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Media • Development • Internationalism

Our 25 years of illuminating a changing world

Twenty five years ago a small group of broadcasters, development experts and business people decided to set up a charity that would encourage UK television to show a broader range of stories about the developing world. In a post-colonial era, humanitarian emergencies and the need for compassionate responses dominated public attitudes. It was only a few years after Michael Buerk’s BBC News reports on the devastating famine in Ethiopia; even more recent were the LiveAid concerts – important events but not the whole story of developing countries, even then. A letter to the Charity Commission, bashed out on a manual typewriter, said that the charity would try ‘to stimulate within the broadcasting fraternity a greater interest in broadly educational programmes about the developing world’.

The first chairman was businessman Sir Michael Caine of Booker plc who had relevant experience due to his championing of the firm’s famous literary prize.

Within a year One World Broadcasting Trust was running the first of what has become the annual One World Media Awards, a unique and much cherished event in the UK media industry’s calendar, presented by the doyen of British news anchors, Channel 4’s Jon Snow.

Over the past quarter of a century, the charity, renamed One World Media in 2009, has expanded far beyond the sheltered groves of the traditional news, current affairs and documentary of British public service television. Stories from the developing world now come through reality TV, glossy magazines, blogs and social media and all find their place in the charity’s annual competition. The technology of media and communications and the explosion of offerings, from YouTube to the Economist and everything in between, has made it more possible than anyone could ever have imagined to bring people around the world together through the production and consumption of media.

Encouraging global dialogue and understanding, human rights and development through the media is what our charity is still striving to do. It is heartening to see how successful our annual awards have become, while behind the scenes we carry on with other charitable work supporting student journalists and filmmakers in the UK, and media leaders and innovators in developing countries.

Events around the world in the past year have demonstrated that our work is more relevant than ever. The nominations for the Awards this year underline that, and media itself – critical to democracy and freedom of expression – is often part of the story. They range across the Arab Spring, the East African famine and Afghanistan. But they also highlight less obvious stories from countries as far afield as Ethiopia, Indonesia and the Caribbean. Shocking instances of human rights abuses, conflict and poverty get their share of the limelight. But subtleties and analysis are also part of the picture, showing that the lives of people in developing countries are not exotic phenomena but are influenced by the systems that rule the world. From African migrants producing food in Spain for the dinner tables of Europe to the rubbish being generated by the consumerism of Jakarta’s exploding middle class, the work of journalists and filmmakers helps make clear how we are all implicated in the complex ways of the world.

Over the past 25 years, major themes have emerged in our Awards’ annual stock take of how the UK media represents the world. HIV/AIDs has dominated in all categories in some years; more recently it has been the rapid urbanisation in previously agrarian societies that has stood out. Last year, powerful entries rang alarm bells about the environmental and social costs to the Chinese people of the West’s appetite for electronic consumer goods. This year, in keeping with global concerns about the widening gap between the runaway wealth of international elites and the destitution of the world’s poor, inequality is a leading issue, including within developing countries themselves.

As the deadline for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals approaches in 2015, there is a widening debate about how to continue making progress in tackling poverty, inequality and intolerance. The industrialisation of China, Chinese investments in Africa, stresses on the world’s food and water systems, migration and women’s rights will all feature in the futures of the wealthy and poor alike wherever they are. Through our Awards we encourage journalists and filmmakers to tell the whole story, to relay the authentic voices of people often discounted or silenced in international affairs, and to help us understand how in a globalised world, twenty five years on, we are all connected more than ever.

This blog has also been published on the Huffington Post

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on May 9, 2012 | Tagged | Leave a comment

Guest blog by Awards sponsor Malaria Consortium

Malaria Consortium sponsored the Documentary category in our Annual Awards on May 8 2012. Their executive director Sunil Mehra explains why they value being part of One World Media’s community.

We are delighted to be here at the One World Media Awards again this year because we love you all for what you do – highlighting major issues facing the developing world and supporting British media coverage of some of these most critical issues from around the world.

This is the second year Malaria Consortium has supported the Documentary category, a category that we feel has the challenge of not only tackling difficult subjects, but also giving a voice to people that, for many different reasons, are unable to speak loudly enough for themselves. All of us here know that shining a light on issues, through media coverage, is one of the most powerful and effective ways to instigate dialogue, from which comes opportunity for real change.

An issue for all of us that cannot be ignored, is malaria. Despite being preventable and treatable, around half the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, are at risk from this disease.

The majority of people who die from malaria are children under five. Over 90% of those deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa.

We are winning this battle – keep up the faith.  A year later I can report that a child dies from malaria every 60 seconds.  I hope some of you remember I mentioned every 45 seconds last year.  I leave it to all the mental mathematicians amongst you to work out our rate of progress.

Significant progress has been made in the last 10 years — malaria deaths in Africa have dropped by one third. Together, international NGOs, health workers, civil society, governments, donors and the scientific community have made great progress. But this progress is fragile and there is still much to be done.

I recently returned from Myanmar/Burma, where there is serious concern over a drug-resistant strain of malaria. There is evidence of a new malaria parasite, resistant to the most effective cure we currently have for this disease. If it is not successfully contained, it will spread and affect the lives of some of the world’s poorest communities, stretching from Asia to Africa and beyond. Unless controlled, malaria has the potential to affect all of us — and devastate the lives of many.

By increasing our efforts to tackle malaria, we could save the lives of millions of children in Africa alone, by 2015.

All of the films in this category illustrate how documenting an issue and bringing it to a wider audience can engage, educate and motivate. They may not always be comfortable viewing but they are powerful tools that can be used to ensure communities around the world devastated by disease, conflict and poverty are not ignored.

(The winner of the Documentary category was Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, ITN for Channel 4)

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on May 9, 2012 | Tagged | Leave a comment

Guest blog by Guy Berger, Director for Freedom of Expression and Media Development at UNESCO

On World Press Freedom Day, One World Media is publishing this blog that marks the launch of the Leadership and Guiding Principles for Media Owners and Operators by the African Media Initiative. We congratulate AMI on taking this important step towards the development of ethical, independent and plural media throughout Africa.

AMI Principles will nourish Africa’s information consumers

A fish, they say, starts to rot from the head. It’s the same in the world of newshounds. When there are bad smells at the top echelons of a media house, you can expect the contamination to spread to the whole entity.

Just as nobody wants to get poisoned by festering fish, no one wants to be a victim of corrupted journalism. In the United Kingdom, however, thousands of people today have been victims of phone-hacking. The wider British society is also an indirect victim of the related tabloid journalism. These tales have pandered to what might interest (and titillate) the public, rather than striven to elevate humanity through stories of genuine public interest.

African countries have not had the phone-hacking kind of unethical journalism. But truth has still been a victim of corrupted journalism in many places around the continent. This is particularly in the state-owned sector, which has a long way to go in changing from being one-sided government mouthpieces to independent public broadcasters.

But ethical problems have also tarnished privately-owned media enterprises. Many commercial newspapers and radio stations have cut fast and loose with facts, played political games, and engaged in paid-for public relations without revealing this to their audiences.

Across the board, it’s high time to finger the ultimate culprits of journalism that has gone wrong: i.e., those who steer the ships.

The point is that editors, managers and owners carry the primary duty for what is happening in their specific media organisations. In any given media house, a compact is needed between these three forces – and one which both respects standards of good corporate governance and which upholds the ethics of honest public service to society.

Explicit and meaningful commitment to these high-minded standards is vital if media enterprises are to be trusted by audiences, and if they are to make a real contribution to democracy and development.

It would be rather exceptional to find exemplary ethical behaviour by individual journalists when their superiors are setting a bad example. Of course, reporters should never be demanding brown envelopes in exchange for coverage, simply because some editors are also on the take. Yet it is with the leadership that overall responsibility lies. That means, at minimum, that media leaders should proactively promote ethics, and definitely not collaborate with internal rot or turn a blind eye to it.

In this context, the release of a new document of principles to give guidance to media leaders makes serious sense. The agency that has developed this product is the African Media Initiative (AMI), a civil society body which works closely with media executives around the continent. (see www.africanmediainitiative.org)

The timing of the release of the AMI Principles is not arbitrary: it coincides deliberately with World Press Freedom Day, 3 May. The fact that more than 100 countries celebrate this day on the international calendar is thanks to a proposal 21 years ago for such an annual occasion. The call was made by African journalists at a UNESCO conference in Windhoek, and eventually agreed at the UN General Assembly.

With its “Leadership and Guiding Principles for African Media Owners and Managers”, AMI is now offering another African gift to the globe. Its Principles arose from consultations around Africa, but they are relevant elsewhere as well. Billionaire media baron Rupert Murdoch, whose journalists oversaw the phone-hacking in the UK, could certainly learn a lot from AMI’s document.

Media leaders who decide to adopt the AMI Principles will be showing real commitment from the top. They would assure the public that the media sees its main role as being public service, and this being so, as the Principles state, “even as we pursue our commercial interests”.

By signing up to this vision of ethical leadership, the people who guide media enterprises will further commit to:

• Promoting freedom of expression, other human rights and environmental sustainability,
• Avoiding conflicts of interest, while also combating in-house corruption,
• Disclosing who owns and funds the signatory media house,
• Engaging regularly with stakeholders and partners on ethical issues.

In practice, signature companies should also strive for an internal culture of editorial independence and responsibility to the public interest and journalistic ethics. In terms of the AMI Principles, these signatories should have a policy that effectively reduces or cuts the potential for “gifts” to journalists that could influence decision-making in the newsroom.

Aided by the AMI Principles, ethical leaders would refuse to offer, pay or accept bribes, and would ensure that their staff did not plagiarise content from elsewhere.

UNESCO this year developed an evaluation tool called the Gender Sensitive Indicators for Media. (see http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/IPDC/ipdc28_gsmi_paper_rev.pdf). So it is music to this international organization, that AMI Principles also commit media leaders to action on gender inequality and sexual harassment.

Perhaps most importantly, the AMI Principles call on media leaders to work together to promote law and policy reform that will help the sector as a whole. This means, as the AMI document explains, setting up associations where these do not exist.

Not ending there, the Principles urge media leaders to support self-regulation, and to set up channels like an ombudsman to deal with public complaints. The leaders should also commit to regularly review ethical goals, targets and performance against universal codes. A new and relevant code is the “Media Transparency: New Sustainability Reporting Guidelines for Media Organizations” by the Global Reporting Initiative, also being launched on World Press Freedom Day (see www.globalreporting.org).

What’s in it for media leaders to take up the opportunity and endorse the AMI Principles?

First, they will be showing a proactive stance that makes clear which media houses have a conscience and are proud to say so. Second, they the leaders – and not outsiders – will set a standard against which their media houses can be assessed. Third, they will be helping to build a strong sector of like-minded media internationally.

The greatest benefit of all is explained by AMI as follows: “Best practice by media owners and managers is the best defence against attacks on media freedom and the most secure foundation for media development.”

This outcome of the AMI Principles would be not just of value to media leaders and their enterprises. It is also something that is squarely in the interests of society at large. In short, the AMI Principles make a significant contribution to our collective rights to free speech, because they put emphasis on expression that is sustainable because it is ethical.

If we don’t want African information menus to be dominated by rotten fish, we should be urging media houses everywhere to embrace and implement the African Media Initiative.

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Guy Berger worked with AMI in 2011 in developing the Principles. He is now the Director for Freedom of Expression and Media Development at UNESCO.

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on May 3, 2012 | Tagged | Leave a comment

Blog by our chairman – a letter to David Cameron

Our chairman, Myles Wickstead, writes an open letter to David Cameron on what more the UK can do to tackle global poverty now that the Prime Minister is Chair of the UN panel on the Millennium Development Goals.

Take a look.

http://africanarguments.org/2012/04/16/the-millennium-development-goals-what-next-mr-cameron-by-myles-wickstead/

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on April 16, 2012 | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Transforming Tunisia and its media

You can read the history of a place in its landscape. I’d spent three days at a conference in a hotel on the tourist beaches to the east of Tunis and was driving back to the airport in a taxi, not even having had time to see the ancient site of Carthage close by. Along the ten mile route between the hotel strip and the city were half finished buildings close to the road, the tarmac cutting through the land straight as a die, crumbling away at the edges to a parallel unmade track and a line of scrubby bushes dotted with plastic rubbish. As we bowled along in the pale morning sunlight of mid-November, the buildings alternated with patches of undeveloped land, the repository for piles of construction rubble. But beyond all these signs of faltering development flashing by, some  scenes from an older culture played out. There in the near distance was an olive grove and in the still air, a faint mist disappearing as the temperature rose, a solitary man was spreading cloths round the base of a tree. He would be absorbed all day in the harvest. Further on, down a track off the road, three men with a chestnut horse congregated round a small hut. A thin line of smoke rose from a stuttering fire, and the field beyond, enclosed by cypresses, was green with crops. They too were preparing for a day on the land.

Closer to the city we left the last of countryside behind and joined a motorway, entering the ubiquitous landscape of urban sprawl with parades of shuttered shops, deserted offices and advertising hoardings. Then came a surprise. I found myself rolling alongside an extensive grove of mature eucalyptus trees, sun-dappled now as the sun rose higher, stretching far from the hard shoulder, an archetypical mythic wood, mysterious, beguiling, wonderful. There were no apples there but it seemed very old, pristine – Adam and Eve could have been strolling through, oblivious to the roaring traffic. Then, as we reached the trees’ boundary further along the motorway, there was a huge billboard declaring that a new sports stadium was to be built. We left it behind and I wondered if the eucalyptus forest would survive what is to come in Tunisia.

The sports stadium  itself probably opens another chapter for Tunisia, one where attention urgently needs to be given to the future of the country’s young people. I hadn’t seen many of them on my trip. I’d been to the African Media Leaders Forum, a conference for the private media owners of the continent that had attracted 350 people from 48 countries. Apart from cleaners, who everywhere in the world are mostly women, all the Tunisians I’d seen had been middle-aged, or older, men – the taxi drivers at the airport rank, the hotel and restaurant waiters, the drivers in the cars on the motorway. Yet, 70% of the population of Africa is under 25.  In Tunisia, 60% of the population is under 30. It was the self-immolation on December 17 last year of 26 year old vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi, the sole earner in his family of 8, that sparked the uprising leading to revolution in January when dictator Zine El Adidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country.

The man with the job now of figuring out what to do in Tunisia following the Jasmine Revolution and elections last month came to talk to us at the conference on the first morning. Prime Minister Beji Caid el Sebsi is an 84 year old lawyer who has experience of government that predates the dictatorship.  His presence was electrifying, not least because, Tunisia’s revolution having kicked off the Arab spring with extraordinary consequences,  the eyes of the world are on this small country’s project to become a democracy and tackle the causes of the revolution: poverty, unemployment, corruption, high food prices and lack of freedom.

El Sebsi spoke eloquently, fully aware of the huge challenges and expectations they face. ‘The youth of Tunisia were in despair before the revolution,’ he said. ‘We have 700,000 people unemployed out of an active population of 3.5 million and 200,000 graduates who are not adapted to the needs of the market. We have very poor areas that need the basic infrastructure required for development. But we are doing our best in Tunisia to ensure that our revolution leads to democratic governance.’

We heard from others during the conference about media reforms specifically. A new body has been set up to move broadcasting regulation towards the UK’s Ofcom model, the Independent Body for the Reform of Communications and Media (INRIC). One of its members, Kamel Labidi, pointed out that despite the prominence of social media in discussions about the Arab spring, the 40% literacy rate in Tunisia means that the traditional media of radio and television continue to play an important role, and during the elections last month it was traditional media that mattered most. Ridha Kefi, another INRIC member, spoke about the additional challenge of reforming media education and training in order to equip journalists with the skills they need to operate within a democratic framework. ‘Journalists were used to implementing orders from the top,’ he said. ‘We need to reform the whole thing.’

International support appears to be welcome. The British Embassy in Tunisia are doing what they can to help the transformation of Tunisia’s media with projects underway to offer guidance on turning state tv into a public service model, reforming legislation to improve media freedoms, and the creation of an impartiality code for coverage of elections and politics generally.

Before I left Tunis I met the country director of the British Council, the UK’s international cultural relations body. Eunice Crook told me they have several initiatives with Tunisia’s vast population of young people. Freedom of expression and the use of media and communications are central. ‘We are helping the youth find their voice and get it over’, said Mrs Crook. They are building young people’s debating skills and training them in advocacy through setting up websites and blogs. A particularly interesting project was initiated by the Tunisian film producer Dora Bouchoucha who has won British Council support for the production of 8 documentaries about the revolution by young filmmakers. And they aim to help boost the profile of vocational training and employment skills through a grass roots version of The Apprentice.

I flew out thinking there was an atmosphere of urgency in Tunisia, even though Rome, let alone Carthage, was not built in a day. I just hope they don’t sacrifice the eucalyptus grove to build the sports stadium.

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on November 23, 2011 | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Call to replace Prince Andrew with a Trade and Human Rights Ambassador

The UK government’s Department for International Development has set up a new unit to promote private sector involvement in development. No doubt this was the inspiration for  the Overseas Development Institute’s event on this topic, held yesterday at Portcullis House, part of the Parliament complex in central London. The host, alongside the ODI, was the All Party Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development and Lib Dem MP David Laws, a key economic thinker for the coalition, was in the chair.

The kicking off point for the panellists was a piece by the ODI Research Fellow Peter Davis, published in the Guardian on September 2. The article has stimulated a lively thread of comment. Yesterday Peter was on hand in person to push his view that it is the private sector that is the driver of development, not aid.  He cited numerous reports that show that the evidence for the development impact of the private sector is extensive and made a plea for greater involvement of the corporate world in shaping the post-MDGs approach to aid and development, including how donors’ money is spent.

The two representatives of big business on the panel were Charlotte Woolf of the world’s leading metal and mining company Mittal, who gave as an example of development impact Mittal’s work in Liberia, and Anton Mifsud Bonnici of BP.

Charlotte described how, rather than bring in high-tech machinery to drive a new railway line through Liberia to get their ore to the coast, they hired 8000 locals to hand-restore the old railway infrastructure, shattered by years of war. They’ve also trained all of Monrovia’s taxi drivers in driving safety and car maintenance, motivated by a desire to avoid their personnel getting killed in the nightmarish traffic between the airport and the city centre.

What she wanted to see was DFID and other donors spending their money on supporting the creation of effective environmental regulation in developing countries.

Anton Bonnici said it was the private sector’s willingness to take risks – something other development actors couldn’t do – that led to social and public benefit.

The left-leaning view of corporates’ involvement in developing countries is less upbeat and Peter’s article for the Guardian has stimulated a range of responses, not least the need for strong government to keep the corporates in check as well as to enable real accountability. It was a theme explored by speakers from the floor as well as the panel’s two other contributors.

John Morrison, executive director of the Institute for Human Rights and Business stressed the need for real accountability: ‘It creates the social licence for business to operate’, he said. And he also urged the donor community to pay much more attention to the human rights dimension of relations with developing countries, including in any future role for business: ‘The MDGs are a human rights-free zone,’ said John. He castigated the UK government for not saying a thing when Vodaphone bowed to President Mubarak’s demand that they close their network during the Arab Spring. ‘There is no reason to think they would do anything different if the same thing happened in Bahrain tomorrow’.    He thought that in future it might be necessary to legislate to bring greater cohesion between human rights and development.

John also urged DFID to deal with a serious schism in its own approach: that between accountability and growth, especially now that the government is bringing the private sector right into the heart of policy-making. ‘Other European countries make those links much better,’ he said,’ with themed Ambassadors for instance to bring together trade and human rights. The UK does not have a strategy. What do we have? Prince Andrew.’

Karen Luyckx, Lead Analyst on Corruption and Transparency at CAFOD, reminded us all that transnational companies provide a small minority of the employment in the developing world – 75% is provided by small businesses and foreign direct investment does not automatically bring positive impact – the tax take around the world had actually fallen between 1993 and 2007. It was necessary to have legally enforceable minimum standards for business operations she said. CAFOD were campaigning for social and environmental reporting to be mandatory in foreign business operations in developing countries and for contracts to be published on a country by country and project by project basis to enable greater scrutiny.

‘A stronger civil society as well as state institutions is essential,’ she said,’ so that people can get access to justice when things go wrong’.

Stronger, independent media should also be an essential pre-requisite for greater influence by the corporate sector in development. Where big business goes, probing, fearless and relentless journalism should also follow. At One World Media we’d like to see more thought given to how the international community can support this aspect of democratic infrastructure as the post-2015 debate takes shape. The MDGs are a media-free as well as human rights-free zone.

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on September 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

England’s most wanted – made in China?

The riots and looting last week were a pyrrhic victory for global consumer brands. The  aim of marketing is to make consumers want and acquire – preferably in exchange for money – your products. On the evidence of the looting, brands that have thrived on appealing to the mass market as well as certain sub-cultures of urban youth won a resounding, if perverse, endorsement.

As the violence on the streets abated and the police raided homes, court appearances  revealed the objects of desire in all their mundane ubiquity. Trainers, mobile phones, flat screen TVs, jeans and T shirts had been taken home from carefully selected and ransacked shops and were then confiscated as those arrested were hauled off to face justice. These were mass produced consumer goods that for some have high status but which, despite the apparent glamour attached to names like BlackBerry or Burberry, are not the scarce, exclusive, expensive items with which elites mark themselves out.

Many of the consumer goods the looters wanted are the products of huge global corporations. They are brands that are often made by workers in rapidly urbanising developing countries, sometimes in terrible conditions. These goods now represent a link that spans the world, a disenfranchisement that for all its different manifestations is shared by workers and consumers alike – the fate of the non-citizen who has only a role to play in a bigger system.

Many of the journalists and filmmakers who entered One World Media’s annual awards this year had covered the production end of this system in their work, thereby illuminating the interconnectedness of our world.

An outstanding example was Kathryn Hille of the Financial Times, one of the nominees for Journalist of the Year. Kathryn had had a phenomenal year of reporting from China, explaining the emerging character of the country as it rapidly industrialised, in a way that combined sharp analysis with the human face of the stories. A major focus of her work was Foxconn, the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer and China’s largest private employer. Amongst the products its workers turn out are Apple’s iPad and iPhone. Companies like Dell, Nintendo and Nokia all sub-contract production to Foxconn.

Kathryn reported that a spate of suicides amongst workers last year was linked to working conditions. Chinese academics have described Foxconn factories as labour camps rife with worker abuse and illegal overtime.

BBC3′s series Blood, Sweat and Luxuries regularly shines a spotlight on the price being paid by workers and the environment in developing countries for the north’s system of consumerism. Their programme on gold and electronic waste won our Popular Features award this year. Ricochet’s film followed three young Britons to Ghana who experienced for themselves what labour conditions, supply chains and lack of education mean for the people there who produce products destined for the UK or who deal with the UK’s exported waste.

The Guardian’s  global development website, which won our Millennium Development Goals award, regularly chronicles the impact of western consumerism on those countries in the developing world that provide raw materials like oil or minerals or the cheap labour needed to produce high volumes of low cost mass market goods like the trainers, jeans and T shirts last week’s looters went for.

In the aftermath of the riots, as debates rage about the causes and consequences, value systems are examined and policy responses formulated, let’s keep in sight the ways in which some of the most exploited peoples and countries of the wider world – those who make products so desired people will riot and rob to acquire them – have been made visible. We need to take heed of Kathryn Hille and others like her who report from distant lands and remember that how we, the good and bad alike, live here, today, is connected to the lives of others in more ways than we think, whether we pay for the goods we so desire or not.

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on August 15, 2011 | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beyond 2015 – an MDG on media?

What could the world look like in 2030? By 2015, which is the deadline for 2000′s eight Millennium Development Goals, there will have been progress on keeping children alive, educating them and reducing preventable diseases, but we’ll still be living with poverty, inequality, environmental degradation and conflict. So can a new vision emerge for what to aim for by 2030 or will it be more of the same over the next 15 years, plugging away at chronic poverty, malaria and maternal mortality?

The debates about what happens next are hotting up. A new campaign, Beyond 2015, was launched earlier this year and their website www.beyond2015.org is attracting comments and new thinking about the best way ahead.

It’s about 20 years since the ideas that led to the MDGs were germinated and in that time the world has changed out of all recognition. The rise of China, 9/11, the shift to the world’s population living in cities, globalisation, the internet and the spread of mobile phones have all added to a very different set of conditions. Added to that is a strong view that this time, the voices of those in the Global South, especially the poor and the marginalised, must be central to what emerges, even though it’s mostly accepted that the process will be led by the UN.

The Overseas Development Institute ran an event last month devoted to all this. There were hints that those involved in the debates understand that the people need to be informed and their voices heard, but no awareness yet that the media might have a role to play.

Amy Pollard, Policy Officer at CAFOD, said: ‘Serious planning is becoming increasingly urgent and it’s essential that poor people themselves are heard and included in the debate’. Kudakwashe Dube of the Secretariat of the African Decade for Persons with Disabilities said the reality was that developing country governments need the support of international donors just to function so the key thing was to ensure that any framework that did emerge for taking things on from 2015 included input on what the poor of developing countries need from development, not just what their governments need from the international community.

The normal approach to this kind of thing would be for elites, whether in governments or elsewhere, to set out a range of propositions and then consult with ‘the people’. But Mukesh Kapila of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies hoped for something a bit less stately. ‘We should not be too sentimental about the ritual of consultation,’ he said. ‘We need something completely new to come up with a change of thinking about poverty and marginalisation.’ Acknowledging the importance of the current revolution in communications, he made a plea for a chaotic process, with a world of tweeting and Facebook activity driving a new vision for how to transform the world and the way it works. He was aiming to capture people’s hopes and dreams, not just a programme that was more of the same. ‘The future of development is not aid giving’, he said passionately.

So what is it? Dealing more with specifics, he envisaged that there might be 12 goals grouped around three themes – progress for individuals in the classic MDG areas like health and education, the protection and promotion of human capital like gender equality and the effective provision of public goods, an area that’s often overlooked.

It’s this latter that interests us at One World Media. If democracy is the ultimate public good then free, independent and plural media that operate to ethical standards have also to be counted as part of the equation. Yet media support within developing countries has not been a key topic in the MDG world. Amy Pollard presented some CAFOD/Institute of Development Studies research called 100 Voices that showed that CAFOD’s partners in the South overwhelmingly supported another MDG-style overarching, internationally agreed framework for development after 2015, with some important caveats and new priorities in the shape of the environment and climate change. But while support for universal human rights underpins a lot of development debate, the particulars of how a country’s population needs a certain kind of media – and not just the chaos of Twitter and Facebook – to help hold their governments to account are still not on mainstream radars.

The post-2015 debate offers an important opportunity to make the case for the crucial, often complex, role the evolving media sector can play in developing countries. As countries become more stable, developed and democratic, their media become more and more important to national debates, politics, and decision-making at both the ballot box and in the legislature. It’s unimaginable that by 2030 our digital, networked world could tackle its outstanding, and new, development goals without giving media support a higher profile.

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on August 1, 2011 | Tagged | Leave a comment

Imbroglios, catharsis, oligarchs and ethics – the ‘British spring’

I think it was the novelist Will Self who first used the word ‘imbroglio’ to describe the phone hacking and BSkyB bid shenanigans that have been unravelling this past week or so. He was on Newsnight and since then I’ve seen the word used elsewhere several times. Journalists don’t normally go in for the kind of vocabulary Self uses but journalists are good at spotting trends, they hunt in packs and imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Whether or not the new police investigation and Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry come up with solid evidence that others, apart from the News of the World, have been getting stories by illegal means, there’s no doubt that the entire trade of journalism is implicated in the imbroglio, even though it is a better kind of journalist that has galvanised public opinion and led Parliament to act yesterday, in unanimity, like representatives of a sovereign people in defiance of a quasi-oligarch.

Illegality aside, journalism is going to have to do some tough self-examination, while the board of News Corporation considers its standards of corporate governance, the Metropolitan Police thinks afresh about how it serves and enforces the rule of law, and politicians dig a bit deeper into their souls to more effectively fulfil their role as citizens elected by their peers to exercise power in the public interest, not in furtherance of vested interests.  It’s a cathartic moment for the essential elements of democracy in the UK. No wonder the US media are calling it the ‘British spring.’

Last night’s POLIS/Media Society event at the London School of Economics touched on these issues, with David Aaronovitch of the Times asserting that the main crisis that’s arisen is not so much of illegality as of ethics. ‘Hacking someone’s phone was wrong before there was a law against it,’ he said. Yet journalism does not have the same ethical base as professions like medicine. Professions, which are often governed through Royal Charters, primary legislation and self-regulatory codes of conduct that have sanctions behind them, are a long way from journalism’s model of training, development and practice within a weak professional governance framework of codes issued by relatively powerless bodies like the Press Complaints Commission or the National Union of Journalists.

At corporate level, broadcasting differs from print media, being regulated by Ofcom and the BBC Trust. All broadcasters are required to abide by legal terms that give them the right to operate, and those terms include significant codes of practice covering controversial and ethical considerations like when secret recordings are justified. Breaches can face seriously punitive sanctions.

Last night Aaronovitch described his experience of the BBC’s hefty Producers’ Guidelines and how when he left to join the Independent he discovered a print world where ethics was a topic barely on the radar. But, he also said, he believed this was changing in part because of the increasing scrutiny all institutions are facing these days. He saw from contact with students at places like City University that ethical considerations were now part of the way new generations of journalists were being taught.

Ethics are certainly something we put centre-stage in our own Student Programme. In our work with 23 universities around the UK we make ethical dilemmas when working in developing countries a major element of our workshops and masterclasses. Later this autumn we’ll be rolling out teaching resources that feature 10 case studies, all with prominent journalists and filmmakers, that explore how they got their stories and what questions they had to ask themselves – as well as their subjects – in their making.

Ethics, and their part in everything from the choices of individual journalists, police officers and politicians to corporate governance and democracy, are going to be the currency of public life for a while.

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on July 14, 2011 | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Week rolls by…..

We’re always saying the media is a fast-moving environment but I take a holiday, look around, and One World Media Week is almost a distant memory.

We crammed a lot in this year – the second year running we’ve programmed a series of events around our theme of the media’s role in furthering international development, human rights and global understanding. The Week ran from May 9 – 13 and kicked off with an event at the Overseas Development Institute on what the Arab Spring has to tell us about new media technology’s impact on development (see previous post).

Andrew Preston, Mail on Sunday, talks to students at One World Media's New Talent Day 2011

Our big annual event – the One World Media Awards – had some competition this year for the main highlight of the Week from our New Talent Day (right). While the journalists and filmmakers were polishing their gongs on the morning after the night before, 140 students were hugger mugger in a crowded lecture theatre at Westminster Uni, hearing from top commissioners and practitioners about getting on in the business. So we had both ends of the spectrum – those at the top of their game and the keen newbies itching to get a foot on the ladder and get their stories told – strutting their stuff.

The Awards were a sell-out and the atmosphere was terrific. As a snapshot of the best of what the media’s done in the previous 12 months, the event is unmissable. Strong themes emerged amongst the nominated entries, not least urbanisation in the developing world, and, importantly, the price developing and emerging economies are paying to feed the consumer culture of rich countries like ours. Peter Kosminski, winner of the Drama Award for Channel 4′s The Promise, said nice things about us: “One World Media actively proselytises on behalf of grown-up programmes on serious issues that affect our increasingly fragile world. In a television firmament ever more obsessed with the trivial, this could not be more timely.”

What’s great about the array of amazing work nominated, though, is its diversity and creativity – from Joe Sacco’s mesmerising graphic novel-style reportage to Highrise:Out My Window’s online innovation to Welcome to Lagos’s refreshing, upbeat tone. Our inaugural student award elicited 30 entries with lovely work by the nominees – the next generation has talent and a keen appetite for storytelling across cultural boundaries.

Alan Duncan MP with members of the ShujaazFM tea

In the Green Room there was the extraordinary spectacle of Minister of State Alan Duncan from DfID posing with a larger than life-size cutout of DJ Boyie, the character who stars in ShujaazFM in Kenya (right). DJB is a pirate DJ who broadcasts every day from his bedroom to Kenya’s millions of young people, with positive messages about dealing with everything from gangs to getting more crops out of your patch of land. The team who produce the show, syndicated to 23 FM stations throughout Kenya, and the comic book that goes with it, distributed free through the Nation newspaper and Safaricom’s mobile phone kiosks, were in town to receive our Special Award. As DfID part funds the project Alan Duncan was keen to meet them and they – and One World Media – were honoured with a special exhibition put up in the atrium at the Department.

While our Student Programme manager Derek Thorne tackled the New Talent Day, with commissioners from Channel 4, Al Jazeera and the Mail on Sunday on hand with insider knowledge, I was touring radio stations with the ShujaazFM crew. We wanted to help them with a little professional development and had great support from Capital FM, Somethin’ Else, BBC Drama and Factual in offering insights into production methods and radio broadcasting for a youth audience. A sidebar was bumping into Lenny Henry at Broadcasting House in the tiny studio where Desert Island Discs is recorded. He promised to visit on his next Comic Relief trip to Nairobi. We’re now aiming to send a UK radio expert to Kenya to help Shujaaz develop their techniques on site.

The New News Ecology panel session at the Commonwealth Club

Thursday saw a stellar line-up of speakers on the New News Ecology at the Commonwealth Club near Trafalgar Square (right). With sponsors the Institute of Development Studies, based at Sussex University, we were exploring the upheavals in international journalism, discussing who now pays for it, who’s doing it and who’s consuming it. Huge thanks to Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 (also our Journalist of the Year), Richard Sambrook of Edelman, Stewart Purvis of City Uni, Wais Bashir of Demotix, Sean Maguire of Reuters and our own Phil Harding, a trustee, who was in the chair, for a high quality session.

The finale of the Week was at the Frontline Club, standing room only for John Pilger’s powerful film The War You Don’t See. John was on hand to take questions about his historical critique of warmongering and the way the media has often been manipulated to influence public opinion and support for successive wars.

Not a bad week’s work. I certainly needed that holiday.

Posted in Uncategorized by Marion on July 14, 2011 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment