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Puerto Vallarta News NetworkTravel Writers' Resources | January 2008 

Media Dyslexia and the WSF
email this pageprint this pageemail usPerla Wilson - TerraViva
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Global Day of Action: In villages, rural zones, and urban centres around the globe, citizens are mobilising to show that another world is possible. Check out IPS/TerraViva articles, exclusive interviews and opinion columns: Click HERE.
 
Santiago - No one has ever said that the relationship between the social world and mass media outlets is easy, even less so in the case of initiatives to foster a new political approach such as the World Social Forum.

However, when it first started the WSF did spark a certain (media) interest, so much so that its concurrence alongside the World Economic Forum was viewed as a media strategy. Leading newspapers sent their reporters to Porto Alegre 2001: “the issue was the comparison with Davos, about which I could write an extensive article. I remember at the time that the North American press didn’t cover the issue, and didn’t view it as newsworthy,” reported Rocco Cotroneo, an Italian correspondent covering Latin America for the Corriere de la Sera.

Nevertheless, the media soon began to distance itself, and by the third Forum, also held in Porto Alegre, its interest had dwindled considerably. “I think that the novelty began to wear thin because there were no transformations taking place, no practical influence on politics or the economy,” maintains Cotroneo. However, the obstacles faced when trying to permeate the political agendas of governments are set against the fascinating diversity of stories regarding grassroots practices that can be found in the Forum.

“Although, even if we bring together all those stories, they still aren’t necessarily newsworthy; in a celebrity-focused media, it is difficult that a collection of ideas can dominate the headlines,” adds Cotroneo.

In Chile, the situation is extremely difficult. Nowhere else in Latin America are social issues so excluded from the news, which tends to use the parameter “there’s no news if there’s no conflict,” within a mass media that has one of the greatest concentrations of ownership (on the continent).

“Social inequality doesn’t make the news,” claims Raúl Sohr, journalist and international commentator for Chilevisión, a TV channel owned by Chilean business tycoon and aspiring presidential candidate Sebastian Piñera. “Only the social forums that have ended in violence or confrontational situations challenging the authorities, have been the ones that have dominated the headlines,” he concludes.

According to Sohr, “It is an excellent idea to table demands at a local level and by-pass a general directive everyone tries to apply in their country. The problems that people are concerned about are always by definition of a local nature, and should be the ones given priority. The media often ignores dramatic situations or events, such as the hunger strike of over a hundred days by a leading Mapuche activist; such events only get picked up by the media when they turn violent, those involved them becoming vilified by the press establishment.”

“Unfairness in the way issues are dealt with is evident; the mass media is an industry and its objectives are set by economic factors; news has to sell. Those sectors holding the economic or political power have a guaranteed niche within the printed or audiovisual media. It is difficult to make room for issues regarding the Social Forum, and a lot depends on the points in common that can be established with those issues that dominate the media agenda,” maintains this leading journalist.

Sohr agrees with some of the members of the WSF International Committee in that the relatively horizontal structure of the Forum itself, which has deliberately rejected a “personality-led structure,” has had an adverse effect: “news needs to be pinned on someone, that’s one of the golden rules of journalism; leaderless movements have a serious disadvantage in that respect.”

However, a very different view can be found within the independent media. In the opinion of Enzo Mangini, from the Italian weekly Carta, “the Forum shouldn’t change its style in order to fit in with the format of mass media outlets; it should be these media outlets themselves that adapt to this innovative approach.”

“Through the strengthening of worldwide independent and community media networks, it is possible to provide the communications outlets needed by the Forum to highlight its work,” also stating that “we cannot allow our only strategic objective to be breaking through the news barriers of large media corporations.”

The debate between one and other perspective –a traditional journalistic approach versus an alternative approach, professionals versus activists- is just one more manifestation of the underlying debate within the whole Forum: its characteristics, organisation and purpose. The Forum combines organisations using traditional methods, such as the IPS Agency and its TerraViva news service, with libertarian and community groups such as Ciranda, or mixed-media organisations like Amarc, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters.

The editorial contents of each one of these groups faithfully reflects their particular idiosyncrasy, although together they present a complementary body that mirrors the Forum’s huge diversity.

The Venezuelan film maker Angel Palacios, author of the award-winning documentary “Llaguno Bridge - Keys to a Massacre, believes that technique plays second fiddled to the actual message, proving his point by travelling around Latin America with a pocket-sized camera that he uses to record his often clandestine interviews.

But then Palacios is a graduate of the renowned San Antonio de los Baños film school in Cuba, and must certainly know how to use his little camera and editing console a lot better than any enthusiastic amateur. His famous documentary, which dissects each moment of the incidents that led up to the right-wing coup attempt in Venezuela on the 11 of April 2002, is mainly based on the used of amateur videos that have been tightly edited, so offering clear evidence regarding a huge conspiracy.

Mangini agrees with the view that the Forum attracted media interest at the beginning, but warns against the style that was used in the overall coverage; “the structure used was quite traditional, and they were unable to appreciate the innovative aspect of what was taking place. The Social Forum was viewed as some sort of new international communist movement, or a meeting of dissidents, or got turned into a quirky news story about a strange gathering of thousands of people who all talked about another world.”

The inability to link global phenomena with their local consequences, as highlighted by the Chilean journalist Raúl Sohr, is also present within the Italian media. “Major issues such as migration are treated at quite a superficial level,” points out Mangine, “with no attempt to dig deeper and identify the relationship with the crisis affecting African agriculture or the situation of small farmers on that continent, as if people weren’t interested in such aspects, or are too ignorant to understand them.”

There was a general consensus that the interventions planned for the Global Day of Action would not be considered newsworthy by the commercial press, in spite of efforts by the communications group recently set up by the International Council. “Mainstream media outlets have completely ignored the actions planned for the 26 of January (…) and I think this year they won’t write anything at all about it,” predicts the Carta journalist.

“It’s going to be very difficult for the demonstrations held that day to capture the media spotlight,” envisages Cotroneo from the Corriere de la Sera:” A day of social mobilisation is viewed as a political act called for by actors of no importance to the mass media, which has a detrimental effect on issues raised by the Social Forum finding their way into the news.

Estimates are that this decentralised call to action, by nature of its diverse claims, content, and diversified forms and lack of any representation or resolutions, will merely short circuit up against the usual means by which media operates. Communications discussions within the Forum have taken these and other factors into account when setting impact strategies. However, given the general belief that: "if it’s not covered by the media it doesn’t exist," ideas for innovative communications responses for socio-political initiatives are often confusing, breaking the rigid parameters by which globalized media is guided.

The challenge to come up with and implement creative and flexible responses to meet the demands for communication and information is still a pending issue within the WSF.



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