NEED FOR SHARED VALUES IN GLOBAL VILLAGE UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGE FOR MEDIA, SECRETARY-GENERAL TELLS THIRD WORLD TELEVISION FORUM
Press Release
PI/1093
NEED FOR SHARED VALUES IN GLOBAL VILLAGE UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGE FOR MEDIA, SECRETARY-GENERAL TELLS THIRD WORLD TELEVISION FORUM
19981119 General Assembly President Stresses Media's Moral Duty, As Two-Day Forum Opens, with Theme 'Future of Audio-visual Memory'Addressing the opening of the World Television Forum this morning, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that, if the global village was to be a truly desirable place for all, it must be guided by broader frameworks of shared values and principles, which posed an unprecedented challenge to those who had the power to bring the world the news every day.
There were problems to which no one was immune, he said, such as pollution, global economic crises, drugs and terrorism. No nation, no matter how powerful, could address such problems alone. They must be addressed multilaterally, but for that to happen they must be understood by people everywhere. It was a moral imperative not to turn away from the enormity of such problems, but to look at them directly. In that effort, the power of television must be a partner.
Leaders of the broadcast industry are taking part in the two-day Forum, whose theme is "The Future of Audio-visual Memory: Looking at the 20th century -- Towards the 21st century". It is organized by the Department of Public Information (DPI), with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy and the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations. The Forum is sponsored by RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana, the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), the Mediaset Group, France Télévision and NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai). Co-sponsors include EUTELSAT (Organisation Européene de Télécommunications par Satellite), the National Association of Television Program Executives, and TV5, the French-speaking worldwide satellite television.
Didier Opertti (Uruguay), President of the General Assembly, said the audio-visual media had a moral duty to be guided not just by material considerations, but with a view to furthering the social good and providing the audience with material that could help develop its intellect and enhance its spirit. For that reason, the medium must not confine itself to satisfying the demands of the market, but should steer the market towards the achievement of certain social and ethical values. That mandate did not mean that freedom in the production and development of audio-visual media should be diminished. It merely meant that the freedom must be exercised for the benefit of the community.
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The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Italy, Lamberto Dini, said it was the overriding purpose of the media to ensure that humanity and truth prevailed at all times, and to unleash the power of technology for good. "We must prevent the mass media from being used as channels for fanaticism, for thwarting every attempt at reconciliation, for rejecting the ancient wisdom of compromise and tolerance, and for fuelling crusades", he added.
Conrad Black, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hollinger International, Inc., said that the steady proliferation of television channels and the existence of remote controls had reduced the significance of television advertising. Most television viewing was now an almost mindless surfing of channels. On the other hand, people did pay to buy newspapers and they were attached to that format. Newspaper circulation was rising, and newspapers retained considerable and direct influence on public opinion. The success of a new newspaper in Canada showed that reports of the demise of the newspaper industry were premature.
Opening the Forum, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Kensaku Hogen, said the Forum had been convened to discuss some of the major challenges facing the television industry worldwide and the central role television played in addressing the critical issues of our time. At the turn of the century, and the millennium, the international community had the opportunity to discuss that complex issue from several points of view.
Statements were also made this morning by: Roberto Zaccaria, Chairman of the Board, RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana; Kay Koplovitz, President of the International Council of NATAS; Fedele Confalonieri, Chairman of Mediaset Group; Jean-Loup Demigneux, on behalf of Xavier Gouyou Beauchamps, President of France Télévision; Hatsuhisa Takashima, Executive Controller General of NHK, speaking on behalf of Katsuji Ebisawa, President of NHK; and Giuliano Berretta, Director General Elect of EUTELSAT. Interventions were also made by: Letizia Moratti, former Chairman of RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana; and Khalid Hassan, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Shalimar Television Network, Pakistan.
Participants in the two-day Forum include: Martin Scorcese, President of the Film Foundation; Robert Rosen, Dean of the School of Theatre, Film and Television at UCLA; film directors Gillian Armstrong, Olivier Assayas, Masato Harada, Sidney Lumet, Dariush Mehrjui and Giuseppe Tornatore; Arnold Vahrenwald, Professor, European Consortium for Audiovisual Training and European Secretary of CentreBar; Danny Schechter, Vice-President and Executive Producer, Globalvision; Don West, Editor at Large, Broadcasting & Cable Publishing Group, and Editor-in-Chief, Digital Television; Elisabeth Guider, Managing Editor, Variety; and Bernard Miyet, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations.
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Statement by Secretary-General
KOFI ANNAN, Secretary-General of the United Nations, said, as was clear from several of the participants present today, there here powerful personalities behind today's news, and the powerful personalities behind the television industry reflected the unprecedented power and promise of the medium. What was being questioned, however, was the lack of strong personalities in the news. Why did the world not see more heroes and leaders to inspire it?
In the United States, two events that dominated television screens recently brought that question to people's lips. They were both stories of individuals testing their limits. John Glenn's story was that of a hero beating his own performance in space 36 years ago; Mark McGuire's and Sammy Sosa's story was that of two sportsmen beating the home run record of a predecessor 37 years ago. Both stories had people lamenting the absence of more heroes in the media. Where, people asked, were the others who took risks to test the limits of human achievement?
It seemed as through the very onslaught of progress, the sheer mass of human endeavour, had overshadowed and dwarfed the individuals behind it, he said. Heros that dominated the world's consciousness seemed to have become an endangered species. Globalization had made human endeavour stretch so far and wide that the world found the stories almost impossible to absorb. The research behind every achievement was teamwork that had crossed and recrossed borders and oceans countless times. The people involved seemed so many that the world could not hope to know their names, numbers, or nationalities. Increasingly, the world was being asked to focus on faceless manifestations of good and bad -- like medicine, technology, terrorism and pollution. The challenge now was to look for the individual that encapsulated human progress; to give human endeavour a human face.
The world was nearing the end of a tumultuous century that had witnessed both the best and worst of human endeavour, he said. The challenges were ever more complex. Like it or not, modern communications meant that people were connected, inextricably and irrevocably. Those connections had helped give birth to a new phenomenon -- an emerging sense of global citizenship and responsibility. The world saw that at work in the movements that spurred governments to negotiate the treaty banning anti-personnel landmines last year, and the Statute of the International Criminal Court this year.
In those movements, if anywhere, the world could find heroes of today, he said. They were a new expression of global people-power -- individuals and groups animated by humanitarian and human rights concerns, supported by world public opinion and united by weapons that would prove more powerful than any landmine, e-mail and the Internet.
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But the world faced a more profound challenge, he said. That was to understand better the emerging forces and forms of globalization, to shape them to serve world needs and respond effectively to their consequences. There was a great deal of talk about the "global village". But, if that village was to be a truly desirable place for all on the planet, it must be embedded within and guided by broader frameworks of shared values and principles. That posed an unprecedented challenge to those who had the unparalleled power to bring the world the news every day.
Statement by General Assembly President
DIDIER OPERTTI (Uruguay), President of the General Assembly, began by describing Plato's allergy of the cave, where the flickering shadows cast on the wall of the cave was reality or truth for the chained prisoners, since it was the only world visible to them. Like Plato's prisoners, modern man knew the world, which was increasingly outside the bounds of his direct experience, through the electronic shadows transmitted by television monitors. The media was now the source from which a large sector of humanity sought the truth.
He said defining the role which television should play in modern society was a task that could not be postponed. Television had quickly become a powerful factor of modern life. It not only determined perceptions of the world, but also influenced behaviour. However, modern society was not ready to assimilate that impact. To manage the astronomical volume of images and sounds that were sent out by the audio-visual media in such a way as to educate the recipients -- without disinforming, desensitizing, overwhelming or attacking them -- was one of the most delicate tasks facing the world in years to come.
He said the audio-visual media had a moral duty to be guided not only by material considerations, but with a view to furthering the social good and providing the audience with material that could help develop its intellect and enhance its spirit. For that reason, television must not confine itself to satisfying the demands of the market, but should steer the market towards the achievement of certain social and ethical values. That mandate did not, in any way, mean that the exercise of freedom in the production and development of audio-visual media should be diminished. It merely meant that the freedom must be exercised for the benefit of the community. In other words, it must be exercised responsibly.
He noted that the schedule of the meeting did not include a single explicit reference to education, although the idea of education as one of the media's most important aims -- if not the most important one -- was implicit in some of the topics to be discussed. The education of peoples to build a better world should be the main objective in charting the course of future media policy. Last week, the General Assembly adopted a resolution by which the period from 2001 to 2010 was declared the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World. That
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resolution recognized that the United Nations should promote a culture of peace consisting of shared values, attitudes and behaviours. The role of television in that process was beyond discussion.
Statements
KENSAKU HOGEN, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, and Chairman of the Forum, said that this was the third consecutive year that the World Television Forum had been convened to discuss some of the major challenges facing the television industry worldwide and the central role television played in addressing the critical issues of our time. The fact that the General Assembly proclaimed 21 November as World Television Day, following the first Forum in 1996, bore witness to the importance the international community attached to the role of television. At the turn of the century, and the millennium, the international community had the opportunity to discuss this complex issue from several points of view.
He said that this year's Forum reflected the diversity of the means of communication in today's multi-media environment. This year, in addition to the television industry, the Forum would hear contributions from representatives of the print media, film, satellite broadcasting, the Internet and other news media. The number of attendees had never been higher and geographical representation had never been greater. The Forum had participants from over 80 countries, making it a truly global event.
He added that he wished to pay tribute to the former head of the Department of Public Information, Samir Sanbar, who did pioneering work in organizing the first two Forums.
LAMBERTO DINI, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Italy, said he believed that politics, more than any others sphere of activity, must take proper account of the multimedia revolution. Its approaches, forms and substance were greatly influenced by it. The media brought the world and politics into homes and removed the barrier between the public and private spheres, between positive freedom to participate in politics and the negative freedom of non-interference from outside. The media erased the borderline between the political sphere and the domestic sphere, marked by the threshold that not even Hobbes's absolute sovereign would have dared to cross.
He said the extraordinary mission of the media lay in shattering the illusion, particularly on the part of the people living in the first world, "that we can hide behind our privileges". It was the overriding purpose of the media to ensure that humanity and truth prevailed at all times, and to unleash the power of technology for good. "We must prevent the mass media from being used as channels for fanaticism, for thwarting every attempt at reconciliation, for rejecting the ancient wisdom of compromise and tolerance, and for fuelling crusades", he said.
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He said the media, then, must be used to guarantee transparency on the international stage. It also must increasingly be used as an instrument for justice. Without the media, which drew attention everyday to new pockets of violence and intolerance, "we might never have wrought the miracle of convening what was perhaps the greatest law conference this century has ever seen and which culminated, last June, in the establishment of the International Criminal Court, and the adoption of the Charter of Rome". By eroding the havens of sovereignty, the media had made it possible to encroach into the sometimes separate and exclusive realm of diplomacy. Today, the eye of the media was helping to keep consciences and international institutions on the right path.
He said "thanks to the media, we are permanent witnesses to the great tragedies of our time; the plight of the refugees, a drama of persecution and exile that is not entirely behind us". The cult of belonging, the segmentation of humanity, the segregation of individuals who were imprisoned by their race or culture still bore heavily on the world. The media must be viewed not as a negation of the values of others, but as an affirmation of personal identity. That applied particularly to culture. Globality did not mean wiping out or confusing different identities. The media were capable of straddling borderlines, interweaving languages, reformulating symbols and preserving memories, without confusing them.
CONRAD BLACK, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hollinger International, Inc., said it was slightly perverse of the Secretary-General to ask him to talk about television industry, when he was usually very critical of it. He was proprietor of over 100 newspapers and he often felt that the newspaper industry would come to an end in a world dominated by television.
However, he added, as the quantity of information increased, the editorial function would become more important than ever. The steady proliferation of television channels and the existence of remote controls had reduced the significance of television advertising. Most television viewing was now an almost mindless surfing of channels. On the other hand, people did pay to buy newspapers and they were attached to that format. Newspaper circulation was rising, and newspapers retained considerable and direct influence on public opinion. The success of a new newspaper in Canada showed that reports of the demise of the newspaper industry were premature.
Despite what was said by those in the television industry, television's performance had not been particularly benign, he said. It did play some role in the demise of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. It also played an indispensable role in the dramatization of many human tragedies, such as those in Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Without such televised reports of events in those countries, they would not have received the amount of world attention that they got. Television, however, did not have the ability to bypass censorship by sometimes brutal and repressive governments.
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He said the television industry in the United States had not contributed to social progress in the world. He deeply regretted the public relations damage caused by depiction of violence in television and film. In that sense, the abuse of freedom of expression was comparable to curtailment of that freedom. Television should show some restraint in its portrayal of America as a much more violent place than it actually was. There should be a compromise between the perfect world portrayed on television in the 1950s and the violent world portrayed today.
ROBERTO ZACCARIA, Chairman of the Board of RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana, said images that referred to historic events had forced their way into "our personal and collective imaginations". Those images were the audio-visual memories of the century. This century was the first century narrated by the media. "We are familiar with almost all the peoples and places of the world without ever having visited them." The contribution of the new digital technologies was not limited to ensuring the conservation of audio-visual memory, but had significant implications for the quality and use of the materials. "We must preserve the conditions which have allowed us to create television that is eclectic and broad-based, television that speaks to all people, television that is competitive, based on solid values and strongly characterized by high-quality content", he said.
There were three challenges for safeguarding the audio-visual heritage, he continued. The first was to guarantee the greatest possible access to images and sound by allowing the greatest possible number of people access to "our audio-visual heritage". The second challenge was to create a new model for audio-visual archiving, one better adapted in anticipating future scenarios, regulating the retrieval of the audio-visual past and safeguarding the rights of authors, producers and distributors. That third and last challenge was that of quality. "Here I speak of the comprehensive definition of quality, which ranged from the content to the clearest image resolution." There was need to work together to create new programmes and to restore those from the past. "Lest us reinforce television, not only as a reality, but also as documentation, as an art form."
KAY KOPLOVITZ, President of the International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), said that, as the millennium approached, the International Council faced a multitude of questions. The tempo of change had accelerated. The world was facing difficult challenges, with conflicts threatening peace in many parts of the globe. Of major importance would be the ability of one form of communication to be translated into another, for a personal message to be broadcast as mass communication to a worldwide audience. Television, computers, cellular telephones, cable and even shopping were converging. To mention just one example, the over-the-air networks and cable channels were flocking to the worldwide web and the Internet.
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While each media sector would keep its unique characteristics, there would be increasing competition among all media for the limited amount of leisure time people had, she said. People would seek access to better sound and higher resolution images, but also would gravitate towards better content, more entertaining programmes and more rapid and informative news. Apart from technology, the structure of communications was changing. As the number of viewing options increased, audience ratings of the major broadcast channels around the world were eroding. Individual viewers were increasingly taking command of their dialling and interactive options. Today's audiences had learned to be selective. Programme executives had less control over what the public wished to watch. Audiences would choose according to their own preferences, regardless of whether the programme was a favourite of their parents or originated from a remote web site in Botswana or Brazil.
FEDELE CONFALONIERI, Chairman of the Mediaset Group, said that it was a priority to reaffirm the cultural role of television. Public broadcasting had played a crucial role in supporting cultural awareness, and it had introduced cultural programming to countless numbers of young people. Commercial television had opened up new lifestyles, in terms of freedom of choice, for many people. The Italian experience in that regard had become a model for other European countries. At this Forum, the leaders of the most powerful means of communication in the world must assume the responsibility for making sure television was a positive force for change in the world.
The role television could play in enhancing collective memory should be explored, he said. Without memory, there was no culture, and without an awareness of culture, there could be no promise. The cinema was on the front line in providing younger generations with a collective awareness of the past. While the media had been criticized for molding cultures and traditions, movies had touched the soul of all people and stressed what was common in all of us. Television was faced with a tremendous challenge to promote common values and social unity. The world was facing a crisis of identity that led towards isolation. If television remained bound in national limits, it would not be able to meet global demands. Television needed to draw new and wider boundaries. The television signal should be a message of peace around the world.
JEAN-LOUP DEMIGNEUX speaking on behalf of Xavier Gouyou Beauchamps, President of France Télévision, said television considerably expanded the framework of universal conscience. Viet Nam could not have affected the American conscience the way it did without television. The most recent events, including the use of television to illustrate genocide, showed the medium's unwillingness to stay out of any issue. Television also made manipulation easier. It spread culture everywhere and was more accessible. However, because it was accessible to the larger number and not just the elite, television was subject to suspicion, because it focused on the greatest common denominator.
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He said television was deepening its cultural function, assuming the role of cultural echo. Where frontiers were becoming entangled, television must make people aware of changes, crises and conflicts, so that viewers could live up to their responsibilities in an informed manner. However, television ran the risk of being the opium of the people. Information as a resource was something that needed to be managed. Public television must play a role very close to that of public service. Public channels must also present support for topics that were legitimately part of public television. Production did not only involve just thinking about programmes, but also about technical considerations. How could programmes be made accessible to people?
HATSUHISA TAKASHIMA, Executive Controller General of NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai), speaking on behalf of Katsuji Ebisawa, President of NHK, said today his company broadcast 17 hours of high definition programmes daily. Although Japanese high definition television (HDTV) was currently using analog technology for transmission, the camera, the television set, recording and editing equipment were all digital. In the year 2000, there would be seven HDTV channels in Japan fully digitized, including transmission and reception, with one additional analog channel for the transitional periods. This morning, NHK had brought that mobile production facility and innovative HDTV technology to the United Nations for World Television Day.
He said, as technology evolved into the next century, it brought with it a new age of quality television programming. It was a symbiotic relationship, where the codependency of technology and programming was an important issue. It was NHK's vision that HDTV represented the technological leap that would maintain the relationship and the further evolution of technology and programming. That technology and its brilliant imagery would enable television producers to create programming that, at one time, could only be imagined. With HDTV, television technology also now stood ready for its ultimate convergence with computer technology, broadening the horizon of "our almost limitless potential".
GIULIANO BERRETTA, Director General Elect of EUTELSAT (Organisation Européene de Télécommunications par Satellite), said there was some concern that the recent meteor storm would destroy satellite communications. Fortunately, no satellites had been damaged in the storm. That event showed that satellites were a robust form of communication -- once they were in orbit they were perfectly safe. Practically all television systems relied on satellites, and they had introduced democracy into television broadcasting. There was now greater competition in television programming, with many channels broadcasting many shows. There were no limits to digital satellite television, and, in the future, it should be possible to put on 30,000 television channels.
Satellite communications, in general, had provided greater freedom to communicate and the freedom to choose, he said. The first revolution came with analog television, and the second was with digital television. After satellite television, the next innovation would be Internet via satellite. Such a system
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would provide greater amounts of information at greater speeds. It would be possible to retrieve information very quickly and deliver it anywhere in the world.
LETIZIA MORATTI, former Chairman of the RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana, said there had been radical changes in the television industry, and those changes had social and economic consequences. Nobody would be free from the effects of those changes, either as protagonist or as victim. Those in the television industry needed to understand that they faced new risks and new opportunities, as well as responsibilities. Television played an important role, because it was such a pervasive media. It could play, however, a positive or negative role.
She said that television had helped in the development of democracy. Sometimes, however, it contributed to distorted perceptions of events and became a tool of propaganda. Television sometimes gave superficial highlights of events or it ignored others. Television needed to achieve more, and those in the industry needed to seriously consider what more they could do to promote democracy, human rights and cultural and social progress. While television had helped in the unification of language and promoted understanding, it had also destroyed centuries of cultural traditions. The role of televisions must be looked at honestly, and the looking should be more in the shadows than in the light.
With regard to the idea of the "global village", the world needed to rethink the role of communications. It did not need to be a tool for monopolies and the control of market forces. Shared guidelines and a communications ethic were needed to make communication work for the weakest sectors of society, especially children. Ethics could play a vital role for protecting not only the rights of those in media companies, but also the rights of the weakest sectors of society.
KAHLID HASSAN, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Shalimar Television Network, Pakistan, said the onslaught of the Western media was spearheaded by television. Satellites, in particular, had thrown open the floodgates in the whole process. There were positives in that process, but there was also a darker side that reeked of commercialism and, too often, moral decay. At present, there was one raging, unidirectional torrent that swept away everything that stood in its way. How could that overpowering torrent of information serve the people of the world? That was the greatest challenge of the twenty-first century. Satellites and the worldwide web would not necessarily translate into true knowledge.
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