The second day of the WEMF brought discussions on ‘multilateral institutions and global media concerns’. Would it be the multilaterals – the OECD, the UN, and UNESCO – complaining that they did not get enough coverage in the media? Yes, it was. The OECD, the worlds keeper of statistics in economics, thought that economics should be explained more clearly and often to the public. Standby for loads more curves, graphs, and bar charts, about why it is not the economists’ fault that there was a recession. We will need to find someone else to blame. But everywhere you looked things seemed black, and everyone wanted to explain to the public whose fault it is. If its not the recession, it’s the conflicts, or global warming. It was a nice cheery session.
The session moved on to ‘access’ services – services which help people with disabilities. The bottom line here is that there is technology available aplenty. It can provide great services to help those with sight or hearing disabilities, or the aged, to follow and enjoy television and radio. But, it is all very slow to get widely used. For example, it’s a quarter century since ‘audio descriptions’ – adding a sound track to a TV programme describing what is happening in the picture – was first developed. Today only a handful of broadcasters throughout the world add audio descriptions to a few percent of their programmes. Most do nothing at all. It is a super aid for those with sight disabilities and the aged to enjoy television. But it does add to the cost of making TV programmes. There is a new UN Convention which may impose obligations on broadcasters in this area, but it is rather vaguely worded. Who is to know, and who is to decide, what are actually what the Convention calls ‘reasonable measures’ to help those with disabilities? Does that include spending money?
The grey clouds got even darker with the last session of the WEMF 4, which concerned the growing numbers of journalists killed in the line of their job. Delegates were truly moved by the long rolling caption showing all the journalists who have been murdered since the last WEMF. The UN has asked governments to protect them, but the reality is that the situation is getting worse. And two thirds of the deaths have nothing to do with war, but with reporting crime. Everyone agrees on ‘taking action in a meaningful way’, but the detail is that no one knows which action to take. The meeting touched on ‘citizen journalists’ – Joe Public who uses their mobile phone to shoot news and send it in. What protection do they have? None at all.
How could the WEMF be seen overall? The organizers could not have been more helpful. The arrangements were stylish. The discussions were a roller coaster of problems. Did it come anywhere near the UN request to ‘shape the future of broadcast and broadband for the benefit of mankind’? That, alas, is still someway away.
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