Smart but fleeting mobs?‘Smart mobs’ is an interesting term for like-minded groups that behave intelligently (or just efficiently) because of their exponentially increasing network links.
The idea was first proposed by author Howard Rheingold in his 2002 book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. It deals with the social, economic and political changes implicated by developing information and communications technology. The topics range from text-messaging culture and wireless internet to the impact of the web on the marketplace.
In the eight years since the book first appeared, we’ve seen a proliferation and evolution of smart mobs, fuelled by the growth web 2.0 tools and, more recently, the many and varied social media. In fact, author Rheingold is credited with inventing the term virtual communities.
But the reality is that smart mobs can also be very fickle — their attention can be easily distracted. A smart mob can disperse just as fast as it forms, even while its original provocation remains.
This was demonstrated in dramatic terms in June 2009. Following a hotly disputed presidential election in Iran, there was a surge of online support for pro-democracy activists there who launched a massive protest. A main point of convergence for online reporting and agitation was micro-blogging platform Twitter. Within a few days, mainstream media like TIME and Washington Post were all talking about this phenomenon in gushing terms.
As I wrote at the time: “I have no idea if the Ayatollahs are closet fans of Michael Jackson. But they must surely have thanked the King of Pop for creating a much-needed diversion in cyberspace precisely when the theocracy in Tehran needed it most.”
Other recent experiences have demonstrated how online interest can both build up and dissipate very fast. Staying with a single issue or cause seems hard in a world where news is breaking 24/7.
Here’s a current example. Following the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that started on 20 April 2010, local communities and environmental activists deployed various social media tools to track the unfolding disaster. BP, the giant oil company implicated in the disaster, has also tried to use social media to communicate its positions, but not too successfully. On Twitter, it was not BP’s official account but the satirical @BPGlobalPR that was dominating the online conversation. As one commentator wrote: “It is an object lesson in how social media can shape and control a company’s message during a crisis.”
Beyond PR?By early July 2010, however, there were already signs that online interest on the issue was already waning — even as the oil continued to leak from this largest offshore oil spill in US history. In a detailed analysis of main social media platforms’ coverage of the issue, Mashable noted last week: “An estimated 100 million gallons or more of oil have surged into the Gulf of Mexico…Yet on Twitter, Google, blogs and even YouTube, we’re already wrapping up our collective discussion of the oil spill and how to repair its damage.”
Riding the wave can be fun, but waves form and break quickly. Those who want to use social media tools for social activism still need to learn how to hitch a ride with the ocean current beneath the fickle waves.
Who says environment is a ‘safe’ subject for journalists and broadcasters to cover?
Journalist colleagues who work on conflict, security and political topics often have an illusion that environmental reporting is a ‘cosy and comfortable beat’ – one that allows reporters to travel to exotic locations, see cuddly animals, relax in pristine environments and generally take things easy.
That might have been the case some years ago, in another century that’s now receding in our memories. But not any longer: there’s as much conflict, intrigue and complexity in many of today’s environmental topics, and covering them can often be hazardous to the courageous journalists who go after them.
Ahmadi: Beaten up for exposeJust ask Ahmadi, a journalist working for Harian Aceh in Indonesia. Together with a fellow journalist, working for News Investigasi in Medan, he recently investigated a flood that had taken place in the Alapan district in April 2010. During their journey, they met some people cutting up logs. The journalists asked workers who owned these logs and were told that they belonged to the Alapan District Police Station and the Alapan Military Sub-District Command. Hmm…
When confronted with this information, a high ranking military officer reacted quickly and sharply: he wanted the whole story suppressed. In defiance, Harian Aceh published the story on 21 May 2010 — which resulted in Ahmadi being assaulted and threatened with death by the same officer.
“Ahmadi joins the long list of journalists who have been targeted for shedding light on deforestation, which is responsible for at least 18 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions,” says Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the international watchdog on media freedom.
It says attacks on journalists and bloggers who try to cover any kind of environmental damage are growing steadily all over the world. Among them, those who investigate industrial pollution or the destruction of forests are particularly at risk.
No longer a cosy beat...This week, on the eve of World Environment Day (5 June), RSF released a new report titled Deforestation and pollution: High-risk subjects. It makes grim reading for all of us who are committed to journalism as if the planet mattered.
It follows and echoes their call last year: “We must defend journalists who expose attacks on the environment”.
The new report, the second of its kind within just a few months from RSF, was prepared with the help of its worldwide network of correspondents. They gathered information about incidents in Indonesia, Argentina, El Salvador, Gabon, India, Azerbaijan, China and Morocco. Behind each of these threats and attacks, there were big corporations, criminal gangs or government officials who had been corrupted by money from mining or logging.
Asia features prominently in the report, which condemns the responsibility of the Vietnamese and Chinese governments in serious press freedom violations that deprive the public of crucial information about cases of pollution or deforestation.
The report describes, for example, the way the government in Hanoi has tried to suppress any debate about the environmental impact of bauxite mines being operated by a Chinese company. A field investigation in Argentina established that journalists are under pressure from both supporters and opponents of a mining project.
Mining companies (Aluminium Corp of China, China Metallurgical Group and the Canadian companies Yamana Gold and Pacific Rim), oil companies (Shell, Addax and Synopec), wood pulp companies (Sinar Mas and Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper) and two French multinationals (Bollor and Areva) are all identified in this report as having a direct or indirect role in cases of intimidation or censorship.
This is the second report that RSF has published on this subject. In September 2009, a report titled “The dangers for journalists who expose environmental issues.“, looked at 15 cases of journalists and bloggers who had been killed, attacked, jailed, threatened or censored for covering environmental problems in Russia, Cambodia, Bulgaria and Brazil.
RSF this week reiterated the appeal it launched during last December’s Copenhagen Summit: The media are needed to gather information and disseminate it to the public. Where climate change was concerned, it reminded everyone one, it was the media who helped to establish credible, independent diagnoses of the state of our planet. Their analyses continue to play a crucial role in helping decision-makers to adopt policies and rules that will lead to the desired changes.
On this blog, we have consistently highlighted the need for safeguarding journalists who pursue environmental stories that threaten vested interests within and across borders. For example:
In April 2007, we asked: Can journalists save the planet? Yes, they can be front-runners in the world’s attempts to save species, habitats and entire ecosystems. But only if the rest of society protects and stands by them. When our planetary house is on fire, shooting the messenger isn’t going to save anyone.
“Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software!”
This is one of the less known, but more entertaining, dicta by Arthur C Clarke – he called it ‘Clarke’s 64th Law’, and I personally know he used to bring it up when meeting with particularly crusty or glum intellectuals. (Not all were amused.)
Clarke’s words kept turning in my mind as I moderated and spoke at a session on social media at Asia Media Summit 2010 held in Beijing China from 24 to 26 May 2010. The country with the world’s largest media market is not exactly the world’s most open or free – and certainly when it comes to social media, it’s a very different landscape to what we are used to…
These days, International visitors arriving in China discover quickly that access to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook is completely blocked. Apparently the brief ‘thaw’ in restrictions, seen before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is now over — the current restrictions have been in place since the spring of 2009.
This doesn’t mean there is no social media in China. In fact, I heard from several Chinese friends and colleagues that there is a very large, dynamic and fast-evolving social media scene in China. For the most part, however, it’s not based on globally used and familiar platforms, and is happening in a digital universe of China’s own — under the watchful eye of the government.
Jump in...but some conditions apply!For example, I found from this March 2010 blog post by Merritt Colaizzi that:
* 221 million people have blogs, largely in a diary-style.
* 176 million Chinese connect via social networking system (SNS) with their “real” friends and online networks.
* 117 million connect anonymously via bulletin board system (BBS). These interactive online message boards are the heart of social media in China. They’re where people go to find topic-based communities and where consumers talk about products and services.
There are lots of other blogs, mainstream media reports and research commentary on social media in China — just Google and see (now that’s another thing with limited – and uneven – access in China: Google itself is available, but search results come with lots of links that simply aren’t accessible). Much or all of this interaction happens in Chinese, of course. It’s a significant part of the web and social media landscapes, but if you’re in China on a short visit and want to stay connected to your own social media networks, that’s not at all helpful.
And, of course, it undermines one of the key attributes of a globally integrated information society: the interoperability of systems and platforms.
Luckily for me, perhaps, I can survive a few days without my social media fix: I have an appalling record of updating my Facebook account: days pass without me even going there. For the moment, at least, I’m also taking a break from regular blogging (well, sort of). But I’m more regular in my micro-blogging on Twitter, and visit YouTube at least once a day, sometimes more often. I could do neither during the few days in Beijing – and that was frustrating.
So imagine having to talk about social media as a new media phenomenon in such a setting. That’s only a tiny bit better than reading computer manuals without the hardware…But this is just what I did, with all the eagerness that I typically bring into everything I do. I planned and moderated a 90-minute session on Social Media: Navigating choppy seas in search of Treasures?
With access to key global social media platforms denied, we visitors and Chinese colleagues in the audience could speak mostly generically, theoretically and aspirationally. I didn’t want to place my hosts and seminar organisers in difficulty by harping on what was missing. Instead, we focused on what is possible and happening: how development communicators are increasingly social media networks and platforms to get their messages out, and to create online communities and campaigns in the public interest.
The thrust of my own opening remarks to the session was this: In the brave new world of social media, we all have to be as daring as Sinbad. Like the legendary sailor of Baghdad, we have to take our chances and venture into unknown seas. Instead of maps or GPS or other tools, we have to rely on our ingenuity, intuition and imagination.
More about the session itself in future blog posts.
For now, I want to share this TED Talk by American watcher of the Internet Clay Shirky on how cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history. Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.
Nalaka Gunawardene (L) with cartoonist Camillus Perera - photo by Malaka Rodrigo
In January 2009, writing a tearful farewell to the slain newspaper editor and investigative journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga, I invoked the memory of Siribiris. I wrote: Goodbye, Lasantha – and long live Siribiris!
Last weekend, I finally met the ‘father of Siribiris’ and was delighted to salute him in public.
Let me explain. Siribiris is an iconic cartoon character well known to two generations of Lankan newspaper readers. He is a creation of Camillus Perera, a veteran Lankan political cartoonist who has been in this uncommon profession for nearly 45 years.
Camillus started drawing cartoons in newspapers in 1966 with the Observer newspaper and the film magazine of the same publishing group, Lake House (then privately owned and under state control since 1973). He draws pocket cartoons, political cartoons as well as satirical comic strips. His most enduring accomplishment has been the creation of a set of regular characters who have developed a loyal following over the years. Among them are the wily Siribiris, prankster Gajaman, fashionable young lady Dekkoth Pathmawathie, smart alec kid Tikka and sporty Sellan Sena.
These and other characters are very ordinary and very real, and they inhabit an undefined yet familiar place in the cartoon universe that most Lankan newspaper readers can easily relate to — it’s a bit like R K Narayan’s fictitious village of Malgudi.
Siribiris (left): puncturing egos for 40 yearsMy own favourite, Siribiris, is really Everyman personified: long-suffering, taken for granted by politicians, exploited by businessmen, hoodwinked by corrupt officials, and always struggling to simply stay alive. He is down but not yet out. The only way that poor, unempowered Siribiris can get back at all those who take advantage of him is to puncture their inflated egos and ridicule them at every turn. And boy, does he excel in that!
I grew up enjoying Camillus cartoons in various newspapers meant for children, youth and general readers. I had occasionally seen him being interviewed on TV. But I’d never seen or met him in person — until now. It happened when the British Council Sri Lanka invited Camillus as chief guest at their awards ceremony in the climate change cartoon contest they organised, which I helped judge with three others.
As the master of ceremonies, I announced: “It’s a great pleasure and honour for me to introduce Camillus Perera, the senior-most cartoonist in Sri Lanka who is still professionally active. Indeed, he has been drawing cartoons for as long as I have been alive — for he started his long innings in the same year I was born!”
Cartoon universe of Camillus PereraCamillus, a small made and pleasant man, spoke briefly and thoughtfully. (As I keep saying, we writers just can’t beat cartoonists in the economy of words!). He recalled how he’d used the British Council Library for visual references for years before the web made it much easier to search. He congratulated all those who won prizes or commendations in the contest.
Many years ago, I privileged to count senior cartoonist W R Wijesoma as a senior colleague when we both worked for The Island newspaper. Now I have finally met Camillus Perera, another hero of mine still practising his craft and drawing regularly for Rivira Sunday newspaper, as well as The Catholic Messenger and Gnanartha Pradeepaya. My only regret is that I don’t follow any of these newspapers on a regular basis, even though I try hard to keep up with Siribiris on the web…
There is a bit more than childhood idol worship involved here. Satire is one of the last domains we are left with when freedom of expression comes under siege.
As I wrote in July 2009in a blog post on news wrapped up in laughter: “There is another dimension to satirising the news in immature democracies as well as in outright autocracies where media freedoms are suppressed or denied. When open dissent is akin to signing your own death warrant, and investigative journalists risk their lives on a daily basis, satire and comedy becomes an important, creative – and often the only – way to comment on matters of public interest. It’s how public-spirited journalists and their courageous publishers get around draconian laws, stifling regulations and trigger-happy goon squads. This is precisely what is happening right now in countries like Kenya and Sri Lanka, and it’s certainly no laughing matter.“
Taken in that light, Camillus Perera is not just a popular and entertaining cartoonist adorning Sri Lanka’s newspaper industry. He is a gentle giant in the world of journalism — a man of few words whose sharp wit and keystrokes are more piercing than any number of words that we writers and journalists can churn out. He is a living cultural treasure.
So long live both Siribiris — and Camillus Perera!
Last chance...?Here’s a winning idea for a new business venture in these lean times: make an always-agreeable ‘magic’ mirror — and the vane and wicked will beat a path to your door.
Well, at least half the politicians in Sri Lanka would. They’d rather not see their true selves on any mirror.
The magic mirror idea was popularised many years ago by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, whose wicked and vain queen had an unusual mirror that talked back, each time she asked: ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?’.
The queen wasn’t looking for honest answers; she just wanted to hear she was always the prettiest and fairest in the land. (All competition – real and imagined – was dealt with brutally.)
Little has changed, even in this 21st Century. We may not have too many monarchs left in the world, but our uncrowned rulers can be equally vain and ruthless. They are obsessed with self-aggrandizing sycophancy – they’d only tolerate magic mirrors that totally boost their egos.
If I seem to be preoccupied with mirrors, that’s nothing to do with my own vanity. In this digital age, the mirror is still a pretty good metaphor for the media industry that I have been part of, in one way or another, for over 20 years. At its very basic, the media are expected to reflect our society and our times.
But some people don’t like what they see on a true mirror. In 2009, we saw a spate of mirror smashing or media bashing in Sri Lanka. It started on 6 January, when the studio of the Maharaja Television/Broadcasting Network (MTV/MBC, popularly known as Sirasa Group) was attacked by armed gunmen who almost blew up the country’s most popular private broadcast organisation. On 8 January, exactly a year ago today, Lasantha Wickrematunga, editor of The Sunday Leader, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle as he drove to work in suburban Colombo.
Sirasa & Lasantha: Refused to be magic mirrorsOne year later, both crimes remain unsolved. They have joined a long list of crimes against journalists and media organisations in Sri Lanka, most of which have never led to any prosecution of the perpetrators.
As Reporters Without Borders noted in a statement this week: “The emotion and anger have not gone away in the year since this famous Sri Lankan journalist’s death. The anger is being sustained by the government’s flagrant obstruction of the investigation. Lasantha Wickrematunge’s name and memory will not disappear and, in that sense, those who were behind his murder made a mistake.”
Commenting on the MTV/MBC (Sirasa) attack, I described the typical reaction of the mirror-bashers: “…if you don’t like what you see in the mirror – which is what media is to society – just kick it, shatter it and hammer it into dust so that it won’t reflect anymore. Destroy all the mirrors of the land, and we’ll finally be the fairest and prettiest in the whole world. That seems to be the perverse logic that fuels attacks of this nature.”
Rex de Silva, the first editor that Lasantha worked for in the late 1970s cautioned that Lasantha’s murder was the beginning of ‘the sound of silence’ for the press in Sri Lanka. As I asked on the day of Lasantha’s emotionally-charged funeral: “Can this sound of silence be shattered by the silent, unarmed majority of liberal, peace-loving Lankans who were represented at the funeral service and the Colombo cemetery today?”
Back to mirrors. While the true mirrors were getting bashed, those who played being ‘magic mirrors’ have done well for themselves (and are probably laughing all the way to their banks). But that’s not a phenomenon confined to the little island of Sri Lanka. A good part of the US Media did the same under the hawkish Bush Administration, which prompted the cartoon below.
It’s not just ‘Dubya’ who is addicted to such agreeable mirrors. Indeed, for many modern-day rulers, an essential trapping of power involves surrounding themselves with spin doctors, press commissioners and other manipulators or manufacturers of image. In mature democracies, there are certain checks and balances which usually guard against the worst excesses (but there are notable exceptions – look at Italy!).
In immature, fragile or pseudo democracies, mirrors obey the laws of physics (optics) at grave risk to themselves. If you want proof, just talk to the staff of Sirasa or The Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka…
All journalism is subjective; it’s just that some of us are better at disguising it! As we head for the end of 2009, we at Moving Images blog take one last fleeting, impressionistic, judgemental and, yes, darn too opinionated look at the past 365 days. That Was The Year That Was…and here’s our list of superlatives!
Best news and biggest relief (national): Sri Lanka’s nearly three decades long and brutal civil war finally ended in mid May 2009 – and not a moment too soon. It rightly created headlines around the world, and also made it to TIME’s top 10 news of the year. Within 24 hours of that much-awaited news, I wrote and published one of my most emotionally charged essays ever, Memories of War, Dreams of Peace. I probably spoke for a whole generation of Lankans: “As we stand on the threshold of peace, I am overwhelmed with memories of our collective tragedy. I hope we can once again resume our long suspended dreams for a better today and tomorrow.” With the hindsight of seven months, I still want to believe every word…although it’s become increasingly hard to cling on to such ideals.
Biggest disappointment (national): Ending the Lankan war entailed tremendous effort, cost and sacrifice, and we all knew that consolidating peace and restoring normalcy were going to be even harder – delivering peace dividends is no mean task. As weeks became months, our cautious optimism slowly turned into disappointment and dismay: it became clear that the triumphalist government was treating the historic ‘open moment’ simply as as blank cheque to do pretty much what it wanted. My May 19 essay on Dreams of Peace had ended with a question that resonated with millions: “Would our leaders now choose the Mandela Road or the Mugabe Road for the journey ahead?” Can we please ask that question again…? Hello, anybody listening?
Most evocative piece of writing: Without competition, that distinction goes to The Last Editorial by Lasantha Wickrematunga, the courageous investigative journalist (and de facto leader of the political opposition) in Sri Lanka, who was brutally slain on January 8 while on his way to work. That editorial, which appeared post-humously in his newspaper The Sunday Leader on 11 January 2009, embodies the best of Lasantha’s liberal, secular and democratic views. Nearly a year after the dastardly daylight crime, his killers have not been caught and independent media remains under siege even in post-war Sri Lanka.
Most memorable quote: While people like Lasantha articulated our cherished dreams for a truly pluralistic society, our billion+ neighbours in India have been building it for over six decades. It’s still a work in progress, and the ideals need occasional reiteration. This is precisely what classical dancer Mallika Sarabhai did when she ran as an independent candidate when India conducted the world’s largest democratic election in April-May. She lost, but wrote one of the most insightful pieces on what it means to live amidst the huge cultural, social and political diversity in India: “We are a salad-like melange of cultures and not a soup where all variations get reduced to a homogeneous pulp—this, to me, is our greatest strength.” (She inspired my own essay: Sri Lanka – Spice Island or Bland Nation?)
Biggest disappointment (global):
The UN climate conference in Copenhagen, held in December and officially dubbed COP15, ended up in what many activists felt was a cop-out. Greenpeace echoed the frustration of many when they said at the end of what was, at its start, billed as the ’14 days to seal seal history’s judgment on this generation‘: “Don’t believe the hype, there is nothing fair, ambitious or legally binding about this deal. The job of world leaders is not done. Today they shamefully failed to save us all from the effects of catastrophic climate change.” I was glad I wasn’t part of the mega event — I’ve burnt enough aviation fuel this year, but almost all events I participated in on three continents were more productive than the Danish debacle…
Biggest Under-achiever: If the world laboured a mountain and delivered a mouse in Copenhagen, the mid-wife of that process must surely have been the current UN chief Ban Ki Moon. More secretary than general, Ban is, in his own admission, the UN’s Invisible Man. All the top speech writers and PR agents in the world can’t animate this the perennially dull and dour diplomat. Not ideal change-maker when the world is racing against catastrophe. Kofi Annan, we miss you!
Most moving work of moving images: The world’s rich are having a party, and millions living in poverty are the ones footing the bill. This is the premise of Indian journalist and activist Pradip Saha’s latest film, MEAN Sea Level, which looks at the impact of climate change on the inhabitants of Ghoramara and Sagar islands in the the Sundarban delta region in the Bay of Bengal. I found it both deeply moving and very ironic. With minimal narration, he allows the local people to tell their own story. As it turned out, these testimonies were lost on the bickering politicians in Copenhagen…
Best media stunts: We are a bit divided here. At a time of ever-shrinking attention spans, it takes much creativity and guts to grab the cacophonous media’s attention, especially for a good cause. Two very different men succeeded where many have failed. In February Bill Gates, the world’s top geek now working for its meek, released some mosquitoes at the TED 2009 conference to highlight the continuing grip that malaria has on the developing world, especially Africa. In October, climate crusader President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives held the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting to remind everyone of the watery future that awaits low lying island nations like his when climate change rises sea levels.
Biggest Irony: NASA announced in November that an unmanned space probe that was intentionally crashed on the Moon had discovered the presence of ‘significant amounts’ of water there. That bit of scientific evidence cost US$79 million to obtain…and was not the most comforting news for a planet that rapidly running short of usable freshwater. In the wake of the Apollo Moon landings in the late 1960s, misguided voters in Sri Lanka elected a government that promised ‘to bring rice even from the Moon’. When might we hear politicians promise us water from the Moon?
Well, that’s it folks — the highs and lows of 2009 according to the Blogger-in-Chief and his team of elves here at the Moving Images Media Empire. We’ve waded through our several dozen blog posts to come up with the above, and make no claims for being fair, balanced or comprehensive…
Indeed, we hope you don’t agree with all our picks, and invite you to express alternative – even dissenting – views. All comments that are not outright libellous or blatantly self-promotional will be published.
We take this opportunity to thank each and everyone who read our posts over the year — and especially those who left comments, sometimes radically disagreeing with our views. We also reiterate our pledge to frustrate those few persistent detractors who keep demanding to see our nationalistic, religious or other credentials…
Evolution or revolution?
I was born three years before the Internet (which turned 40 a few weeks ago), and raised entirely on newspapers and radio in a country where broadcast television didn’t arrive until I was 13.
From the time I could read and write, I always wanted to be a media publisher. In that pre-history of the Personal Computer and Internet, my choices were pretty limited: I published a hand-written household newspaper and was its editor, reporter, printer and distributor all rolled into one. But I was obsessive in my work even then, and the newspaper lasted a couple of years in which over two dozen issues were released (all of them now mercifully lost).
My school teacher parents were my first patrons, supplying me with plenty of paper, pencils and ink. But there must have times when they rather wished that I didn’t indulge in my own brand of independent journalism. I loved to criticise and lampoon the ‘management’ in my editorials — even as a kid, I was already critical of the establishment!
Fortunately for me, the ‘management’ left me alone and to my own devices, but most independent editors in history haven’t been so lucky. As the American journalist A.J. Leibling (1904 -1963) once said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” In his time, this was perfectly true.
There was a time, until recently, when press barons and media moguls led, and the rest of society followed. In our topsy-turvy times, however, the reverse is increasingly true.
In theory, at least, anyone can be a global broadcaster and publisher in less than two hours using free tools that can be downloaded and activated in minutes.
David Brewer (photo from http://www.i-m-s.dk)My British media activist friend David Brewer has just published an online guide on how to become a publisher or broadcaster in 100 minutes. (Okay, the non-geeks among us might need a bit longer than that, but still, you can be in business in just a few hours.)
David Brewer’s journalistic and managerial experience spans newspapers, radio, television, and online, and he now runs Media Ideas International Ltd, a media strategy consultancy with clients in Europe, the Balkans, the CIS, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Central America.
David has worked with what I like to call the A-B-C of global broadcasting. He was the launch managing editor of BBC News Online in 1997, and moved to CNN, as managing editor, to set up CNN.com Europe, Middle East and Africa and CNNArabic.com. He was an editorial consultant for the launch of Al Jazeera English in 2006 and continues to work with Al Jazeera English as a new media consultant.
In his spare time, he runs Media Helping Media , a network and online resource to support media in areas where freedom of expression is under threat.
I quoted the Filipino academic and social activist Professor Walden Bello, as saying: “Things are pretty savage at the grassroots level in some of our countries. Journalists who investigate and uncover the truth take enormous personal risks – the vested interests hire killers to eliminate such journalists.”
Bello, executive director of the Focus on the Global South, further said: “Journalists living in the provinces and reporting from the grassroots are more vulnerable than those based in the cities. This is precisely why local journalists need greater support and protection to continue their good work.”
Last week, Reporters Without Borders echoed this call, saying: “We must defend journalists who expose attacks on the environment”.
The press freedom activist group released a new report titled “The dangers for journalists who expose environmental issues.” It highlights the indifference – and even complicity – of some governments and local authorities that make little attempt to protect journalists who take risks to investigate attacks on the environment.
The report looks at 13 cases of journalists and bloggers who have been killed, physically attacked, jailed, threatened or censored for reporting on the environment, and highlights the need for a free press to tackle ecological challenges.
In countries such as Russia, Cambodia, Brazil or even Bulgaria, in Europe, journalists run considerable risks when they try to alert the world about the misdeeds of those who prey on the environment.
It’s a show called the XYZ Show, broadcast weekly on Kenya’s Citizen TV. Started in mid May 2009, the first season introduced Kenyan viewers to a new form of satire television, with life-sized puppets made to resemble famous persons, mostly politicians.
Now comes the report that the show has riled some Kenyan politicians – surprise, surprise! I have only just come across this Citizen TV news report, broadcast a couple of weeks ago:
Controversy Over The XYZ Show
The satirical puppet show XYZ on Citizen Television every Sunday night, has attracted the attention of non other than the Public Service Minister Dalmas Otieno. The Minister says the caricature show is depicting politicians in bad light. The Director of Communication Ezekiel Mutua avers that, the show is representative of just how free the media is, in Kenya.
Well, what can we say? We thought politicians in general had thicker skins. Perhaps some Kenyan politicians are in danger of forgetting that timeless piece of Swahilian advice: Hakuna matata!
Hakuna matata is a Swahili phrase that is literally translated as “There are no worries”. It is sometimes translated as “no worries”, although is more commonly used similarly to the English phrase “no problem”.
I ended a recent blog post, News wrapped in laughter, with this thought: “There is another dimension to satirising the news in immature democracies as well as in outright autocracies where media freedoms are suppressed or denied. When open dissent is akin to signing your own death warrant, and investigative journalists risk their lives on a daily basis, satire and comedy becomes an important, creative – and often the only – way to comment on matters of public interest. It’s how public-spirited journalists and their courageous publishers get around draconian laws, stifling regulations and trigger-happy goon squads. This is precisely what is happening right now in countries like Kenya and Sri Lanka, and it’s certainly no laughing matter.”
An interesting experiment in political satire on Kenyan television has just ended its first season on 9 August 2009. It’s a show called the XYZ Show, which was broadcast weekly on Kenya’s Citizen TV. Started in mid May 2009, the first season introduced Kenyan viewers to a new form of satire television, with life-sized puppets made to resemble famous persons, mostly politicians.
Gado the CreatorThe XYZ Show was inspired by famous puppet satire series like the British “Spitting Image” and the French “Les Guignols de l’Info” shows. In the XYZ Show, the puppets commented on news and current events from both Kenya and overseas.
The XYZ Show was developed by a team led by Kenyan cartoonist Godfrey Mwampembwa, alias Gado. He is the most widely syndicated cartoonist in East and Central Africa. He publishes a daily cartoon in The Nation, the largest newspaper in Kenya, and his work has been published in Le Monde (France), Washington Times (US), De Standaard (Belgium) and The Japan Times.
According to its creators, the XYZ Show challenged famous figures from Kenyan high society and politics using humour and satire. It aimed to become a new forum for social and political debate, one that provides room for open discussion.
Watch XYZ Show’s first episode trailer, produced one year ago:
Says the Prince Claus Fund of the Netherlands, which supported the show’s production: “Although freedom of the press is a constitutional right in Kenya, it is difficult for many journalists to practice their profession without interference. Gado and his team hope that the XYZ Show will contribute positively to strengthening freedom of the press and increasing political and social awareness among the people of Kenya. The show provides commentary on current social and political developments and aims to use humour and artistry to reinforce freedom of speech in Kenya.”
From what I’ve been able to watch online, on the show’s YouTube channel and elsewhere, the production values are at a high standard, comparable to such shows made in Europe and East Asia. The puppets are attractive, movements convincing and the pace quick and slick.
Who pulls his strings?The producers have also tried hard to make XYZ more than just a TV show. The website, in English, shows how the content is being adapted for the web (as webisodes) and mobile phones (as mobisodes). The show’s official blog takes us on to the set and shares with us the story behind the story, and introduces us to the artists and technical geniuses involved. Full marks for trying to engage the audience.
Then there is Barack Obama. Using his Kenyan connections, the show casts him (really, a puppet in his image) in a ‘supporting actor’ role. This has clearly inspired some interest in the show beyond Kenya.
So far, so good. But how does it work with the audience? The show is directed mainly at local audiences, and even if it’s presented in a mix of English and local language, it’s not something a complete outsider like myself can appreciate.
So I ‘crowd-sourced’ by asking a Kenyan reader of my blog, Marion N N, for her opinion. Marion is part of Sojourner, which her blog introduces as “a social enterprise that exists to promote the origination, production and distribution of African viewpoints through visual media. We are passionate about African film-making and seek its viable promotion globally”.
Marion wrote a comment in her blog after watching one episode a few weeks ago. She lives and works in Kenya, and her views are far more valid than my own.
Behind the screen, creators at work...She wrote: “My first off impression was fascination about the quality of the show in terms of animation which is very new to the local TV production scene in Kenya. Once past the fascination of the animation, I found that the content failed to hold my interest, connect with me or engage me as an audience. As a socio-political spoof show, humor ideally should be the hook that captures audience but in this case, humor comes across as mindless, illogical or simply stupid action on the screen. As if in evidence to this fact, at some point my husband in between laughter remarked ‘This show is really stupid’. I would imagine this would be a compliment to the Production becuase it provoked laughter in a viewer. However beyond that moment, it seemed only natural for us to flick over to more substantial entertainment having enjoyed that brief flight of fancy that failed to arouse an appetite for more.”
Marion also wondered what the show’s intended audience was, and highlighted the many challenges in getting the levels and balances right in doing political satire: “That politicians sometimes (nay, most times) behave ridiculously is not new or fresh. But the treatment, underlying themes, ideas communicated to audiences should be. Why do I suggest this? Because political satire by its nature speaks to an audience that is fairly mature, and exposed. To use childish humor that is poorly developed will not hold the audience’s attention. Infact at some point the content may become a tad irritating to watch. Political satire needs to be treated with a peppering of fact, wit, fresh perspective or take -out: The achievement of some underlying objective and not just mindless visual gimmicks that lead to the feeling of ‘stooping to idiocy; by audiences. This seeming insult of intelligence causes us as an audience to switch off.”
In my own view, The XYZ Show had at least three major challenges. Doing any puppet show is hard enough, and these days the on-air competition is neither local nor fair: it comes from global entertainment corporations like MTV and their regional variations, usually with deep pockets. Doing political satire is even harder, especially if the political culture is intolerant or repressive. To get the look, feel and balances right in a country where such a show is being done locally for the first time is a formidable challenge by itself.
But I’ll let Marion have the last word. In spite of the various concerns, she feels that the XYZ Show has ‘room to grow and conquer the airwaves’. But, as she notes, “The production team have their work cut out for them in pre-production. It’s back to the drawing board and ask who is my audience? What appeals to them? How do I connect with them, define an objective for the show and its audiences? Research facts and opinions about national sentiment on issues then develop scripts and sequences…”
Open Minds! 