World Social TV - the idea

The global, alternative movement needs its own world-wide television
Presented by Daniela Dahn at the WSF in January 2007 in Nairobi




Even a very long march begins with a very first step.
Chinese proverb

If someone dreams alone, it is only a dream. If many dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality.
Friedensreich Hundertwasser

It is the oldest trick of the bourgeoisie to let the voters freely choose his and her unfreedom by keeping them in the dark about their own situation. What everyone needs to be able to choose his or her own path is knowledge. What will come out if one places a man, who was neither allowed to learn how to read music nor how to play the piano, before a piano and leaves him the free choice of the keys?
Bertolt Brecht

The future does not consist in whether you believe in it or not but in preparing it.
Erich Fried


Another world will only be possible if we get other media. The present mass media, in particular the big private chains, are a propaganda machine of neoliberalism, an apparatus for making people disgusted with politics by way of cheap entertainment, a colonisation of reason.

  However, most people form their opinions through television. In the struggle for the public image of the world, it has more power than armies. For that reason ever more private interest groups, to one or the other degree intertwined with governments, moved to establish their own broadcasting station for their own purposes. Six big media companies dominate the world market of moving images. The largest of them is Time Warner. This company owns movie and music productions, publishing houses and – what is most important – CNN.

  In 1980, Ted Turner founded the Cable News Network for television and radio. In the meantime, CNN can be received in 212 countries. In all important languages. It reaches more than a billion people. CNN distributes the North-American view of the world. Patriotic in the sense of the government, uncritical, the American idea of making the world happy. The original claim of doing something for mutual understanding among the people by way of world news remained unfulfilled. The broadcasting station became famous during the Gulf War of 1991, when it sold the war as harmlessly as a video game and accompanied colourful images of exploding bombs sarcastically (?) with the music of the song What a wonderful world as  podcast.

  The television broadcasting station of BBC, like British politics, differs ever less from that guiding image. Infamous is the Italian Berlusconi TV. Already more independent the Arabic broadcasting station Al Dshasira. Only a short while ago, there was put on air the French multi-lingual television broadcasting station France 24. To us European viewers, there is reserved – like to almost anyone in the world – only the television of well-fed people for other well-fed ones. Hardly ever a television camera ventures into the favelas of Rio, the slums of Calcutta, dares to look into the dried-up wells of Kano or Dyamena, shows us the miserable reservations of US American Indians or the soup-kitchens of Berlin or the clochards of Paris. When do we get to see working children and discriminated girls? What do we know about the world-wide oppression of trade unions on the one hand, and the most recent strike of 40 million Indians on the other? We hear nothing about the victims of the gold mines in Papua- New Guinea or the families of the leaders of the Latin American landless movement murdered by the estate holders. War images only remind us of great fireworks, when after all do you see dead civilians, injured fighters or even the transfer of killed NATO soldiers in tin coffins? We hear little of the crippled victims of landmines or about the daily life in cities and villages destroyed by war. Instead the broadcasting stations by way of disinformation have become part of the conduct of war.

  For a long time already, tv networks have demonstrated to us that a lie passes as truth when it is only big enough and gets repeated often enough. Thus the University of Maryland recearchers have found out that 80 percent of the viewers of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News until recently were still convinced that world-wide public opinion is in favour of the war of the USA in Iraq, and this because weapons of mass destruction were allegedly found and there were “proven” connections to Al Qaida. Media companies cultivate a good relationship with PR agencies such as the US “Office of Global Communications” or the “Office of Strategic Influence” that spread manipulated information.

  Are we not robbed of every degree of confidence and tired of the lies? Is this disinformation not the real danger to global security? The journalist and leader of the civil rights organisation Free Press, John Nichols, is convinced: “If we had honest media George Bush would not be president, and we would not have led a war in Iraq.” At the largest conference on media reform that took place up to now in the United States, Jesse Jackson added in front of 2000 participants in Madison: “We have underestimated what the rule over the media means for our struggle. Why have there been larger demonstrations against the war in Europe? Because the Europeans are better informed. Fox and Clear Channel basically organised pro-war demonstrations. Our media were on the same side as the tanks.”

  US American intellectuals still envy us Europeans for the relative differentiation of our media. However, the “Berlusconification” of television, meaning its getting enlisted by the ruling elites, for a long time has been proliferating as well. The italien author Umberto Eco described this as “media dictatorship” where it is unimportant whether there are any newspapers defending dissident opinions, what is decisive is, who “controlled the means of information with the greatest penetrating power”. The control is not even exercised in the first instance by censorship of news – that would be too obvious. It was sufficient to belittle the arguments of the opposition and to sweep them off the table. “Those are right, who have the last word.” In all wars, be it in Kosovo, in Iraq or in the Near East, this was quite obvious. “It would be naïve to think that indoctrination did not go along with democracy. It is rather a characteristic feature of democracy”, Noam Chomsky instructs us and points to the fabrication of a consensus by propaganda tailored to the current regime. Persons may be criticised mercilessly, but not the underlying structures of power.

  If it is not possible to break the medial hegemony of neoliberalism and neomilitarism, these forces will continue their apparent victory march unchecked. The global alternative movement needs the power to put its own topics on the TV agenda. Because: if it doesn´t exist in the media, it doesn´t exist.

  The idea, or let us say the dream that the movement will have its own global TV station, sounds very utopian. But apparently, one needs to foster the impossible to achieve the possible.

  The globalisation-critical movement up to now wages mainly on communication through the Internet. Yet more than 90 percent of the world population are still excluded from it. On the other hand, 70% of the people dispose of electricity. In the media age, an alternative movement cannot organise beyond its greatest possible efficancy. It is mainly a question of the spread of knowledge about economic interrelationships, of the economic alphabetisation of the masses, as the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called it. It is a matter of the unveiling of the institutions of oppression, of constraint and of oligarchic rule within market democracy. It is a matter of the core of the system of rule, in other words the private power of disposal over the resources that should justly belong to all the people.

  In order to also give the poor ones, the excluded ones, the illiterate the conscience of their common interests, journalists, artists, scientists and representatives of social movements have to think about the step by step construction of a public, independent, enlightening world TV channel that works beyond profit motives. And this television station one day in the distant future, but a very fine day indeed, would start transmitting in the most common languages. In the following order, the most people speak: Chinese, Spanish, English, Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Swahili. The contributions would not have to be all synchronised or subtitled, and a simultaneously entered translation would be sufficient. An alternative broadcasting chain need not be perfect, but professional.

  Among the topics, there would not only bee social and ecological hot spots – no one wants to watch only bad news. Just as important it would be to report on activities and concepts of the movement. When millions strike or demonstrate, this should be worth more than 15 seconds of broadcasting time. All the more so since in this brief time, one usually hears nothing about the motives or the substance of speeches, but only whether there were riots on the margin. And then again already nothing on who really initiated them.

  There would also have to be reports on theoretical congresses, about the practical work of NGOs, about the work of investigation committees, about cooperative initiatives, or the success of individual movements.

  And finally, it would be desirable if this broadcasting firms were also able to initiate big, up to now taboo debates, build bridges across cultures and religions. If one does not want to negotiate with terrorists, one will at least have to talk to them in order to understand motives and deal with the causes in a peaceful way. Initiatives such as the alternative Nobel prize or the World Future Council need a media platform.

  There are already many independent local broadcasting stations. The most hopeful one has gone on air in summer 2005: Nueva Televisión del Sur. The Spanish-speaking Telesur with news, political reportage, interviews and discussion broadcasts is conceived to create a counter-public to CNNespañol: The first “anti-hegemonic telecommunications project in Latin America”, an initiative of the countries Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, with cooperation agreements with the Portuguese-speaking TV Brasil. Yet the rest of the world has nothing of it, even though it would also interest us very much. Could not Telesur help us in it, and we Telesur?

  There is no exchange, no networking taking place with all the other small independent broadcasters. For instance with The better bbc or the one in Toronto or the one in Rome (www.tvglobal.org). In the USA as well, there might be interests, as for instance, the Internet association supported by George Soros (www.moveon.org) that airs movies critical of Bush. Networking would be useful for media centres of counter-information such as Indymedia or Media Watch Global or Znet (www.zmag.org) or www.politik-digital.de. Alternative movie festivals experience a need of this (www.globale03.de). In Peru, there is a cooperative broadcasting enterprise lacking films and in India (like everywhere) there are documentaries without transmission possibility. The first step would probably consist in linking all these beginnings to a net with large meshes to start with and to examine them for their global TV adequacy. The equal and similar minded would first have to get to know each other, first exchange experiences, then movies. That way, there could form a central pool, a digital mass storage facility, linked via Internet and radio, a network of cooperative partner stations from where local broadcasting stations, later even the viewers themselves, will be able to choose broadcasts recorded earlier.

  With view on such a network, I would like to emphasize: people who believe in an independent alternative world broadcasting enterprise should be visionary, but never naïve. Knowledge is power. No knowledge is preservation of power. Today mass media and especially large TV stations are great factors of power. And therefore, they are sacred. Sacred by money. Or more particularly by people with money. 30 seconds of advertisement on CNN cost 20000 Dollars. Time Warner has a yearly income of more than 25 billion Dollars. Thus he can afford an annual budget of 1.4 billion for CNN. Who then wants to face such competition?

  For one, Telesur with its annual budget of six million US-Dollars. Recording techniques and broadcasting licences today are not unaffordable. Never underestimate the unexpected possibilities for resistance by the possession of hand cameras. The sensational success of the video platform www.youtube.com bought by Google from three young people, where everyone can show his or her videos and see the videos of all participants, shows the need for exchange, for grassroot media. Such models and ideas in the future need not remain reserved for entertainment. Who has experienced it once, sees that nothing is more interesting than to find out his or her own situation.

  All the more so given that purely commercially financed TV is becoming a thing of the past. Digital video recorders can automatically cut out advertising blocks; TV displaced in time, and without advertisement becomes possible. And in the rich countries, a majority of people are ready to pay for it. (It is the same as in the Internet: You have to pay to be spared the commercials.) This is our chance. Advertisments will become less, content more important. Viewers are allready insulted in their intelligence by present-day TV and therefore they might be ready to pay small fees.

  We shall need not only professional programm makers, journalists and artists, but also people who are fit in the law and know the way to financial sources. Only then will it be possible to decide in a competent way following which model the project could be organised: for instance as small cooperation between public, local and cooperative channels and their supporting circles among the public. We would have to strive for a democratic TV. The next important question in that respect would be under what roof to organize.

  In December 2003, there took place in Geneva the UN World Summit on information society. An action plan was passed there. Until 2015 among other things, the following goals are supposed to be reached:

   - make sure that more than half of world population has access to      Internet within their reach,
   - make sure that all people in the world have access to television and      radio.

  Yet, no one asks what programms “all of the world’s population” will see. What will we have achieved when programmes aimed at making people stupid have turned even the last ones into zombies and the long-term effect of advertising has made us completely uncritical?

  I miss a visionary strategy in the UN plan. I only found an economic strategy. Of course it is right to remind the developed countries of the Monterey consensus: the decision to invest 0.7% of their respective GNP (Gross National Product) for developmental help. Most rich countries, also Germany, at this point pay around 0.2%. It is also commendable that the UN Plan should welcome initiatives to reduce the debts of the poorest countries or even to remit them. Yet are such appeals sufficent to create trust?

  Does that mean that as a roof after all rather the World Social Forum should be chosen? Or international trade union associations? Or a new NGO that concentrates on the world broadcasting station?

  It is natural that the ethics of this global chain would be obligated to universal values such as lack of violence, peace, freedom, equal rights, solidarity, tolerance and common responsibility toward nature. It would conduct a dialogue between cultures about diversity, identity and tradition. Yet that is not enough. The UN goal of halving poverty until 2015 now finally has to be taken seriously. A world television centre that concentrates on social and peace policy themes may help to make people aware what poverty in daily life really means. The 900 million illiterate people could be included in this effort at transporting things into the political realm. Education is the first step out of poverty. Questions need to be asked about the connection between poverty and richness, about armament, weapon’s trade and war. There is a need to talk about the distribution of goods. We need to think on an international scale about the distribution from the top to the bottom, from North to South, because it can, if at all, only work in a global dimension at this point. This kind of political education could be a stimulator for the globalisation-critical movement and many civil society initiatives.

  The UN action plan affirms: “The engagement and the interference of civil society is important for the emergence of a fair information society.” And indeed, there is this interference to a growing degree. Many people are angry about the primitivism and falling into line of commercial programmes. They sense that the control of public discourse by private companies threatens the basis of democracy. US deputies reported almost surprised that in their circumscriptions, events about media questions attracted more people than any other topic.

  When the US telecommunications and media supervisory agency FCC under suspicion of corruption in 2003 planned to drive further the concentration of private media ownership, trade union, consumer and civic rights groups were indeed capable of motivating people to send letters of protest and E-Mails to the Federal Communications Commission. And 3000000 Americans got in touch with members of congress, pushing them to lift the planned changes in legislation. Under this pressure both the US House of Representatives as well as the Senate defeated the deregulation plans of the FCC. Yet the White House threatened its veto and obtained that Fox TV, CBS and UPN may continue to exceed the admissible threshold for media concentration. The intertwining between the interests of conservative government and private broadcasting chains could hardly be more glaring.

  Let us not have any illusions then: In the beginning, there will be nothing but obstacles. In this case, it will be our task to describe these obstacles and to make them public. Press freedom as the freedom of a couple of billionaires to found TV stations may not be accepted. The democratisation of licensing fees would be a first step. Yet even if the legal and financial hurdles are overcome, it may take years until the necessity and acceptance of such a transmitter has gotten around among TV makers and viewers, until the viewing habits of large viewer groups can be changed. Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights guarantees not only the right to freedom of opinion, but also the right to free communication and information. Let us show the gap between promised human rights and reality. Let us help to diminish this gap. Let us begin.

Translated by Carla Krüger, January 14, 2007

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