Television – Page 24

Taking it personally: Anita Roddick’s Arabian Nights

“I am overwhelmed by the potential of the web to link like-minded people and move them to mass-action,” the late Anita Roddick once wrote. “We are excited to experiment in other media too — perhaps subversive billboards, or a television program, or other print projects. As someone once said, we are only limited by our imaginations.”

In my personal tribute to Anita, written shortly after her untimely death on 10 September 2007, I touched on her extraordinary skills as an activist-communicator. It was in connection with a global television series that I last met Anita in person.

In the summer of 2003, I was invited to join a small group of people at Anita’s country home, Highfield House, in Arundel, Somerset, England. It was a one-day brainstorming on the future of Hands On, a global TV series that she’d been hosting for three years.

Hands On stood out as a beacon of hope amidst so much doom and gloom on television -– it featured environmentally-friendly technologies, business ideas and processes that have been tried out by someone, somewhere on the planet.

It covered a broad range of topics, from renewable energies, waste management and information technology to food processing and transport. The aim was to showcase good news and best practices so they could inspire others — entrepreneurs, communities or even governments — to try these out.

The series was first broadcast on BBC World and was redistributed to dozens of TV channels worldwide through my own organisation, TVE Asia Pacific, and others. It was backed by the reputed development agency Intermediate Technology (now called Practical Action).

Watch a typical Anita introduction of Hands On and a sample story in capsule form:

Anita brought her usual passion and dynamism to our discussion, energising the development and communications professionals enjoying her hospitality. Covering good news was already going against the media’s grain, but it was harder to keep at it year after year, especially when the media landscape was changing rapidly. It was a challenge to stay engaged and relevant to viewers across Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Europe.

During the meeting, Anita asked me to sum up the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which was coming up in a few months. Putting aside all the ‘developmentspeak’ of UN agencies, I described it as an attempt to put new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to work for the poor and disadvantaged of our world. Or get the geek tools to work for the meek. (I still think my phrase ‘Geek2Meek’ sounds better than the official ICT4D, where D stands for development.)

We agreed that civil society had to seize the opportunities offered by these new media tools. (A few months later, Anita presented two Hands On editions called ‘Communicating for Change’ on BBC World that profiled some initiatives doing just this.)

Always fond of analogies, I likened Hands On to Arabian Nights, which, according to legend, a young woman had spun from her rich imagination for 1,001 nights to save her life from an evil king. In Hands On, I suggested, we are telling stories to save not one life, but all life on Earth.

Read my July 2007 post: Telling stories to save ourselves…and the planet

Anita quite liked my analogy. She was always a good story teller, and had so many good stories to tell (A favourite opening line from her biography, Body and Soul: “There I was, with my panty down to my knees.” You’ll never guess why until you read that story…)

She challenged everyone at that meeting to make Hands On more interesting to younger viewers in different cultures. We recognised that offering one media product to a global audience was a tough sell: most people prefer a home-made, local story.

But then, she’d built the entire Body Shop chain with a largely common product offering, even if raw materials were sourced from different parts of the globe. She never imposed the Body Shop experience on our meeting, but it was sometimes instructive to look at how a globally available product could still be localised.

This is just what we did in the months and years following the Arundel brainstorming. We rolled out the ‘Localising Hands On in Asia’ project, which saw several dozen Hands On stories being versioned into local languages and distributed through broadcast and narrowcast means in Cambodia, India, Laos and Nepal. The two-year project, generously supported by Toyota, was hugely successful in delivering the Hands On stories to millions of people who would never have been exposed to it in original English.

We were thrilled when our localising work inspired similar local TV shows in three countries (Cambodia, Nepal and Laos). Yet it was the narrowcast outreach that was more rewarding.

Read about one narrowcast experience in my April 2007 blog post: Anita Roddick, Angkor Wat and the development pill

Coming soon: Who killed Hands On, one of the most successful multimedia initiatives in recent years to communicate development?

Wanted: Fair Trade in Film and Television!

This short film, Fair Trade: The Story (8 mins) has been produced by Eq.tv (Equilibrium Television).

It’s very well made, with great use of images and sound, and powerfully sums up the complex issues around fair trade in an accessible manner. The best part: we don’t feel it’s an activist film, even though fair trade is, by definition, progressive and activist.

What is your power as a consumer? The film, produced in association with TransFair USA and TinCan Productions, begins with this question.

It then tells us: “Fair Trade combines stringent environmental criteria with the highest income and labour standards of any product certification. Fair Trade ensures a fair price for farmers, fair wages for workers, safe working conditions, direct marketing access, community development, democratic decision making, sustainable farming methods, environmental protection.”

Chris White of TransFair USA quips: “Fair trade isn’t a product. Fair trade isn’t a brand. Fair trade is a story.”

Fair trade is all about creating opportunities for small scale producers in the developing countries to get organised and supply directly to consumers in different parts of the world. When they sell direct, with few or no intermediaries, they can earn three or four times more, and that money will enhance their incomes, living standards and societies.

Fair trade is certainly a cherished ideal, but it’s mired in complex economic and political realities. The globalised march of capital, profit-maximising multinational corporations and developed country farm subsidies are three among many factors that made fair trade difficult to achieve in the real world.

Difficult, but not impossible. Determined producers and consumers have shown over the years that they can connect to each other, ensuring greater fairness and justice in transaction. That’s the power of the consumer.

Now here’s another kind of fair trade that I have been advocating for a long time: Fair Trade in Film and Television (FTinFT for short). It’s high time we started promoting this as another plank in fair trade activism.

Let me explain. In the media-rich, information societies that we are now evolving into, media and cultural products are an important part of our consumption — and therefore, more of these have to be produced. In the globalised world, more television and film content is being sourced from the majority world — or is being outsourced to some developing countries where the artistic and technical skills have reached global standards.

But in a majority of these media production deals, the developing country film and TV professionals don’t enjoy any fair terms of trade or engagement. Their creativity and toil are being exploited by those who control the global flow of entertainment, news and information products.

This is why the top talent in the global South become assistants, helpers and ‘fixers’ to producers or directors parachuting in to our countries to cover our own stories for the Global Village. Equitable payments and due credits are hardly ever given.

I personally know many award winning film-makers in developing countries across the Asia Pacific who have been engaged on such unfair, uneven terms. Lacking sufficient market opportunities and trade unions in their own countries, these professionals have little choice but accept the occasional assignment that comes their way from BBC, CNN, AJI or other global players.

Remember, film-makers have families to feed too.

Unfair trade in film and TV is also how the unsung, unknown creative geniuses contribute significantly to the development of new cartoon animation movies or TV series, as well as hip video games that enthrall the global market. Lacking the clout and skill to negotiate better terms, freelancers and small companies across the global South remain the little elves who toil through the night to produce miracles. They work for tiny margins and even tinier credit lines. Some don’t get acknowledged at all.

If you think this is inevitable in the big bad world of profit-making business, hear this. I also know some western charities that champion global justice who are equally guilty of repeatedly exploiting southern film-makers — sometimes, ironically, to produce documentaries about social justice issues!

Even as they cover stories about fair trade practices in coffee or cotton, these entities practise unfair trade in their own industry.

I can cite many examples. Last year, the London-based Panos Institute approached me for recommendations for development-sensitive film-makers in two Asian countries where they wanted to implement some training programmes. I asked if the professionals I can gladly recommend – whose skills are on par with any western counterpart – would be paid international rates. Panos backed out saying they can only pay a local rate, which they felt was good enough.

Then there are UN agencies who always haggle with local film-makers over rates and fees. The same agencies that happily commission PR media agencies from Madison Avenue for hundreds of thousands of US Dollars would ask southern film-makers to donate their time, or work at a reduced fee, for the United Nations causes!

Local rates for local talent is simply not good enough if their work contributes to an international media effort. Southern film-makers and photographers, who lack opportunities to roam the planet looking for stories and work, should be engaged on fair, international rates in any media venture whose products will be consumed globally.

I’m proud to say that TVE Asia Pacific practises what I preach here. We are small time commissioners of southern film-making talent, but we always pay international rates, and engage local talent in every country we work in. And they get due, proper credit in all our productions.

This, then, is the essence of Fair Trade in Film and Television that we must advocate and agitate for. As long as the story tellers of the global struggles for social justice are themselves excluded from the story, there can be no fair trade, or true global justice.

There is now an urgency to address FTinFT because Media Process Outsourcing (MPO) is emerging as a growth industry. May 2007 news: India’s InfoSys and TV18 set up MPO firm.

Let me return to the question frequently posed by fair trade activists: What is your power as a consumer?

Now ask that question as a consumer of media products on TV, video, DVD, web and mobile devices. Don’t take anything for granted. Don’t accept the lofty PR claims of big time (or even small time) producers and peddlers of media content on how ethically they have sourced or made this content.

For a start, look carefully at where stories have been made, and whether local film and TV professionals get proper, on-screen credit. And write to the big players – 24/7 news channels, cartoon corporations and others – demanding to know their fair trade policies and practices in content creation and sourcing.

Make the same demands on the United Nations agencies peddling media products on their social causes. See how many of them will stand a simple test: do they engage southern film-makers to tell stories of development and social justice in the South? If not, why not?

And if you are in a position to decide on commissioning a new film, TV or video product, please consider engaging local talent — but pay them international rates if your product is going to cross borders (these days it very likely will).

We have a long way to go to achieve Fair Trade in Film and Television. Let’s get moving!

Read my call for ethical sourcing of international TV news

Photos from TVE Asia Pacific image archives

Shimu: Bangladesh’s real life ‘Meena’ enthralls millions on TV

Meena’s uncle has arranged for his daughter Rita to marry Babu, a shopkeeper’s son. But Rita is only 15 and has not yet finished school. With Meena’s help, it comes to light that Babu, who is studying to be a doctor, does not want to get married yet, especially since he knows it is unsafe for young girls to become mothers. To everyone’s satisfaction, the marriage is postponed until Rita is 18 and has completed her education.

That’s the storyline in Meena: Too Young to Marry, which is part of the hugely successful cartoon animation series Meena, which Unicef produced with leading animation houses in South Asia during the 1990s. It was part of the Meena Communication Initiative.

Its central character is Meena: a spirited, nine-year-old girl, living in a typical South Asian village, facing all the usual challenges of growing up — whether in her efforts to go to school, or having enough to eat, or in fighting the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in her village. In a sub-region where many families still favour boys over girls, life is not easy for Meena, but she finds ways to not just cope but flourish.

Now comes the news of a real life Meena in Bangladesh.

Alo Amar Alo is the name of a live action television drama series that promotes girls’ education in Bangladesh. Launched in July 2007, it is currently running on Bangladesh Television, BTV.

Alo Amar Alo (“Light My Light”) centers around a girl named ‘Alo’ who stops going to school when she completes Class V. Throughout 26 episodes, the story follows Alo as she struggles to overcome life’s challenges through the support and friendship of a renowned actress.

Playing the role of Alo is 13-year-old Shimu, who suddenly finds herself the star of the country’s most popular television series.

In an article profiling her, The Washington Post wrote on 14 September 2007: “Shimu, a youthful Bangladeshi version of Winona Ryder, is recognized across the country for her moving role as the spunky 11-year-old heroine Alo. On Wednesday nights, more than 10 million viewers tune in after the 8 p.m. news to see her character put through the gantlet of family entanglements and financial strains that afflict many of the young girls in this desperately poor, densely populated South Asian nation. Alo must fight to stay in the fifth grade while her uncle demands that she work in a garment factory and other family members urge her to marry so they will have one less mouth to feed.”

“Teachers say that Shimu’s photograph hangs in classrooms across the country on posters advertising the show and that her story has become a symbol of the struggle to keep girls in school.”

Elsewhere, the article notes:
“As in Latin America’s telenovelas and many African and South Asian TV dramas, story lines in Bangladeshi programs are often infused with messages decrying social ills such as child labor, domestic violence and early marriage. Many of the shows are low-budget productions funded by nonprofit organizations or the government. Shimu’s show…is funded by the Education Ministry and UNICEF; actors receive modest stipends.

Being a TV star has not changed Shimu’s life, says Washington Post writer Emily Wax. Even though Shimu is on television, her family does not own a TV set. She and her friends watch the show at the theater group’s center.

Her grandfather, Mohamed Siddiq, 61, is quoted saying he wants Shimu to stay in school but is worried that she may end up marrying or working, since their family is being evicted in a month and has no savings.

“We are illiterate. I really want Shimu to stay in classes,” Siddiq said. “It’s just so hard to survive here.”

Read the full article about Shimu in The Washington Post online

The Alo Amar Alo series is funded by Unicef and the Ministry of Education in Bangladesh. It’s part of a communication strategy which includes interactive popular theatre shows, folksong performances, wall paintings and Meena Communication Initiatives.

“These have been extremely effective in raising awareness on the value of education as well as reaching the remote corners of the country through the mass media. Parents have shown more willingness to send girls to school. The increase in the enrollment of girls has also been the impact of multiple awareness raising campaigns,” says Unicef Bangladesh.

But big challenges remain. The Washington Post article draws parallels between the character Alo and child actor Shimu.

“Sometimes I feel she should support me,” Shimu’s grandmother, Ayesha, 49, who was herself married at 12, is quoted as saying. “Boys want to marry her. They are always harassing her. Even though she is known for her acting, it’s very hard to make a living here. If she were married, we wouldn’t have to worry about feeding her.”

To which Shimu says, simply: “It’s better to stay in learning for the future. I want to try.”

One concern is I have why Unicef is exploiting a child actor without adequate pay. The article refers to actors receiving ‘modest stipends’. If Shimu was paid better for her natural talent as well as considerable time she doubtless spends on acting in Alo Amar Alo, surely that can make a difference in one child’s life? Or is that not statistically significant for Unicef?

Photo of Shimu courtesy The Washington Post

Meena image courtesy Unicef

Ozzy Ozone: The Little Molecule on a Big Mission

This is Ozzy Ozone. He is an energetic, cheerful little ozone molecule – part of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere that prevents the Sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays from coming through.

Today, 16 September 2007, is a day to celebrate Ozzy Ozone. Because it’s the 20th anniversary since the nations of the world adopted the Montreal Protocol to phase out chemicals that harm the ozone layer.

It was a landmark international environmental treaty — one which has galvanized governments, industry and society into sustained action for two decades to give using close to a hundred chemicals, all of which – when released into the air – go up to damage the ozone layer.

Ozzy Ozone has been part of the many-faceted public education programme mounted by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to tell everyone how harmful UV rays are to our health, and how Ozzy and his fellow ozone molecules are literally protecting life on earth from being zapped out.

In this video, Ozzy Ozone and Alberta the Albatross take a voyage of discovery to find out exactly who and what is attacking the ozone layer and how children can play an important role in making a difference.

Watch Ozzy Ozone online:

Order Ozzy Ozone on video tape or DVD from TVE Asia Pacific

Ozzy himself is now 10 years old. He was created by a graphic artist in Barbados, as part of a government-supported campaign to raise public awareness on ozone layer thinning. This cartoon character served as a “mascot” and was very effective in raising awareness in Barbados. The cartoon series has been printed in the local newspapers on several occasions. Additionally, promotional items produced for local public awareness and education campaigns using the Ozzy graphic include posters, key rings, rulers, erasers, refrigerator magnets, mouse pads, pens, pencils, stickers, and envelopes.

The character was enduring and popular that UNEP struck a deal with Barbados to ‘globalize’ Ozzy. An animated video was produced, along with a dedicated website, comic strips and other media adaptations.

Ozzy Ozone website

Anita Roddick: “There was nothing like this dame”

Citizen journalist, film-maker and media critic Rory O’Connor has written a moving tribute to extraordinary activist and entrepreneur Anita Roddick, whose premature death on 12 September 2007 has left her many admirers in shock and grief.

He recalls how colleague and fellow media-activist Danny Schechter and he first met Anita at a gathering of progressive business executives called the Social Ventures Network. Their shared background, vision and ideals soon turned them into friends and co-conspirators.

Rory recalls how their company Global Vision embarked on a new human rights-oriented TV newsmagazine in the mid 1990s: “Anita and her husband Gordon were key players in that series – ‘Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television’ – coming to fruition. They contributed their energy and enthusiasm, their ideas and information, their contacts and creativity (and oh yes, their capital!) and without all of it, the series would never have been born. But with their help, the award winning newsmagazine was broadcast weekly for four years, on more than 150 public television stations in the USA, as well as on channels and networks in sixty-one other countries. It remains the only regularly scheduled television program in history devoted exclusively to coverage of human rights.”

Rory echoes my own point about how Anita was a communicator par excellence, driven more by intuition and inspiration than any textbookish theories:
“Although Anita wasn’t a media activist per se, she intuitively understood how media could be used for activism, and she did so shamelessly and in a cheerfully relentless manner. Whether she was supporting social and environmental causes through window displays, convincing American Express to pay her to appear in an ad promoting the Body Shop and its causes, working with Globalvision on its commercial and non-profit programming (or later writing books, blogging, running an activist website, contributing to the success of Mother Jones magazine, or working closely with — and donating millions to — media-savvy organizations such as Amnesty International,) Anita intrinsically ‘got’ the importance of characters and stories to selling anything—from cold cream to ideas and values – and she employed them cleverly and constantly in support of her principles.”

Watch Anita’s one minute on climate change for Friends of the Earth:

Watch QuantumShift.tv’s thoughtful tribute to Anita Roddick, better presented than the fleeting coverage of mainstream news channels:

Read the full tribute on Media is a Plural website.

Read my own tribute to Anita Roddick: We shall always remember you!

Read Danny Schechter on News Dissector website

Crossing the other Digital Divide: Challenge to conservation community

Digital Divide refers to the gap between those who have regular, easy access to modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) and those who don’t. In the past decade, the IT industry and development community have launched various initiatives to bridge this divide. The One Laptop Per Child project is among the better known examples.

As digital technologies and media gain momentum and wider coverage than ever before, another kind of digital divide has emerged. This week in Kathmandu, during the Fourth Asian Conservation Forum, some of us have been talking about this new divide — between the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants.

This latter divide is mainly a product of age, not socio-economics. Market research and sociological studies now confirm that today’s younger people – raised on a diet of mobile phones, video games and mp3 (music) players – have radically different ways of accessing, receiving and coping with information.

Recognising this new Digital Divide is vital for communication and advocacy work of conservation groups, such as IUCN – The World Conservation Union, conveners of the Kathmandu forum.

For nearly 60 years, IUCN has been an effective platform for knowledge-based advocacy. Using scientific evidence and reasoning, it has influenced conservation policies, laws and practices at country and global levels. The world would be a worse place to live in if not for this sustained advocacy work by thousands of experts and activists who were mobilised by IUCN.

Much of that work has been accomplished through the classical advocacy tools: scientific papers, books, conferences and, in recent years, ‘policy dialogues’ — meetings where experts and activists would sit down and talk things through with those who make policy in governments and industry.

IUCN continues to pursue all these methods, with creditable impact. IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species, whose latest edition is being released today (12 September 2007), is among the best known examples of how the Union’s work informs and inspires urgent action for saving the world’s animals and plants driven to the edge by human activity.

To remain similarly effective in the coming years, IUCN — and the rest of the conservation community — need to evolve and adapt to changing realities in human society. One such reality is the proliferation of ICTs in the past two decades.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced recently that the world’s telephone connections had passed four billion. Largely thanks to the explosion of mobile phones in the majority world, the total number of telephones (fixed and mobile) had quadrupled in the past decade.

While exact figures are hard to come by, it is estimated that around 1.17 billion people (almost 1 in 6 persons) have access to the Internet, even though varying levels of quality.

These are the more widely quoted figures, but the media mix keeps diversifying even as the size of the overall ‘ICT pie’ keeps increasing. For example, the 1990s saw a channel explosion in both FM radio and television across much of Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America, hugely increasing viewers’ choice and enhancing the outreach of broadcasting. The popularity of video games (and now, online games) has spawned trans-boundary subcultures that were inconceivable even a decade ago.

It is this bewilderingly media-enriched world that IUCN’s members and experts are trying to engage, hoping to persuade everyone — from governments and industry to communities and individuals — to live and work as if the planet mattered.

In Kathmandu this week, I argued that scientific merit and rational (and often very articulate) reasoning alone won’t win them enough new converts to achieve significant changes in lifestyles, attitudes and practices. To be heard and heeded in the real world outside the charmed development and conservation circles, we need to employ a multitude of platforms, media and ICT tools. And we have to talk in the language of popular culture.

We have come a long way since the 1980s, with the new ICTs evolving parallel to our own understanding of sustainability.

When we were involved in processes leading up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, back in 1992, most of us were still using fax and snailmail to exchange information. Email was confined to academic circles and the web was not even conceived.

By the time Johannesburg Summit was held a decade later, email had come into wide use and static websites were being used to disseminate information and opinions. E-commerce and music file sharing were gaining momentum.

Just five years on, the rapidly evolving web 2.0 offers us more tools and platforms to not just engage in one-way dissemination, but to truly communicate with a two-way flow. Wikis allow participatory document drafting. Web logs or blogs enable faster, easier expression and discussion. YouTube and other platforms have suddenly made sharing of moving images much simpler (assuming we have sufficient bandwidth).

In fact, connectivity is improving in many parts of the world, though there still are many gaps, frustrations and cost issues to be resolved. Young people, under 25 years, are leading the charge in entering and ‘colonising’ the new media. Social networking platforms such as MySpace and FaceBook are only the tip of this cyber iceberg. And virtual worlds — such as Second Life, with over 8 million online members — are moving in from the periphery to occupy a clear niche in our new digital world.

Every indication is that these trends will continue. IUCN and other conservationists, with their rigorous scientific analysis expressed in technical papers, print publications and the occasional op ed article in a broadsheet newspaper, have to navigate in this whirlpool — and it’s not easy. But their choice is between engagement and marginalisation. The planet cannot afford the latter.

I’m not suggesting that conservation scientists and organisations must drop their traditional advocacy methods and rush to embrace the new ICT tools. But they need to survey the new media landscape with an open mind and identify opportunities to join the myriad global conversations.

A good part of that is what intellectuals might see as chatter, or tabloid culture. It’s precisely this mass tabloid audience that needs to be engaged for conservation.

There are inspiring examples of how other sections of the development spectrum are seizing new media opportunities:

* Some humanitarian groups now use Google Earth online satellite maps for their information management and advocacy work, for example in Darfur, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.

* In an attempt to name and shame offenders, human rights activists are using YouTube to post incriminating video evidence of human rights abuses worldwide. The influential Foreign Affairs journal recently called this the YouTube Effect.

Fortunately, at least a few Asian conservation leaders already appreciate this enormous new media potential. In Kathmandu, Surendra Shrestha, UNEP’s regional director for Asia Pacific, echoed my views.

“My young kids spend several hours each weekend in virtual worlds. We need to get in there and engage them with our content,” he said. “To do that, we have to get inside their minds, and speak their language.”

Shrestha mentioned how UNEP in Asia is attempting this with ICT-based projects for youth, such as e-generation which, according to him, has involved half a million young people.

Such initiatives are beginning to happen, thanks to a few conservationists who are pragmatic enough to exploit the inevitable. But much more needs to be done to make conservation ‘cool’ and hip for Asia’s youthful population, half of them under 35, and many of them Digital Natives.

For sustainability measures to have a chance of success, these upwardly mobile, spend-happy youth have to be reached, touched and persuaded. If it takes tabloid tactics to achieve this, so be it.

And given Asia’s growing economic clout and ecological impact – with China and India leading the way – the fate of the planet will be decided by what is done, or not done, in our region.

While they debate the finer points of conservation strategies and activities in Kathmandu, Bangkok and other cities across our massive region, Asia’s conservation community must quickly cross the new Digital Divide that currently separates them from Digital Natives.

Declaration of interest: I was part of IUCN Sri Lanka Secretariat (1992-1994), where I started its communication division, and have been a member of IUCN Commission on Education and Communication since 1991.

Read my April 2007 post: Do ICTs make a difference?

War Made Easy: Exposing the Spin Doctors of Death

As we mark the sixth anniversary of 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, attention is focused more and more on the role the media played in the days and months that followed.

The war in Iraq was justified as a retaliation against 9/11. The Pentagon marched on to the cheer-leading of American media, which barely asked the basic questions, let along challenge the military-political logic.

A new documentary probes how this shameless acquiescence took place in full public glare. WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, narrated by Sean Penn, features Normon Solomon, on whose 2005 book the film is largely based.

Here’s the trailer for the film:

And its synopsis:

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.

Norman Solomon’s work has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “brutally persuasive” and essential “for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee.” This film now offers a chance to see that context on the screen.

Approx. 72 minutes
English subtitles
Directed & Written by: Loretta Alper & Jeremy Earp
Produced by: Loretta Alper
Co-produced & Edited by: Andrew Killoy
Executive Producers: Jeremy Earp & Sut Jhally
Associate Producer: Jason Young
Sound: Peter Acker, Armadillo Media Group
Motion Graphics: Andrew Killoy & Sweet & Fizzy
Additional Music: John Van Eps & Leigh Philips
Narrated by: Sean Penn
Based on the book by Norman Solomon

Image courtesy War Made Easy website

I haven’t yet seen this film, but it’s certainly one I want to catch soon. Not the least because I live and work in a war-ravaged country – Sri Lanka – where the politicians and generals have engaged in their own (increasingly sophisticated) acts of spin doctoring. Most alarmingly, large sections of the Sri Lankan media find absolutely nothing wrong to play along, all in the name of patriotism….

Sounds familiar?

Read the full transcript of War Made Easy

“Can you help us to film a child’s leg being broken?”

“Can you help us to film a child’s leg being broken?”

This question, posed by a visiting Canadian TV crew in the 1970s, startled my good friend Darryl D’Monte, one of the most senior journalists in India and former editor of the Times of India.

Darryl was having a chat with the crew, giving them some insights on the extent of poverty in his home city of Bombay, since renamed as Mumbai. It is routine for visiting journalists to have such chats with their local counterparts to get context and advice.

It was when the conversation turned to beggars, that this western TV crew asked if they could film the intentional breaking of a poor child’s leg — a brutal practice that was believed to exist so that maimed children could be employed as beggars. A disabled child would evoke more sympathy, and consequently, more alms.

The articulate Darryl must have expressed his exasperation in strong terms. But even he couldn’t have anticipated the response.

“It’s going to happen anyway,” was how the film crew rationalised their bizarre request.

So why not be there, capture it on film, and get a great story out of it — which can be packaged as the brutal side of India’s poverty! This must have been the crew’s line of reasoning. Maybe their editors had exerted pressure to come back with something out of the ordinary.

I quoted this incident in my essay, Ethical newsgathering challenge for Al Jazeera International, published in November 2006. It was a plea for the newest entrant to international TV newsgathering to play by a different, and more ethical, set of rules.

These and worse practices are certainly not confined to India, or to TV crews originating from any single country. And sadly, these have not been abandoned after the 1970s. In fact, the emergence of 24/7 satellite news channels since the 1980s has inspired much more competition in the TV newsgathering industry, creating an alarming race to the bottom.

Such journalists’ only operating guideline seems to be: get the story, no matter what — or who gets hurt in that process.

In filming wildlife documentaries, film-makers sometimes have to make a choice: do they interfere in the processes of Nature, such as a predator setting on a hapless prey? There is an unwritten rule that things must be allowed to happen, with humans only capturing actuality on film.

But when it comes to filming wild life of our species in our cities and villages, the ethical dilemmas are not so easily resolved. This is why all journalists and film-makers, especially those in newsgathering, need a strong ethical framework for their work.

Journalists represent the public’s right to know, which is extremely important. Media coverage and exposes can trigger much needed aid, reform or public outcry on certain issues. But that is not a justification for getting the story by any means.

Darryl D’Monte shared the above story at panel discussion on ‘Does TV do a better job on environmental reporting?’ which I chaired during the annual congress of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ), held in New Delhi, India, in November 2005. That year it was part of the Vatavaran 2005, the national environmental film festival of India.

I was reminded of this story because the 4th CMS Vatavaran film festival is round the corner: it will be in New Delhi from 12 to 16 September 2007. I won’t be there in person; my colleague Manori Wijesekera is representing TVEAP this time.

TVE Asia Pacific News: Environmental film-makers call for ethical framework

Read official report of IFEJ Congress in 2005

Remembering Diana, the world’s first Princess of Television

Today, 31 August 2007, is the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana’s tragic death in a road accident in Paris.

A decade on, I can still remember exactly where and how I first heard the news. This experience is widely shared: to many in my generation — born in the 1960s and raised through 1970s and 1980s (just like Diana was) — this was an unforgettable moment. Perhaps just like the assassination of John F Kennedy was to a previous generation.

The analogy between Di and JFK goes further. Both had charismatic personalities that appealed far beyond their home country. Both epitomised the vibrancy of youth and the potential for change in the institutions they joined (Diana the British Royal family, and JFK the American government). Both lives were snuffed out before they could fulfill that promise, but they left enduring legacies — and thriving cottage industries of conspiracy theories (‘Who killed JFK?’ has now been joined by ‘Who killed Diana?’).

Here’s another similarity: JFK and Diana were both iconic images of the era of television.

If JFK turned up just in time to charm the first generation of American TV viewers, Diana’s arrival on world stage coincided neatly with the worldwide roll out of satellite television, especially the all-news channels. And thanks to the advances in global broadcasting, Diana commanded a far bigger global audience than JFK did (though the comparisons must end there).

I would like to remember Diana as the first Princess of Television of our media-rich age.

Looking back, we can see how satellite television started and evolved almost in parallel to Diana’s own life. Diana had just celebrated her first birthday, when the world’s first trans-Atlantic satellite television signal was relayed from Europe to the Telstar satellite over North America on 23 July 1962. (By coincidence, JFK was to have participated in the event, but could not owing to a technical delay.)

Over the next two decades, as Diana grew up and matured into a young lady who would soon capture the world’s imagination, satellite TV’s technology, outreach and mass following evolved to cover more channels, territories and eyeballs.

A turning point came when the US entrepreneur Ted Turner took a daring step for that time by launching the Cable News Network (CNN), the world’s first 24 hour news channel. CNN went on the air on 1 June 1980 amidst many skeptics asking: who would possibly want to watch news all the time?

Who indeed! Until then, conventional wisdom had confined news to a regular evening slot, anchored by larger-than-life newscasters. The routine was broken only when there was some earth-shattering development.

Turner’s CNN, ridiculed in the early days as the ‘chicken noodle network’, changed all that, and paved the way for dozens of 24/7 news channels.

As it turned out, CNN arrived just in time. The engagement between Diana and Charles, the Prince of Wales, was announced a few months later, in February 1981.

Their Royal Wedding on 29 July 1981 was watched by a combined television audience of over 750 million worldwide. That broke records as the highest audience for a live broadcast, surpassing the Apollo XI Moon landing a dozen years earlier (seen by an estimated 500 million).

The rest is recent history. Television newsgatherers could never have enough of Diana — apparently their audiences kept asking for more. That may be a debatable point, but Diana was quick to learn the art of exploiting the inevitable: when she realised it was a stark fact of life, she started using it to her personal advantage.

Diana used television as much as television used Diana. Her famous BBC Panorama interview with Martin Bashir was one among many instances when she lived her personal life under the glare of public television (photo below).

Image from BBC Image courtesy BBC

But Diana’s clever use of television was not just for advancing her personal agenda. When she became a big time charity supporter in the 1990s, she used the power of moving images to demystify and humanise global issues from caring for people living with HIV/AIDS to banishing the scourge of landmines. These ensured that Diana became the People’s Princess in the last years of her life.

Image courtesy Daily Telegraph

Early on in her marriage to Charles, a leading newsman told Diana: when you married him, we came as part of the package deal. If she was initially stressed by that revelation, she later made the best use of that inevitable trapping of her celebrity.

And when she died young and tragically, on 31 August 1997, her premature departure became the biggest news story of the year.

The BBC (domestic) announces Princess Diana’s death:

BBC World TV announces Diana’s death in Paris:

Diana’s funeral on 6 September 1997 had a larger global satellite TV audience than did her wedding. Of course, by then there were more people and more television sets on this planet.

Elton John sings a special version of ‘Candle in the Wind’ at Princess Diana’s funeral:

So we salute the legacy of the world’s first Princess of Television. One who moved our hearts with moving images of her personal life and those of the worthy causes she championed. One who showed how moving images can move people.

PS: There was a time when the unforgettable television moments were gone after their broadcasts (unless recorded on tape). But now we have YouTube, where the world’s visual memory lives on. All news and current affairs coverage I have linked to in this post were found on YouTube by simply searching for Princess Diana. There is much more where these came from.

Read BBC Online’s timeline of the life of Princess Diana

Al Jazeera International: Looking hard for the promised difference

Image courtesy Al Jazeera

This is how Al Jazeera International (AJI), which started broadcasting on 15 November 2006, promoted itself.

In its own words, the 24/7 English language channel set out to ‘balance the information flow from (global) South to North, providing accurate, impartial and objective news for a global audience from a grass roots level, giving voice to different perspectives from under-reported regions around the world.’

Noble ideals, indeed — and we fervently hope they succeed. That’s what I said in my op ed, Ethical Newsgathering: Biggest Challenge for Al Jazeera, published online within days of the new channel going on the air.

I said: “In recent years, the self righteous arrogance and the not-so-subtle biases of BBC and CNN have become increasingly intolerable. But unless it’s very careful and thoughtful, AJI runs the risk of falling into the same cultural and commercial traps that its two older rivals are mired in.

“CNN can’t get out of its US-centric analysis even in its international broadcasts. And the BBC news team is like a hopelessly mixed up teenager: one moment they are deeply British or at least western European; the next moment they are more passionate about Africa than Africans themselves.

“Desperately seeking legitimacy and acceptance, these global channels have sometimes traded in their journalistic integrity for privileged access, exclusives or -– dare we say it? -– to be embedded.”

I admit that I haven’t been watching enough of AJI to come to any firm conclusions. One reason: the new channel is still not widely available in some countries that I visit and spend time in.

But going by what is on their YouTube channel, where some 1,300 video segments have been placed so far (as at 29 August 2007), I have a rough idea of AJI’s first few months of coverage.

I’m looking long and hard for the difference that they so emphatically promised. Instead, I find them a paler version of BBC World, at times trying oh-so-hard to be just like the BBC!

Take, for example, the coverage they have recently done on the bloody and protracted civil war in Sri Lanka. Being where I live and work, I take a particular interest in this topic.

In a 2-part edition of AJI’s People & Power programme, Juliana Ruhfus investigates the impact of Sri Lanka’s civil war.

People & Power: How the East was Won: Part 1 of 2

People & Power: How the East was Won: Part 2 of 2

I don’t have a problem with AJI’s analysis in this documentary, which tries hard to be balanced and fair in what I know is a very difficult subject to cover, with intolerant hardliners on both sides of the conflict.

But I have several issues with how it has been put together – the norms and ethics of their newsgathering.

* A white blond woman, so evidently a parachute journalist, is reporting and presenting the story. Why isn’t an Asian telling this story?

* She is repeatedly mispronouncing all the local names. Just like the BBC does as a matter of routine.

* She gestures, interviews and talks exactly like those know-all reporters from the BBC. At times I detect a faint condescension in her voice, but that may be my imagination.

* For part of the coverage, the intrepid AJI reporter becomes embedded with the Sri Lankan armed forces, and interviews civilians under the watchful eye of military men. This is hardly a credible way of eliciting any honest responses!

* More importantly, she shows little regard for the personal safety of some people she interviews. At one point, she asks three muslim men if the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka is now any safer than before it was ‘liberated’ by the government forces. The men are clearly uncomfortable with this question. Honest answers can cost them dearly. But why should she care? She persists, showing close-ups of these individuals.

* Even when she interviews people who had explicitly asked for concealment of their identity, she leaves tell-tale signs for those identities to be easily guessed. A woman whose teen-aged son has been coerced into joining a paramilitary group is filmed in silhouette — not a good enough cover. Real voices have not been altered through a synthesizer.

These and other observations blur the difference between BBC and AJI in my mind. With a few notable exceptions, most BBC reporters don’t care one bit about the hapless, distressed people whom they interview. All they want is to get a ‘good story’ with dramatic visuals.

AJI is desperately trying to outdo the BBC in all the latter’s wrong aspects. Otherwise why should Juliana Ruhfus try so hard to get a damning comment from an interviewee evidently ill-at-ease of being ambushed by this western woman?

I still want to have an open mind about AJI’s promised difference, and keep hoping that it will emerge sooner rather than later. But this kind of newsgathering and film-making don’t augur well.

If this is the ethical standard of journalism that AJI aspires to, we who had high hopes of their becoming a real alternative to the dominant two are going to be disappointed.

Read my earlier post: Wanted: Ethical sourcing of international TV News

Watch Al Jazeera on YouTube