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Barack Obama: President of the New Media World – and watch out for those citizen journalists!

His own brand...

Inauguration Day is finally here! Today, 20 January 2009, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Obama campaigned – and won – on the core promise of change. And even before he moved into the White House, he achieved many firsts. Among them was being the first American leader to understand the power of new media and to use it effectively to harness both campaign contributions and, eventually, votes.

On 6 November 2008, soon after the election results were confirmed, we noted how Obama had just been elected ‘President of the New Media world’. I explained: “Obama’s rise has epitomised change in many ways. Among other things, he is the first elected leader of a major democracy who shows understanding and mastery over the New Media World, which is radically different from the old media order.”

Of course, others had different takes on the same outcome. One of the funniest was by The Onion, which proclaimed: Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.’ It read, in part: “African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis.”

The sheer magnitude of Obama’s challenges has become clearer in the weeks following the historic election. While the economy will certainly dominate his agenda, he will also have to live up to the many expectations of hope that his campaign sparked off in hundreds of millions of people — and not just in the United States.

How will the ‘President of the New Media world’ remain engaged with the millions of conversations taking place 24/7 on the web and through mobile devices? Is this realistically possible given his roles as the chief executive of beleaguered America, Inc., and commander-in-chief of the world’s only superpower?

Already, there is much interest whether security concerns and legal requirements will allow Obama to keep using his BlackBerry, to which he admits being addicted. “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Obama said only a few days ago in an interview with The New York Times. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

More to the point, how long will the mainstream media’s honeymoon with the new President last? And how will citizen journalists, many of who cheerled Obama in his long and arduous campaign, now relate to their man in Washington DC? Can the Obama Administration strike deals with citizen journalists as every administration has done with the mainstream media over the decades? Outside the strict security cocoon of the White House, will this presidency ever be able to have any moments ‘off the record’ with every digitally connected person being a potential citizen journalist?

Remember how his comments about “bitter” small-town Americans clinging to their guns and religion — uttered at a ticket-only and supposedly no-media San Francisco fund-raiser during the campaign — came to be publicised? And that, too, by a pro-Obama blogger writing on the openly pro-Democratic blogger site Huffington Post!

Then there’s the power of moving images moving around online as broadband rolls out across the planet, and speeds improve to support real time video-watching. The day Americans went to the polls to elect Obama, we recalled the hugely popular Obama Girl (‘I got a crush on Obama’) – an internet viral video, first posted on YouTube in June 2007 – and asked Can this little video change history? We had our answer within 24 hours.

While Obama Girl was a well-edited, slick campaign-boosting video released online, the thousands of citizen-filmed videos being posted online are not. And yet, in that no-frills mode, some bring out public interest concerns that have implications for public policy debates and/or law enforcement.

A current example is the sad case of Oscar Grant, a young, unarmed black man who was fatally shot by police officers while laying face-down on a BART subway platform in Oakland, California, on 31 December 2008. Several citizens filmed the incident on their mobile phones. Three separate videos, circulating online at a rapid pace, show various angles and stages of the incident. See one of them here. These have already put the spotlight on police conduct and may influence the judicial process.

President Obama arrives at the White House to lead the executive of a nation that is unlike any his predecessors faced. His inauguration will be the most digitised, but that’s only the beginning. For four or eight years, Obama’s every move, word and gesture will be captured, dissected and debated to exhaustion by admirers and detractors alike. And his administration will be under scrutiny by thousands of citizen journalists who don’t share much except the digital platforms and social networks on which they post their impressions.

Welcome to the New Media Presidency. The hard work – and real fun – begin now!

Watch this cyberspace…

Anyone can make video film, right? Why do we need professionals?

I really enjoyed the Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille (2007), which won the year’s best animated feature film Oscar award and deserved it.

Here’s the plot summary from IMDB: Remy is a young rat in the French countryside who arrives in Paris, only to find out that his cooking idol is dead. When he makes an unusual alliance with a restaurant’s new garbage boy, the culinary and personal adventures begin despite Remy’s family’s skepticism and the rat-hating world of humans. Read full synopsis on IMDB

The movie opens with a TV show featuring Chef Auguste Gusteau, owner of the best restaurant in Paris, talking about his bestselling cookbook, which proudly bears his mantra “Anyone Can Cook!”

Well, that’s heretical to the fine artistes of gourmet. But it’s revived the age old debate between fully-trained professionals and new-entrant amateurs, and inspired some interesting discussions online. One blogger thought: “Remy the rat is a perfect metaphor for the non-expert Web 2.0 knowledge maker. He has no credentials and must prove himself through his actual knowledge and application of knowledge rather than through credentials.”

He added: “What’s the moral of the story? Even without being an acknowledged expert on a topic, if you work hard to express your ideas in clever ways, you too can be respected for what you know.”

I’ve only just read these views, but they resonate with what I felt when I watched the movie in late 2007. The story certainly reminded me of a heated debate in my own field of moving images: can anybody and everybody make video, now that the tech barriers and costs have come down? If this is the case, what’s the point of having highly trained, better paid professionals who do it for a living?

I shan’t try to resolve that debate here. But here’s an interesting take on the debate from the Onion News Network. They report: YouTube is offering a cash prize to the first user to upload a video with a shred of originality or artistic merit.

Barack Obama: Just elected President of the New Media world

“Congratulations for restoring sanity and intelligence to Washington…and giving the world its first President. Real hard work begins now. Look after him!”

This was my brief message to American friends soon after they elected Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America.

It was entirely appropriate that I sent this message via mobile phone text (SMS). For Obama’s trail-blazing campaign to the White House used the new media innovatively while also using the old media (such as broadcast television) in a complementary manner.

Obama’s rise has epitomised change in many ways. Among other things, he is the first elected leader of a major democracy who shows understanding and mastery over the New Media World, which is radically different from the old media order.

As AFP reported in a story titled ‘Obama surfs the web to the White House‘: “Social networks and Twitter messages may have helped but analysts agree it was the Democrat’s impressive online organization and Internet fund-raising that fueled his victory over Republican John McCain in Tuesday’s election.”

It quoted Julie Germany, director of George Washington University’s Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet, as saying: “No one’s going to say Obama won the election because of the Internet but he wouldn’t have been able to win without it. From the very beginning the Obama campaign used the Internet as a tool to organize all of its efforts online and offline. It was like the central nervous system of the campaign.”

Both Obama and McCain campaigns had slick websites and TV campaigns. But additionally, Obama inspired thousands of web-savvy volunteers to extend his message way beyond the official outreach. Doing so risked diluting the campaign or losing tight control, but that gamble paid off.

Al Gore, US vice president from 1992 to 2000, also understood the potential of new media, especially the transformative nature of the Internet. But at the time he was in office, the new media tools were not being used by sufficiently large numbers of people for it to make a difference in political campaigning or citizen engagement.

Both the timing and technologies favoured Obama, who successfully tapped into Digital Natives — those relatively younger people who have grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3. (In contrast, Digital Immigrants are those individual who grew up without digital technology and adopted it later.)

But as many commentators are pointing out, the real fight has just begun. It remains to be seen how Obama and his team use New Media tools, platforms and potential to deliver the promise of change.

Meanwhile, my own favourite cartoon of Obama election is the one above – and funnily enough, it concerns a piece of old technology: the good old fixed phone. If you recall, in long-drawn campaign for Obama to secure Democratic Party nomination, his rival Hillary Clinton ran this TV commercial which peddled her credentials for being familiar with the corridors of power.

It’s 3 AM and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing.
Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call…

Hillary’s original ad:

Obama’s official response:

There were various unofficial spoofs created by Digital Natives who love to play with new media tools. Just run a search for ‘3 am’ or ‘red phone’ on YouTube and you can watch many of these online!

By the way, isn’t it time that the old-fashioned Red Phone in the White House – the American President’s Hotline to save the world – was replaced with a more modern looking instrument? One more thing for the New Media President Obama…

Obama Girl: Can this little video change history?

Is this the face that launches a revolution?

November 4 is already here in Asia – and the day will dawn a few hours later in the United States. Today is the day Americans go to the polls to choose their next President.

In less than 48 hours, we’ll know who the winner is. All the polls of US voters suggest that it would be Senator Barack Obama. Surveys in different parts of the world also indicate how so many people expect him to win. And I certainly want him to win!

But after what happened with the 2000 US Presidential Election, I hesitate to draw any conclusions.

Whatever the outcome of today’s election, one thing is for sure: a little campaign video by a relatively little known actress and model changed the face of Campaign 2008.

“I Got a Crush… on Obama” is an internet viral video, first posted on YouTube in June 2007 featuring a young woman seductively singing of her love for Illinois Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Produced by BarelyPolitical.com, a website for funny political videos, it featured actress and model Amber Lee Ettinger who lip-synched the song which was actually sung by Leah Kauffman (of “My Box in a Box” fame).

This video was named biggest web video of 2007 by People magazine…the AP…Newsweek…and AOL. It certainly helped to project Obama as a cool and hip candidate.

As we wait for democracy to take its course, here’s that history-making viral video, which has been watched on YouTube more than 10 million times…and counting:

These are the principal credits:
Created by: Ben Relles
Starring: Amber Lee Ettinger
Vocals: Leah Kauffman
Music Producer: Rick Friedrich
Directed by: Larry Strong and Kevin Arbouet.

Visit Obama Girl’s blog

And finally, if any of you feel anything at all for the incumbent who is about to be relegated to the dustbin of history, here’s a wicked video from the same creators called: Lil’ Bush Girl…Meet Obama Girl
(Caution: it’s not for the prim and proper, but then readers of this blog aren’t!).

‘War for the Whitehouse’: Obama, McCain and The Onion

Onion News Network - for news you can't afford to miss

The American presidential election race is entering its last lap. And the world watches the campaign trail with baited breath.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama enjoys more international support than his Republican rival John McCain, as most people outside the US prefer the Democrat leader to become next US president, according to a BBC poll in September 2008. Most of the people questioned in the global poll conducted by international polling institute GlobeScan believe that US relations with the rest of the world would improve under the presidentship of Obama.

While so much of American and international news media time is being spent on covering the campaign and various opinion polls, some comic relief comes from The Onion – that wickedly funny and innovative website which now produces a steady stream of videos spoofing the news media’s worse excesses.

The Onion calls it the ‘War for the White House’ and has set up its ‘election analysis bunker’ from where its intrepid reporters are bringing us news that you – and major news organisations – have somehow managed to miss. They call is Onion News Network, ONN for short.

They’ve been doing it for the better part of a year, and here are some of my favourites from The Onion YouTube channel:

Caution: There’s a slight bias towards Senator Obama in some of these news reports, but then, he’s been the liberal media’s darling for much of this campaign year.

October 2008: McCain Left On Campaign Bus Overnight
Campaign officials downplayed the incident, saying the senator was fine as soon as he was fed and taken to the bathroom.

October 2008: Gifted Youngster Sells Cookies To Buy Attack Ad
In this installment of Beyond The Facts, a precocious 8-year-old girl participates in grown-up politics by spreading smears and lies.

September 2008: McCains Economic Plan: ‘Everyone Marry A Beer Heiress’
McCain pointed to his personal success in marrying a wealthy beer heiress to prove how the plan could benefit every American.

September 2008: Obama Runs Constructive Criticism Ad On McCain
In response to Republican attacks, Barack Obama unleashed a series of slightly negative ads that gently point out how McCain could be doing a better job.

August 2008: Portrayal Of Obama As Snob Hailed As Step Forward For Blacks
Overjoyed civil rights leaders say that Barack Obama has paved the way for future black politicians to be smeared as country club snobs.

March 2008: Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
For a majority of likely voters, meaningless bullshit will be the most important factor in deciding who they will vote for in 2008.

January 2008: The Onion: More Candidates Court Fat Vote
Presidential candidates are reaching out to fat voters on the campaign trail by eating large amounts of fattening food.

See all election videos of ONN

ONN’s self-introduction says its “style of hard-hitting, on-the-ground coverage of live news events has become a standard in the news industry. The network can be viewed in 92.2 million U.S. households and more than 500,000 American prison cells, making it the most-watched cable network in the world. It can currently be seen in 312 countries, with broadcasts in 52 different languages“.

Wow!

The Onion - The Nation's finest news source...

Wash Your Hands – yes, UNICEF, but only if you ask us nicely!

Global Handwashing Day logo

October 15 was marked as the first Global Handwashing Day (GHD). It’s simple yet important mission was to promote the practice of handwashing with soap.

Washing hands can save lives. Washing hands with soap can save more lives. This is the simple message reinforced on this day with public campaigns focusing on schools and school children.

In this UN-declared International Year of Sanitation 2008, the GHD will echo and reinforce its call for improved hygiene practices.

GHD is a Unicef-led initiative involving governments, civil society, volunteers and others around the world.

“Turning handwashing with soap before eating and after using the toilet into an ingrained habit could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter,” says the GHD official website, explaining the background.

IYS 2008 logo

Trying saying that aloud in one breath – I can’t. Evidently, the crusty technocrat who wrote that text wanted to pack all the rationale into one long, clumsy sentence.

But this message is too important to be spoilt by an inarticulate official. Washing hands with soap can prevent diahrroeal diseases and pneumonia, which together kill more than 3.5 million children under five every year. That’s 400 needless deaths every hour, round the clock.

Fortunately, the campaigning material that went out using moving images were better produced. Here are two good examples (and a bad one).

The popular Australian children’s musical entertainers, The Wiggles, produced and donated a song to mark the Global Handwashing Day. This simple and catchy tune “seeks to motivate millions of children around the world, to transform the simple act of handwashing with soap from an abstract and seldom practiced behaviour into an automatic and enjoyable habit”.

Meanwhile, in India, cricket star Sachin Tendulkar joined forces with UNICEF to get Indian children to improve their health and hygiene as part of GHD. Tendulkar features in a public service announcement (PSA) being broadcast this month in 14 languages across India. It will target students in more than 6 million schools.

And finally, here’s Unicef’s own news story posted this week on its YouTube channel telling us more on GHD. It’s technically well made, but absolutely lacks passion. The narrator delivers her script in such an indifferent, detached tone, and UNICEF Senior Adviser for Sanitation and Hygiene pontificates also in a tone that will not win her many followers. Scenes of senior UN officials washing their hands in a demonstration are laughable. The only saving grace in this story is when we see Hayley Westenra, the well known singer from New Zealand and youngest UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, visiting water and sanitation projects in Ghana.

If only the rest of GHD promoters had the enthusiasm and passion that Hayley Westenra exudes! Passion used to be the hallmark of UNICEF during the time of its legendary executive director James Grant, who strongly believed in communicating messages of child survival and well-being. He gave UNICEF a head start in working with the media, especially television.

Alas, large UN agencies like UNICEF have little or no institutional memory for more than just a few years. Because if they did, GHD campaigns could have effectively used, at least in South Asia (where nearly half of all people lack access to toilets) an episode of the hugely popular Meena cartoon animation series.

Meena is the enchanting heroine of an animated film series produced by UNICEF in South Asia. The films are part of a package of communication materials promoting the status of the girl child in this region. UNICEF co-produced the series a decade ago with leading animators in the US and South Asia.

In Meena’s Three Wishes, Meena dreams of a magic genie that will grant her three wishes so that everyone would be healthy and never again get sick from poor sanitation and unsafe water. When Meena wakes up, she realizes that she must make her dream come true. With the help of her brother Raju, other children in the village, and Mithu, her pet parrot, Meena convinces people to build and use latrines, to use safe water and to wash their hands to stop the spread of germs and disease.

I don’t particularly enjoy it when UN agencies try to play nanny to the whole world, especially if they talk to us in such jargon-ridden, dispassionate terms. Their messages are tremendously important, and deserve wider dissemination — they can literally save lives.

That’s why public campaigns should be left in the hands of communication professionals who know how to reach out beyond the charmed development circle. For the rest of UNICEF, they should perhaps take a lesson or two in passionate communication from Hayley Westenra, The Wiggles – and their own little Meena!

Financial Meltdown: Putting pieces together of a gigantic whodunnit

My cartoon of the year: this says it all...

This cartoon by Pulitzer prize winning Tom Toles first appeared in the Washington Post in 2007 – it brilliantly anticipated the global financial meltdown that we’re now experiencing. Coming in the wake of confirmed global warming, it is a double whammy.

America has been hit hard by the sub-prime crisis. The social and human cost of financial failure has been enormous. An epidemic of home repossessions has left thousands of houses abandoned and boarded-up: whole suburbs are falling into disrepair and dereliction.

Financial institutions in America and in Britain had poured billions into investments backed by these mortgages. As more and more people have defaulted on their mortgage repayments, financial markets have collapsed, causing a crisis that has rippled across the Atlantic, sending the City of London into turmoil and pulling the plug on one now infamous British bank.

Some call it a financial tsunami not been seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s….a crisis that has forced the US government to step in and save the financial system after trillions were wiped off global stock markets and once revered institutions were swept off the face of Wall Street. Is the US intervention too little, too late to save the economy?

In fact, just a few days ago, the People’s Daily of China warned that a “financial tsunami” was approaching, which recalled the Great Depression in the US. It said: “As the contemporary economy has been integrated globally, American consumption and currency exchange rates will directly influence countries dependent on the US as the main export destination for economic growth and employment”.

The Chinese Communist Party organ complained that the US had unleashed financial “weapons of mass destruction” on the world economy in the form of subprime debts and related financial derivatives.

The world’s media have been scrambling to cover these rapidly unfolding events. In fact, many have been caught napping, or worse, been uncritical cheerleaders of the march of capital and credit. Most of them – even the respected financial journals – just didn’t see the crisis building up…or ignored the tell-tale signs that constituted an inconvenient truth.

Danny Schechter - wasnt crying wolf! — Danny Schechter - wasn't crying wolf!

“This didn’t just happen in the course of a usual business cycle,” insists the American investigative journalist and media analyst Danny Schechter, who has been tracking this issues for many months on his influential News Dissector blog and the MediaChannel that watches and critiques the media.

In his new book, aptly titled Plunder, Danny offers an in-depth investigation into the decline of the economy that’s causing millions to lose jobs and face foreclosures and across-the-board price hikes.

He says: “You wouldn’t know it by relying on our media, but the subprime scandal masks massing looting by Wall Street firms using carefully calculated predatory lending schemes enabled by regulators who don’t regulate and a media that looked the other way. We have lost trillions and dislocated millions with no relief in sight. Every American is paying for the greed of our financiers in the grocery store, gas pump and unemployment line. Bank robberies are not new — but banks doing the robbing is.”

Read the introduction to Danny Schechter’s Plunder.

In 2007, his film IN DEBT WE TRUST was the first to expose Wall Street’s connection to subprime loans, predicting the economic crisis that this book investigates.

I have been watching various news media analysis of the current crisis and want to share two that stood out from the rest: Inside Story by Al Jazeera English, and Dispatches by UK’s Channel 4.

In a special show from New York, Inside Story looks at the financial turbulence that rocked the US last week. Will the emergency measures by the US government be enough to stabilise the markets or has the financial system in the US been changed forever? The introductory report from AJE’s Washington correspondent Reynolds is particularly illuminating – he also writes the story for their website.

Inside Story – The US financial crisis – 21 Sep 2008 – Part 1

Inside Story – The US financial crisis – 21 Sep 2008 – Part 2

From the other side of the Atlantic comes a more investigative, one-hour special that was produced and broadcast in March 2008, when the early signs of the banking crisis were beginning to show – for anybody who cared to notice.

As Channel 4 introduces it: “This is a story about the destructive power of finance: what happens when banks are driven by short-termism; when bankers are rewarded with vast bonuses, free to operate under inadequate regulatory supervision, and with the complicity of a government too in awe of big business to step in.”

Dispatches: How The Banks Bet Your Money UK & US – part 1

In this edition of Dispatches, private equity financier Jon Moulton delivers a stinging rebuke to the banks for causing this financial meltdown and explains why the British taxpayer will now pay the price.

Dispatches: How The Banks Bet Your Money UK & US – part 2

Dispatches: How The Banks Bet Your Money UK & US – part 3

Dispatches: How The Banks Bet Your Money UK & US – part 4

Dispatches: How The Banks Bet Your Money UK & US – part 5

Go ahead, just say the word: Condom! Now say it again…

Acting out condoms in broad daylight in India: not an easy task...

Condom!

No one is certain how or where the word originated, but it has become one of those ubiquitous items in modern society.

It’s a two syllable word, fairly easy to pronounce. Then how come so many people – at least in South Asia, home to a fifth of humanity – get their tongues tied or twisted in saying it?

That’s because it’s to do with sex! That’s not a subject that many South Asians still feel comfortable in talking about, in public or even private.

Sex may be a very private matter, but individuals’ sexual behaviour has direct and serious public health implications. Especially today when the world is still struggling to contain and overcome the spread of HIV that causes AIDS.

Condoms originally came into wide use to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In the past quarter century, condoms have become a major weapon against HIV.

Despite this, condoms still remain a hush-hush topic among many grown ups, even as the younger generation warms up to them. Across South Asia, we still have some hurdles to clear in normalising condoms – or making it socially and culturally acceptable for people to talk about condom use, and to go out and buy them without fear or shame.

This is the challenge that various communication groups have taken up, especially in India. According to a 2007 survey by UNAIDS and India’s National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), at least 2.5 million people live with the HIV virus in India, placing the country third in the world after South Africa and Nigeria. However, AIDS prevention in the country is not an easy job. Many people, especially in rural areas, cling on to preconceived taboos about sex — and are often hesitant to use condoms.

In recent weeks, I’ve heard from two campaigns that are trying to change this. One is the BBC World Service Trust working with Indian broadcasters and other partners to normalise condom use through a campaign. I’ll be writing a separate blog post on that effort.

Last month, I received en email from someone called ‘Spread Word for a Better World’, who shared with me web links on a socio-cultural group based in Hyderabad, who are using the performing arts to promote condom awareness.

For over a decade, the Nrityanjali Academy has been singing and dancing their way to the glorification of condom use. They see it as a crucial fight in their central region, where 2 per cent of the population is HIV positive.

P Narsingh Rao, director of Nrityanjali, recently told France 24 online: “Our main target groups are people vulnerable to the HIV virus like sex workers, transsexuals or truck drivers. We tour villages in mobile video vans to show the film. The screening is followed by a question and answer session about condom use and sexually transmitted diseases.”

He added: “We also encourage the use of female condoms, a relatively new concept. We tell the women to negotiate the use of female condoms with their male partners: for men with little sex education, the insertion of the female condom in the vagina can in itself be an erotic act.”

Here are some YouTube videos showcasing their work:

This is an entertaining and educational video in Telugu language on Condom usage, to prevent from sexually transmitted infections and HIV:

A more instructional video on how to use condoms properly:

And finally, an HIV/AIDS song in Telugu – with all the fast-beat music, gyrating and riot of colours we typically associate Bollywood movies and songs with:

The videos speak for themselves. They are matter of fact, engaging and presented by ordinary people (trained entertainers) rather than by jargon-totting medical doctors or health workers. There is none of the awkwardness typically associated with conversations of this subject. No one is tip-toeing around perceived or real cultural taboos. They just get on with it.

Importantly, they involve both men and women, both in performances and in their audiences.

Training young men on just how to do it right...

Images courtesy France 24’s The Observers.

Remembering Anita Roddick, a year after her hasty departure

September 10 marked a year since Anita Roddick left us in hurry, with so much unfinished business.

At the end of our last encounter in the summer of 2003, she autographed for me a copy of her latest book with these words: “Remember me!”.

She remains one of the most remarkable people I have met. Especially in the past year, which has been eventful and tumultuous for me, I have often thought of Anita’s long and colourful journey from working class mom to one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time….and onward to become an outspoken and passionate activist for social justice, human rights and the environment.

As she has written, it was not an easy ride to do well in the male-dominated world of business, nor was it any easier to do good in the greed-dominated world at large. But she not only did it, but had great fun doing so.

What would Anita do? I find myself asking this question every now and then when I seem to be struggling against enormous odds (which is increasingly often). I don’t always find the answers I’m looking for, but it’s always a useful reflection.

I now find that others have been asking this question. Visiting Anita Roddick’s official website this week, I read a moving post by Brooke Shelby Biggs, who worked with Anita for 8 years. She writes:
“I’ve lived most of this past year having conversations with Anita in my mind. What would she say when I told her about considering a move back to magazine journalism? How should I handle my role in the Free the Angola 3 movement? How would she get on with my new romantic interest? Should I move back to my parents’ home town to help care for my ailing mother? I’ve tried to spend this time living according to the philosophy of What Would Anita Do (WWAD?). It was a lot easier when I could ask her myself. But some part of me knows she gave me a lot of tools to figure the hard stuff out on my own. Sometimes I just wish I had her courage.”

I am an activist: website inspired by Anita Roddick

Brooke links to a website called I am an Activist that draws information and inspiration from Anita’s many and varied struggles in support of various local and global causes. Prominently displayed on the home page are Anita’s now famous words: “This is no dress rehearsal. You’ve got one life, so just lead it and try and be remarkable.”

Well, we can honestly say that she’s one person who practised what she preached.

‘I am an Activist’ is also the sub-title of a DVD that celebrates the life of Dame Anita Roddick, which is available for sale and/or download from Anita Roddick.com. It compiles footage gathered on 23 October 2007, when thousands of thinkers, artists, activists, and other heroic saboteurs of the status quo gathered to celebrate the remarkable life and legacy of Anita Roddick. According to the blurb, it features key people from groups like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Reprieve, The Body Shop, as well as family and close friends, as they laugh and cry and ultimately take to the streets to launch.

Anita’s daughter Sam is quoted as saying in her tribute: “My mother treated life like each day was her last, and this gave her the permission for incredible bravery. … Tonight I am personally pledging that I Am An Activist, and within that, I also will have a lot of fun, and I also will be silly. I will not be polite and I will never, ever, ask for permission.”

In the weeks and months since Anita’s death, more video material featuring her public talks and interviews have been shared on YouTube by individuals and organisations. I have this week watched several of them, and felt there still isn’t sufficiently good moving images about her. In her time she must have done hundreds or thousands of interviews for broadcast television, corporate audiences as well as community groups. At least some of these must have been recorded and archived. But we still don’t see enough out there, at least in easily accessible public video platforms like YouTube.

Here are two that I did find which are interesting:

Anita speaks on the lessons she learnt from running her own home business, which she started in 1976 to augment her family income. She talks about how she had absolutely no business training, faced many odds and put up with male sarcasm:

From University of California Television comes this video of Anita delivering the Nuclear Peace Age’s third annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future in Feb 2004.

Vulnerability Exposed: Micro films on how climate change affects YOU!

Never underestimate the power of moving images. Al Gore tipped the balance in the long-drawn climate change debate with his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. The rest is recent history.

Thanks to the film – and sustained advocacy of hundreds of scientists and activists – climate change is no longer a speculative scenario; it’s widely accepted. The challenge now is to understand how it impacts different people in a myriad ways.

Now the World Bank wants people to use their video cameras to capture how climate change may already be affecting their ways of living and working. The Bank’s Social Development Department has just announced the launch of a worldwide documentary competition that will highlight the social aspects of climate change as experienced and/or observed by the film-maker(s).

Called Vulnerability Exposed, the contest is open to anyone anywhere in the world who wishes to have their voice heard. The submitted films should innovatively illustrate the consequences of climate change through one of the following theme categories: conflict, migration, the urban space, rural institutions, drylands, social policy, indigenous peoples, gender, governance, forests, and/or human rights. The submission period ends on 24 October 2008.

Caroline Kende-Robb, Acting Director, Social Development Department, said, “There is a need to see climate change as an issue of global social justice. The rights, interests and needs of those affected by climate change must be acknowledged.”

Watch the Bank’s short video, where she explains further:

The contest has two award categories:
1) Social Dimensions of Climate Change Award (general category) – open to professional and amateur; and
2) Young Voices of Climate Change (youth category) – open to entries submitted by filmmakers under 24 years old.

Award winners will be chosen through a combination of public voting and a judging panel. The film with the most public votes in each theme category will receive honorable mention.

Vulnerability Exposed film competition: Judging process

This contest indicates that the World Bank is slowly but surely opening up to the currently untapped communication potential of web 2.0 – the very point I made in a recent op ed essay.

There are several noteworthy aspects in this competition, some more positive than others. I offer this critique in the spirit of improving a commendable initiative.

Three cheers to the bank for accommodating both amateurs and professionals. It’s about time those who don’t video film for a living (some of who are no less talented in the craft) had more opportunities to showcase their products.

It’s good to see the preference for shorter films, in this contest defined between 2 and 5 mins in duration. This certainly resonates with TVE Asia Pacific’s experience with Asian broadcasters, many of who now prefer shorter films. Longer films have their place, of course, but shorter ones are clear favourites of 24/7 news channels and also online.

Most film contests are judged exclusively by an all-powerful jury (I’ve been on several over the years), but here the online public have a chance to vote for their favourite entries. Let’s hope the judges will consider the story telling power of entries as the most important deciding factor. (The examples in the YouTube film given above are misleading – they all seem extracts from expensively made documentaries.)

The big challenge for many aspiring contestants would be to relate climate change to daily realities in their societies. Despite global headlines and the development community’s current frenzy about it, climate change as a phrase and concept still isn’t clearly understood in all its ramifications. If science now knows 100 facts about the murky processes of climate change, the average public knows less than 25 and understands even less. So it will be interesting to see how entries relate the big picture to their individual small pictures.

I’m a bit disappointed that the World Bank is not offering any cash prize to the winners. Instead, “the winners will receive an all expenses paid trip to Washington, DC for a screening of their film and will have the opportunity to attend a series of networking and learning events organized by…the World Bank in December 2008.” This is all useful, but video – even at the low end – is not exactly cheap, and even labour of love creations cost money to make. We are currently running a comparable the Asia Pacific Rice Film Award – which seeks entries no longer than 10 mins on any aspect of rice – and despite being a non-profit, civil society initiative we have a prize of US$ 2,000 to the winner. And we wish we could offer more.

But my biggest concern is the unequal, unfair terms of copyrights found in the small print of the competition rules. This is where the lawyers have done their usual handiwork, and with the usually lopsided results. The World Bank wants all contestants to make absolutely sure that all material used is fully owned by the contestants, or properly licensed. That’s fine. But tucked away on page 7, under section 12 titled Entrant’s permission to the organiser, is a set of conditions which will allow all affiliated institutions of the World Bank group to use the submitted material for not just promoting this contest (a standard clause in most competitions), but for ‘climate change work program of the organiser’.

What this means, in simpler terms, is that without offering a single dollar in prize money, the World Bank is quietly appropriating the unlimited user rights for any and all the submitted material. These are the core materials in the moving images industry, and nothing is more precious to their creators.

I have long advocated a more balanced, equitable and liberal approach to managing copyrights and intellectual property by both the broadcast television industry and development community — especially where public funded creations are concerned. I have nothing but contempt for lawyers and accountants who often determine the copyrights policies in large broadcast and development organisations. They set out terms that may be justified in strict legal terms, but are totally unfair, unjust and, in the end, counterproductive to the development cause and process. It seems that while our friends in the social and communication divisions were not looking, the Bank’s lawyers have done their standard hatchet job.

While this doesn’t detract from the overall value of Vulnerability Exposed, it diminishes its appeal and potential. Many professional video film-makers who value their footage – gathered with much trouble and expense – may not want to sign future user rights away for simply entering this contest. And worse, the unsuspecting enthusiasts who don’t necessarily earn their living from making films – but are entitled to the same fair treatment of their creations – would be giving away material whose industrial value they may not even fully appreciate.

It’s certainly necessary and relevant for development organisations like the World Bank and the UN system to engage web 2.0. But they must be careful not to import or impose rigid, one-sided and outdated copyright regimes of the past on this new media.

I hope the Bank would consider revising these unfair copyright terms, and treat the submitted material with greater discretion and respect. If not, all entrants risk seeing their material popping out of bluechip films produced by top-dollar production companies in North America and Europe who have ‘mining rights’ to the Bank’s video archives.

Vulnerability Exposed can have more meanings than one. We’d rather not consider some.