SBS radio - Mónica Navarro

Florencia Melgar, SBS correspondent in Uruguay, talked with Mónica Navarro, the tango revelation singer in Montevideo for Temas http://www.radio.sbs.com.au/language.php?news=arts&language=Spanish

CHAOS and ORDER (Beijing, 22nd September 2008)

You can try to take so many photos of China but the angles of your cameras hardly allow you to get the whole picture, just as China cannot be represented within the framework of a photo or a text, like this one.

Chinese media through the eyes of a group of foreign media people is the focus of this presentation.

In China media is still controlled by government.
State owned media is indeed different from government owned.
In other systems state owned media doesn’t necessarily mean government control.

In China, the first way of control is through the selection of the Directors of CCTV and CRI which are decisions taken by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). The second control refers to the contents that need the permission of SARFT to be broadcasted. Nothing goes on air without the approval of SARFT.

Even for content interchange, the journalists, the editors, the directors of the media seem to have a very limited decision power. Deputy Director of CCTV 9, Cao Ri said that they are only responsible for the content making and if there is interest in receiving the signal or to buy any program, CCTV hasn’t got the rights to make any agreement as the only interlocutor is the administration.

When the foreign journalists asked about the reasons for this control, some Chinese journalists and government officials said it was meant to avoid chaos while trying to manage such a population as huge as 1.6 billion.

Is avoiding chaos enough reason for this control? It’s a matter of discussion and opinion. Cao Ri asked himself and the audience what would happen if George W. Bush had this amount of people in his country.

Indeed, all societies have ways of controlling to preserve the order. Just as an example, in the South cone of South America, there is still a lot of self-censorship as a consequence of years of right wing dictatorships.

One can understand the reasons of control in China: keep the order and avoid chaos.
However, it is still not known how this control is implemented in China and on what it is based.
Ø Which are SARFT’s criteria?
Ø Which are the laws that guide this control?
Ø Is there an unwritten law?
Such questions couldn’t find answers from the SARFT’s officials.
According to Cao Ri, Deputy Director of CCTV 9, he never read such laws.



Technology and control

In China there has been great development in media technology since the opening in 1978. This advanced technology seen in the media seems to provide a very comfortable context for the journalists.

This development of technology, which also improved the monitoring process, has opened up their ways of growing and Internet appeared in the scene limiting the possibilities of control.

The question behind this might be: does technology development make control strategies useless? The technological evolution (with web 2.0 for instance) is leading to a non controlling system where news can be published in the web with no filter.

The SARFT authorities are aware that there is a need of adapting to times. Zuh Hong, Director of Administration Office and Spokesman of SARFT put the example of the man who reported a plane accident from the country and when it was broadcasted to the world, the world thought it was a second accident, because it took three days to go through the Chinese bureaucratic system before being released.

Internet is a leak in the control system that can not be fixed by any government.

How longer can this continue, especially considering the new Chinese audiences who can access internet and who can speak English?
In China, there is more access to Internet in the English language than in Chinese.
What will happen when this young people grow up and become the main audience?

During this seminar it was noticed that Chinese people working in the media are aware of the weaknesses of their media system and this might be the most important indication of an open minded situation.

Cai Guofen, from the Communication University of China, said that innovation and advancing with the times are necessary and that journalism needs to be improved. That’s why the Chinese teachers are doing research to acquire a better understanding of the doctrine and the principles of journalism.

Building the news, building the truth

Following Cai Guofen’s presentation, the truth appears as the main objective of the journalist work: “if there is no truth, the information has no value” was one of her remarks. She also supported the idea that Chinese journalists look for the truth within the Marxism Leninism doctrine because all the journalists follow these ideas.
From outside it seems a bit of a generalization or is it that we need a deeper knowledge of China to understand this approach?
This intent of getting nearer the truth was also reflected by Cao Ri, Deputy Director of CCTV 9 who said that the opening process takes time, that they are trying to make news better and show the real China but at the same time –he said- we have to understand that news in China have their own criteria and cannot be judged from outside.
His example was the birth control policy which is said to be a threat to human rights by foreign journalists.
However, for Chinese people, this policy is necessary, and one has to live in China to understand the importance of this birth control policy.

Similar position is supported by Guan Juanjuan, Deputy Director of the English Service of China Radio International, who criticized most of the correspondents sent to China as they report about this country according to their already designed framework.

During her presentation, Guan Juanjuan weighed both sides of journalism in China which is very encouraging. This indicates free expression, at least to a certain extent.
She talked about Tibet and didn’t want to give an opinion about it because she has never been there. She stated that most western journalists’ reports about Tibet are biased.

Agreeing with her opinion a foreign journalist might try hard to understand China in depth to avoid short sighted reports. A journalist needs to be open minded and stay a long time in China to fully understand Chinese media in its own context.

In any case, this seminar is an opportunity for foreign media not only to report about China, but also to work with Chinese media and this will help us to understand China in depth.

Florencia Melgar´s presentation (Beijing, 15th September 2008)

I'm very surprised of the presentations I have heard from most of you.

You seem to come from perfect countries. I don't.

As a journalist, my intention is to interchange real situations with colleagues and media officials of governments to help each other, to understand each other, to go deep into the problems that we have in common.

We come from both public and private radio and TV stations and from communication offices of so many different countries. This is why I'd like to remind everybody that we have different roles and only from there can we have an honest interchange and discussion of ideals.

If not, then all we have are politically correct speeches that take us nowhere.

Part of being honest is that we don't always do what we are told. Media officials work for the government, whereas public and private media work for the people. The sad part of our story is that in private media, we journalists often end up towing the corporate line of the companies that advertise in our programs. And in the public media they end up working for the government. In both cases, we journalists forget the people who are the reason for our work.

Is this obvious? Yes. But how much of this do we apply in our daily work and the decisions we make in the construction of the news?

I don't expect to find my colleagues in this day and age to be arguing in favour of objectivity as a way of avoiding this manipulation of information. Objectivity is impossible and it's a fallacy repeated time and again.

Maybe the aim is to be honest with ourselves and with our audience. Not only because it's our duty but because our audience are intelligent and they have to be respected.

This is the way things work in a real democracy.

So... what is a democratic system? This question has a lot to do with the way we build news and also in relation to our working conditions. I suggest that we re-think what is a real democracy. Voting every 4 or 5 years? Yes, that's part of it. We hear so many politicians and political analysts talking about making democracy deeper which means more participation, real participation, less exclusion and real access to services; home, health, education. We should ask ourselves what is the depth of democracy in our countries. You might also be thinking that in a democracy the powers that be are supposed to be balanced so we arrive to the question of "who controls the government when it is the only real power"? The answer is, the people and the people through independent journalism.

Our colleague from Fuji asked the authorities of China's University, whether there was an independent organization monitoring the media in China apart from the government. We know the answer and the answer is that there is no organization of any kind. Perhaps the real question is, who controls the government? Nobody.

This is true, BUT IT'S ALSO TRUE that censorship not only comes from the government. All over the world we have censorship from advertising. It's necessary to open our minds, see our own miseries and also admit that "self censorship" also exists. In some countries, dissidents are shot. In other countries, the system kills those who cannot adjust to it. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people die merely because they were not born in the right place at the right time. No access to health services, water, food... Does it sound familiar to you?

There are also hidden ways of killing.

I'm giving the example of my country as a way to begin exercising this "self criticism" that I'm trying to encourage here. Uruguay has one of the highest rates of suicide in America, and many of them are young people. We also have more than 20,000 people emigrating for a better way of life. Many of them are young and well educated.

These statistics are high for a population of only 3 million.

So, are we sharing this with the world? No.

The systems that we human beings have created to organise ourselves... that in the west we understand within the framework of the social contract by Jacques Rousseau, can't merely be reduced to the "good guys" and the "bad guys".

This is not excusing censorship, but trying to delve deeper into reasons of policies and behaviours. We need to see ALL the ways of violence towards the media and the citizens in our different political systems and not only see the obvious ways of repression. We need to make visible all the ways of violence.

Again, I'm asking for honesty.

I know there is a lot of fear in saying the "right thing" in relation to the powers that be. There is the fear of government reprisals, fear of losing our jobs, fear of not being able to support our families, fear of not succeeding the way we planned, 10, 15, 20 years ago.

We cannot work as journalists and behave like technocrats. There are reasons and ideologies behind our news. Always! So we shouldn't follow an automatic way of thinking just because it, "works". That's what an animal would do: trial / error, trial / error. We have to think why we do things this way or another.

I've been a journalist for 6 years. I have worked for Public Television, for the OAS as a media official and now I produce a radio show for commercial radio. These reflections come from years of experience in different responsibilities. However, I have always witnessed this sad behaviour of some colleagues, not all, who will sell their souls to the market and forget the people that they serve.

Radio and Television Seminar for Journalists and News Officials (Montevideo - Beijing, Sept. 2008)

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION OF URUGUAY’S CURRENT SITUATION

Uruguay is one of the smallest countries of the South Cone in South America that lies on the Atlantic coast between Brazil and Argentina.
The size of the country is about 176,000 km2 and the geography is featured by undulating plains, lots of rivers and natural forest.
Apart from Montevideo, the capital city, Punta del Este, on the Atlantic coast, 130 kilometers east of Montevideo, is a very well-known seaside resort in South America.
Most of the population has their origin in the immigrants that mainly in the XIX and XX centuries came from Spain, Italy and other European countries. Recent genetic research tends to show that a significant portion of the population has also indoamerican ascendants. The descendants of enslaved Africans are estimated at 8% of the total population of the country. Even though the state is not religious, the population consists of 66% Catholics, 2% Protestants and 2% Jews. At the same time, there is an important participation of Uruguayan population in Afro-Brazilian rituals.
The language spoken is Spanish, and English, Portuguese and Italian are taught at school as second languages. Portuguese has also widespread as a result of MERCOSUR integration.

POLITICS
Uruguay is a democratic republic and has a presidential system. The three independent powers of the State are: Executive, Legislative and Judiciary. The government is elected every 5 years and the vote system is universal.
The President and a cabinet of 12 ministers form the Executive Power and the Legislative Power is organized in two chambers> the chamber of Senators and the Lower Chamber (House of Representatives).
The major political parties are: Frente Amplio (comprising: Movement of Popular Participation; Assembly Uruguay; Socialist Party, Communist Party; and “Vertiente Artiguista”); the National Party / White; and the Colorado Party / Red.
The most relevant social organizations are: PIT-CNT (Inter Workers-National Convention of Workers); FUCVAM (Uruguayan Federation of Housing Construction for Mutual Aid); and FEUU (Federation of University Students).

In the presidential and parliamentary elections of October 2004, it was the first time that a leftist candidate won the Presidency.
Doctor Tabaré Vázquez was elected with 50.45% of the votes. It was the worst vote in history for the Colorado Party.
On the domestic front, the first step of Vazquez was signing the emergency plan-one of the main banners of the campaign- to meet the needs of food, health and education of the homeless population. On the external front, the first steps were to sign an agreement with Venezuela, exchanging Venezuelan oil, which comes to Uruguay at low prices and low interest loans for foodstuffs, exported to that country at low prices, and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Uruguay had broken the diplomatic relations with Cuba in April 2002 when it submitted a censure motion against Cuba at the UN with the argument that the human rights situation in the island was not what it should have been.

THE PULP MILLS
In 2006, the construction of two pulp mills near the Uruguay River, which are owned by Finish and Spanish companies respectively, generated criticism and protests from residents of the town of Gualeguaychu (Argentina) and the government of that country because they said the pulp mills would pollute the river that is the natural border between the countries. Since then, and for more than two years, the residents of Gualeguaychu closed the bridges that cross the river and prevented the passage of vehicles from Argentina, which generated significant financial loss to Uruguay. During 2006 there were intermittent closures in long weekends and holidays until finally, in November, it was decided to block total indefinitely. In the same month Uruguay denounced Argentina at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for blocking Fray Bentos Bridge.
Almost two years afterwards, in September 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has authorized the submission of a Reply by Argentina and a Rejoinder by Uruguay. The Court fixed 29th January 2008 and 29th July 2008 as the respective time-limits for the filing of these written pleadings. In January Argentina introduced a 500 pages document. Last Monday 28th July, Uruguay met Argentina in The Hague and closed the trial stage. The Uruguayan government argues that the pulp mill in Fray Bentos is not contaminating, based on international environmental reports. One of them is the report of the Canadian Ecometrix consultant who concluded that the Finnish pulp plant did not alter the quality of air or water of the Uruguay River in the first six months of operation.

Through this process, the document stage in The Hague is finished. The next step will be oral when each part will support its view in February – March 2009.

DICATOR TAKEN TO PRISON
In a historical decision from the Justice, in November 2006, the former dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry and his former foreign minister Juan Carlos Blanco, were arrested and prosecuted for the kidnapping and murder of four people in 1976, two of them who had been members of the Parliament.

Other senior Army during the years of dictatorship were prosecuted for similar offences and sent to a prison built especially for them.

In January 2007, Bordaberry was placed in home detention scheme, due to its delicate state of health.

THE ECONOMY
The year 2002 was particularly adverse in the economic field and marked a significant deterioration of living conditions of the majority of the population. The Argentinean crisis and the retraction of the Brazilian market raised the possibility of a "default" in the short term. The economic crisis increased the emigration. It was then estimated that 450.000 Uruguayans, 13% of the population, lived abroad. The migrants were mainly young, well educated and with professional qualifications. This exacerbated the ageing of the country's demographic structure. Surprisingly Economy Minister Alberto Bensión announced the change in exchange rate policy which fired a 40% increase. The free float of the dollar was praised by U.S. and IMF but discontent was noted on several popular demonstrations.
The growing rumors of a possible "corralito" (restrictions on the withdrawal of deposits), announced the extension of holiday until August 5, when it confirmed the U.S. decision to provide a direct financial assistance to Uruguay of 1,500 million.
Diplomatic relations between Uruguay and Argentina suffered a decline during this period. In 2002, in an interview for Bloomberg chain, the Uruguayan president, Jorge Batlle said off the record that "Argentines are a group of thieves, from first to last." The statement was broadcasted by television and forced president Batlle to travel to Buenos Aires to apologize publicly for what they described as "a mistake".

In July 2007 the minister of Economy, Danilo Astori, implemented a tax reform based on income tax that harsh voices raised against it, both from the opposition and government sectors. Astori, who already had a difficult relationship with the radical factions of the Frente Amplio on his economic policy and the total cancellation of debt with the IMF (over one billion dollars), said that reform would create greater equality and would be broadly beneficial to the low and lower middle sectors of society. The 28th July 2008 the government announced that from September 2008 onward the minimum income value to be taxed would be increased so 170.000 more of the Uruguayan citizens will not pay this tax.

URUGUAYAN AND INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE AND COOPERATION
Uruguay has developed a wide range of bilateral cooperation relationships as well as multilateral ones through the UN and the OAS (Organization of American States).
The bilateral cooperation relationships that have developed more and that are most known are with Venezuela, Canada, Spain, Germany and Japan.
There are many bilateral agreements in specific areas. For example, the Uruguayan Law 16.515 approved in July 1994 is the agreement for technical and scientific cooperation between Uruguay and China. More recently, in January 2007, we find the Uruguayan Law 18.226 that makes in a law the Framework Convention on the Preferential Credit granted by China to Uruguay, signed in September 2006.

For the Ibero American countries there are many projects and initiatives approved in 2007 by the Responsible for Cooperation in the XVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government in Santiago de Chile which directly benefit Uruguay. Uruguay’s participation in this cooperation highlights in: strengthening and training of human resources in matters of public policies directed at children and adolescents; supporting network of Human Milk Banks; and training and technology transfer in the field of integrated water resources management.
In that summit, a statement on Cooperation was signed on the special importance of international cooperation for development with middle-income countries and the need to continue to support their national efforts to eradicate poverty and the achievement of appropriate Millennium Development Goals.

In relation to the cooperation through the Organization of American States (OAS), the Uruguayan Office of OAS works as a link with the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development (IACD) in project management involving Uruguay, either as participant or coordinator. The areas that are more supported are Sustainable Development and Environment Strengthening, Democracy and Combating Drugs.

The United Nations (UN) Office in Uruguay has developed its cooperation line through the UNDP (United Nations Development Program). In this moment, the UN is going through a restructure of the whole Organization which includes different ways of cooperation. Uruguay is 1 of the 8 pilot countries that are implementing the proposed restructuring of the UN. (The other 7 are: Albania, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam). The first phase of the reform is supposed to be conceptual and it consists of definitions of the reform and making plans to implement it. The second is a phase of implementation and Uruguay is about to begin. Why is UN trying this reform? Because the organization is concerned about the fewer and fewer donations given to poor countries through the United Nations. In other words… donors need to rely on UN fund management to decide to give the cooperation funds to the United Nations to implement projects in poor countries and middle-income countries. Over the last 30 years, trust in this management has decreased a lot. The spirit of this reform seems to be giving confidence to donors and consistency in the actors involved.

REPORT OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS AND IMPORTANT EMERGENCIES Most Uruguayan Media get the information of international news from the news Agencies. However, there is a group of journalist who try to broaden the sources of information looking in the local media of each country and talking to local journalist to know which kind of political and ideological lines are behind the news. Of course it’s essential to know the conditions in which the journalists are working.
As an example, in the radio show I produce[1] we read all the different media from all over the world that we can. The aim is to explain what is going on within that context. In international news this is more important as the audience may not be aware of the complexities of foreign affairs.

During the last 3 years we’ve seen the exponential increase of inaccurate news websites throughout the world, a situation worsened with the advent of “the blog”.

Even though some of these sources can be very useful and interesting, they can also be dangerous. It’s essential to verify the qualifications of the professionals who are responsible of the published content. This is one of the major dilemmas faced when teaching young journalists and media students who understand the concept and the theory. However, when they start working they tend to abuse the internet, and many of them don’t apply the basic idea: internet is a medium, not a source of information.

Important emergencies are the kind of information that transform into a piece of news immediately but at the same time the sources of information are limited.

In general, governments don’t give all the information a journalist would like to receive; sometimes because there are security reasons to be reserved about the information and some other times because the government hasn’t been trained to establish an intelligent and respectful relationship with the media.

The consequence of this is that the same information is copied from one source to another without facts being verified and often results in a distortion of the truth.

JOURNALIST CURRENT SITUATION AND CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES – the South Cone

Being a journalist is not a well paid job in most of the Latin-American countries. There are some news presenters that can be better rewarded for their work, but in general terms journalists have more than 1 job and many times more than 2 or 3. The quality of the information obviously decreases because there isn’t much time to do research, one of the most important duties of a professional journalist. Otherwise, he/she transforms himself/herself into a Public Relations officer.

After the Latin-American dictatorships of the 70s a new spring of democracy came to these lands and with that new wind, newspapers blossomed in most of the countries, many of them associated to political parties. During the 90s there was a slow evolution process of increasingly professionalism which for the journalist means working for the people, not for the owner of the company he works for. Many ethical discussions were part of every day work because the owners of the media didn’t understand this commitment with the truth and the people and felt betrayed. This topic leads us directly to a whole discussion of which should be the objectives of the professional journalists.

Together with this disassociation tendency of the media from the political parties, there was a development of multi media corporations who aim to manipulate the information to their benefit and unify the information that is broadcasted. This enemy of the journalist is now stronger and much more difficult to identify in every day work. I am not able to say if the situation is better or worse in terms of independence; I can say that it’s different.

A different situation is the one of the journalist who works for the media owned by the estate. It’s very common in these parts of the world that the government in power thinks that the public media is its own media who works for the political party in the government. The public media should act as independently from the government as the private media, or even more. Public media has to respect the audience and this means looking for the (possible) truth, instead of being the news agency of the government in power. Journalist need to remember that all the governments have their office of public relations but the journalist job is something different.

The three sectors who are interested in the media business are: the private sector, the civil society and the government, whose interests many times overlap. The ownership of the media has changed a lot in the last 15 years and today there is concentration of ownership of the media throughout the world. Regional and international media corporations control the media market: AOL-Time Warner, News Corporation, General Electric, Sony, Vivendi, Viacom, Televisa, Globo and Clarin. One of the worst consequences of the reduction of ownership is the decline of opinions, views and spaces for an informed debate.

In Uruguay there are nearly 300 AM and FM radio stations and 40 television open channels, most of which repeat signals originated in Montevideo. These TV net is dominated by three private air channels from Montevideo (4, 10 and 12) that capture 60% of the national advertising market and their signals cover the entire country through a signal that is broadcasted openly in major cities. This signal is a synthesis of the three open signals from Montevideo. In 1994 things became a bit more complex when Uruguay incorporated the technology for TV for subscribers. These three signal companies (4, 10 and 12) were given the concession by the government and there has been a private oligopoly since then. The radio is the only sector where alternatives contents are solid, either by their programming, or due to the diverse ownership.

Latin America is, according to statistics, one of the most dangerous areas for journalists, where the objectivity of the press is conditioned to the governments and the circles of economic power. One of the most complex situations is Colombia, that has been living an armed conflict for over 30 years and journalists are in the line of fire from all fronts. The number of deaths of Colombian journalists put up these statistics whereas there are places, like Uruguay, where it is very rare to feel your physical integrity threatened.


[1] “No Toquen Nada” (Don’t touch anything) in Oceano Radio, the top news radio show of the Uruguayan radio.