ideas have to be tested, and nobody else has this possibility. It's worth its weight in gold, believe me! It's an extraordinary opportunity.

If I had to say what the guidelines should be, I'd say that we should follow this example, although this isn’t enough. For example, we’re proposing the organization of an international current of thinkers, of communicators who would work in cooperation with process under way in Venezuela, because it is the most advanced one. We must push it ahead. I've been helping where I could, we are trying to get everyone who's working in these media to commit to training themselves and improving the quality of their programs, so that they can surprise and entice even more.
 
One important aspect of strategy is the policy of studying, of generating a major current of political and economic solidarity with the revolution, but moreover, to have ethics. It is an unavoidable task, and then we would have to have a meeting of delegates from all the Latin American grassroots media movements and sit down to discuss how best to work together on this experience of Venezuelan communication. We now have a model of communication, it only needs to grow and mature.
 
MMC/EC: The law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television (Ley de Responsabilidad Social en Radio y Televisión (Ley Resorte)) in Venezuela has been attacked repeatedly based on the argument that it imposes absolute control by the government. The most recent attack has to do with the distribution of the airwaves. What do you think of this law?
 
Dr. Domínguez: The so-called Ley Resorte is a great tool for social construction in communication. It seems to me that it needs to be studied, it's a great achievement, we should learn from it and improve it; I think that we need to base ourselves on the law and the legitimacy of a process of transformation in the realm of communication. In addition, we should not only debate in Venezuela but on a worldwide scale the issue of the airwaves, and we should take part in that debate, because it’s urgent for Mexico to discuss this issue as well.
 
Moreover, we need to change both the forms of making communication and the consciousness of the mass media. In short, we must place all our scientific knowledge at the disposal of a country's process of transformation, because science is not a privilege granted to a handful of people who make a living of this knowledge; in fact, universities generate the least knowledge in society. Knowledge is not necessarily to be found in universities, although some people swear by it. 
 
MMC/EC: Professor, do you plan to carry forth any academic projects here in Venezuela? 
 
Dr. Domínguez: Yes, I do. We're currently conducting a research project, an applied seminar to teach at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (UBV, Bolivarian University of Venezuela), and we’re also trying to finalize an agreement with the Ministry of Communication and Information to have more seminars in Caracas and elsewhere in the country, where there are many people who are interested in these projects.
 
Aside from that, we'd like to create a space for scientific research in communication; we are extremely interested in participating in this process, and I’ve collected material from different experiences for use in the spaces that we are creating.

Translated from Spanish for Axis of Logic by Iris Buehler and revised by James Hollander, Tlaxcala.
Mar 1, 2007, 03:32

Notes:

(1) T.n.: Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez is referring to the events of April 11-13, 2002, the failed, US-backed coup d'état against Venezuelan President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. The 2002 documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (also: Chávez: Inside the Coup), directed and photographed by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Brian, Ireland, is a must-see that shows events before and leading up to the coup, the coup itself and the rise of peoples resistance to regain their democratically elected President. For groundbreaking evidence on the extent to which the Bush administration illegally aided the opposition, influenced the Venezuelan military, and directly and indirectly supported the coup of April 2002, see Eva Golinger's outstanding investigation: The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela. Havana, Cuban Book Institute, 2005. Available also in Spanish, Italian, and German language via http://www.venezuelafoia.info/english.html.

(2) T.n.: In this particular context we highly recommend watching the documentary Llaguno Bridge Keys to a Massacre by the Cuban filmmaker Angel Palacios who reveals in stunning detail how the Venezuelan media twisted facts and news to blame the massacre on President Chávez and the Bolivarians defending themselves against the shock troops of the Caracas Metropolitan Police. Quite telling footage on the information and psychological warfare carried out before, during, and after the April 2002 coup by the Venezuelan private media -- which have therefore been commonly referred to as the "Storm Troopers of the Apocalypse" (Jineteras del Apocalipsis), particularly the four major, privately-owned TV-stations Globovisión (CEO Alberto Federico Ravell), Venevisión (Gustavo Cisneros), RCTV (Marcel Granier), and Televen (Omar Camero Zamora) -- is also found in The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Editor's Note: These film documentaries: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and ... Llaguna Bridge: Keys to a Massacre - can be obtained from Axis of Logic - LMB

(3) T.n.: Fernando Buen Abad Domínguez is referring to an unparalleled program that is being conducted on Sundays by President Chávez himself, who is carrying forth exceptional battle at the internal communication and information front by using this space to personally inform and also to talk directly with the people about a vast range of topics of political, economic, and social interest. Aló Presidente starts at 11 AM Venezuela local time, and can easily last up to 8 hours (…very much to the annoyance of some Chávez opponents…); it is a live live broadcast by the government TV that can be accessed on-line: Channel VTV (Venezoalana de Televisión) and RNV (Radio Nacional de Venezuela) and can be accessed on-line.

Original Source in Spanish:
 Universidad Abierta: Instituto de Investigaciones sobre la Imagen

© Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com (Translation copyright)