Statement of the 8th MacBride Round Table on Communication

The 8th MacBride Round Table, held in Seoul from the 24th to the 27th of August 1996, attracted more than 200 participants to its sessions and workshops; and a further 200 to the first Asian Alternative Video Festival. The theme was: Communication and Culture: Identity, Plurality and Equality. Converging from a total of twenty four different countries, ideas were shared among academics, researchers, NGOs and senior representatives of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Arab League of Educational, Culture and Science Organisations (ALECSO). The following is the Statement issued at the final session of the Round Table.

The last number of years has seen a rising number of Declarations, Statements, Resolutions, Charters etc. issuing from conferences and other gatherings on the right to communicate, and on alternative and democratic media. The MacBride Round Table itself adds annually to the tally. Yet these statements are symptomatic of some very significant, and potentially far reaching, developments in the area of communications and media.

There is a growing number of gatherings around media issues, partly, at least, because of rising interest among NGOs. And others, such as international aid funders and UN agencies, are displaying renewed interest, many alerted to the importance of media by the much-heralded 'Information Society'. Furthermore, these gatherings are more conscious than before of the existence and growth of an external, global constituency, interested and involved in media and communication issues, to which they can address themselves. Increasingly, these declarations raise matters and target audiences that cut across different forms of media, appealing to sectors beyond the immediate interest of the gatherings issuing them, suggesting the recognition of a deeper affinity between the different sectors and media activities.

Thus, perhaps more important than the statements themselves is what they say about the movement for the democratisation of media and communication. The movement is growing, it is becoming self-aware at a global level, and it is crossing traditional media boundaries. It is in this context that the MacBride Round Table situates itself.

The Round Table over the years, has mirrored these trends within its own development. In the past few meetings, it has debated issues as diverse as the Information Society, alternative video, indigenous people's communication, and gender equality. But then, given its genesis in the UNESCO Commission, it is no surprise that the Round Table is broad-based and concerned with a wide range of issues. The Round Table has also seen a growth in the participation of NGOs in annual meetings and the development of close relations with a number of them, nationally, where the Round Tables have been held, but also internationally and across a range of media. Indeed, the Round Table has constituted itself as an NGO, and is currently discussing with the International Telecommunications Unions how this oldest of UN organisations can open its doors to NGOs.

SEOUL ROUND TABLE

The MacBride Round Table in Seoul significantly reinforces these trends. The Round Table was held in parallel with, and initiated, the Asian Alternative Video Festival '96, the first of its kind, which was attended by video NGOs from around Asia and by an enthusiastic local and international audience. And the diversity of issues debated, in presentation sessions and workshops, was greater than perhaps ever before.

The Seoul Round Table offered considerable evidence of the coming of age of new responses to communication and media issues at a global level. Enriching and transforming old debates with fresh evidence and ideas from a variety of sources, the meeting demonstrated both that the imbalances of the past persist across the different media and geographies; and that new approaches to solving them are emerging from diverse quarters.

Asia was largely on the sidelines of debates on communication that raged during the 1970s and 1980s, but today it offers some invaluable lessons in moving forward into the late 1990s and beyond. The first such lesson is obvious: A global movement for media equity and democratic communication structures cannot afford to exclude any regions or interests. A debate conducted among the minority with power, even accompanied by claims to be acting on behalf of those excluded, can result in no lasting progress .

Building on this, the Round Table illustrated that solutions to media and communication imbalances must be tailored to the characteristics and challenges of each region, and within regions, to the often more extreme contrasts between different areas and populations. Asia is a diverse region within a diverse world. Analyses of problems, and ways and means of solving them, are not available off the shelf, no matter the political complexion. While guided by the same core democratic, participative and equitable principals, analysis and response must relate to the variety and complexity of lived experience.

A number of practical concerns and implications were drawn from these considerations:

1. Responses to media commercialisation and homogenisation originating at local level can play a central role in a new media and communication environment.

In the context of global forces that threaten national cultures and identities, a local level of response may be just as, or more, effective as a state led defence of national culture. While resistance to wholesale commercialisation and commodification of communication is essential at all levels, rebuilding political and cultural identity can begin at the community (including communities of interest) and local level. Often alongside a process of (neo-) liberalisation, community radio, alternative video and access television, community Internet and computer networking, and alternative printed press are gaining strength. These democratic forms of media offer a fresh basis to construct a shared identity, one less reliant on national symbols - or rather one that can renew them from the ground up.

2. In addition to supporting such local and community media, however, there is a need to democratise the processes by which communication and media policy, dealing mainly with 'mainstream media', are being formulated and implemented. When devised and con ducted behind closed doors, even within governments with at least some claim to democracy, communication policies can be compromised in a number of ways.

The workshop on Press Censorship suggested strongly that democratic laws and practices in the media tend to lag behind those governing political and electoral institutions, seriously undermining the legitimacy and progress of the latter. And feeding back onto itself, the issue is poorly reported in the media, nationally but also, and especially, internationally where powerful geo-political interests and media concentration come into play.

3. A further, and related, concern is censorship of the use of the new technologies. Ample evidence was presented regarding the media of 'cyberspace' and video in many countries of Asia and elsewhere. Alongside traditional forms of media oppression, new authoritarian forms are emerging sometimes through the abuse and misapplication of legitimate political and social concerns regarding, for instance, the right to individual privacy and the control of pornography. Internationally, the issues of intellectu al property rights and copyright, for instance, fall into the same category. Coupled with concerns on censorship is the general danger under which journalists work in many parts of the world. In the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, and elsewhere, journalists regularly work in life threatening situations. Better protection of journalists is desperately needed to help ensure a continued free flow of information in our society.


4. Progress made at the Round Table towards building alliances among video NGOs and among the communication scholars, offers tangible evidence, reinforced in presentations across a number of communication areas, of the value of collaboration beyond the national level - while again underlining the need for sensitivity to local differences. The practical benefits for such collaboration can translate down to the very local level, as well as up to global level. Locally, tracking the activities and strategies of transnational corporations between different Asian countries as they affect the lives of workers; recording them on video for mutual exchange, discussion and response; and exploring appropriate vehicles for transnational regulation and accountability worldwide, were recognised as essential. When industry goes global, so also must labour - and this has obvious applications across all regions.


5. At international policy level, also, the value of broad alliances of different alternative media and communication advocacy groups was emphasised. Of immediate relevance are global and regional government sponsored plans to build a new information and communication based society, for example, the Asia-Pacific Information Infrastructure (APII) promoted by advanced Asian countries, the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) of the USA and allies, and the Information Society of the European Union. There is no doubting the progress in core infrastructure in more developed countries, or that there are potentially great benefits everywhere. Yet insistent and repeated rhetoric of APEC, G7, OECD, EU, among others, claiming to affirm the priority of universal service and the need to avoid disparities between the 'information rich and information poor', functions only to obscure the absence of any serious attempt to address these issues. There is willingness neither to concede on the centrality of competition in building this 'brave new world' not to acknowledge the central role of significant transfers to address marginalised communities - often the majority. Following the old advertising maxim, repetition will eventually wear down resistance - and mainstream media also play a central role in this.

All can agree on the current imbalances and inequalities of access to, and adequate training in the use of, communication and information technologies such as basic telephony, the computer and the Internet. The right to communicate in the 21st century will be fundamentally related to the world's ability to address these inequalities.

The task of devising and promoting alternative policies to the neo-liberal orthodoxy is urgent, and building alliances between different concerned media and communication groups would be a major step towards creating the necessary scope and scale of ideas and resources. At least at national level, some legal sovereignty stills remains and the institutions exist, or can be readily created, to implement universal service policies that serve the needs of all. However, a much greater task lies ahead for international institutions such as the ITU and UNESCO, in the face of the growing influence of the corporate sector among intergovernmental organisations. Nevertheless, particularly encouraging is the recent initiative of the UN Administrative Coordination Committee to pursue the concept of the Right to Communicate right across the UN system, with the ITU as the central agency.

CONCLUSION

When constraints tightly delimit room for manoeuvre, Declarations, Resolutions and other such statements sometimes take the place of action. In the interregnum between the suppression of intergovernmental media debates in the mid 1980s and the recent rise of new movements for democratic media and the Right to Communicate more firmly rooted in experience, this was probably unavoidably the case. Now, the MacBride Round Table is just one among an increasing number of organisations and events fuelled by wide spread concern regarding the current direction of media and communication. The Round Table cannot pretend to cover the huge range of issues involved. But the emerging issues echo those of other meetings. In short, the conclusions of the Round Table are:

• The international debate on democracy and equity in communication, clearly growing in strength and depth, must fully explore and acknowledge significant variations within and between different regions of the world, before an effective common strategy can be developed.
• Responses at a local and grass-roots level, in the form of democratic, alternative and developmentally-oriented media, may play a major role in countering the process of globalisation and homogenisation of media and culture.
• The democratisation of the process of devising and implementing mainstream media policy, at national but also international level, must be a priority.
• Especially among the new media of video and 'cyberspace', the introduction of new authoritarian forms of censorship in nominally democratic political systems is emerging as an issue of especial concern.
• The benefits of alliance building, a growing trend among NGOs and scholars, can enrich local activities and efforts and, at international level, can contribute to the development of more equitable and democratic communication and to the establishment of the Right to Communicate. Particularly satisfying was the decision of video NGOs in Asia to collaborate more closely in a number of concrete areas; and of the research scholars to form an Asian Communication Studies Network, a first meeting of which will be held in Australia during 1997.