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.
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.
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