News you care about
- 3 May 06, 10:55 AM
Amid all the discussions of trust in the media, the rise of blogs and the internet, a senior UN official has struck a note of caution.
, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General, told the assembled media representatives, bloggers and developers at the We Media conference that they have forgotten about one key aspect - relevance. Mr Desai is Indian and said that he has access to dozens of news sources when he is in Delhi. But he says he prefers to watch local Indian news channels.
Why? Because their coverage is far more relevant to his interests. And this is a major challenge for the big media players. If the audience for news is changing, if their interests are changing, then what we call news needs to change.
After all, if TV channels or newspapers are not covering things that you care about, it is very easy now to find someone who is.
This theme of relevant news was picked up by a panel discussion of big hitters of the media industry, including 大象传媒 boss Mark Thompson. One issue they were pressed on was the relationship between the mainstream media and audiences in the developing world. In particular, does the big media dictate the agenda or are there ways people in the developing world can make their views heard.
Mark Thompson cited the 大象传媒 World Service as an example of media which was close to it audience and listening to its listeners. The challenge now was to generalise that across the 大象传媒.
This touches on one of the key themes of the conference - the idea of a participatory media. But a note of realism was struck by others on the panel. Google's highlighted that despite growing internet penetration in developing countries, there were still parts of the world where the media is able to dictate what you read.
Timothy Balding from the took this further. He said what we should be talking about is ways of strengthening the media in developing countries. And for this to happen, we need a Marshall Plan for the media, he argued. That idea, however, sounds much like the West imposing its view of the media on developing countries.
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What are the feedback mechanisms for the MSM in the developing world to know what the public wants? I imagine that it is not very scientific. Perhaps the MSM in the developing world determines what things people are interested in?
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the media needs to find out what interests us, but also tell us the whole truth.
almost every time i see a story on different networks i find out things the other network didn't cover.
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I have been folowing the sessions of this morning. Wow. Excellent pieces of analyses about people power and the ways people are redefining the media landscape which is perhaps going to be the defining feature of the century. Great interventions. KEEP IT UP
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Unsurprising inane drivel from the UN - wheres the 'big idea' in that backward-looking summary of part of the media landscape? Combine blogs+media...kthxbye Nitin.
Just look at the UN's inept handling of the ICANN/WSIS debate - how much of an awful idea is it to put the ICANN role into the hands of the ITU or another UN body, whose members include countries who actively filter/block their citizens access to global media. How would that "a mechanism allowing user communities to come together, collaborate and co-operate." Really quite frustrating the doublespeak you get from representatives from politics, I have no idea why the conference organisers invited this guy except to get an impressive name on their conference line up.
See, for example, the UN's newly instituted Human Rights Council whose members will include countries who human rights record is shockingly bad (https://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/03/good-enough-is-good-enough-for-un.html).
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Honesty is the best policy. Reporting interesting events & admiring news keeping in view private, public, and professional responsibilies establish importance and necessaty of media in human society.Future of media is really bright, media companies might be treated as faith with trillions of faithfull followers.Try your luck plain field is availble future is in your own hands.
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I am happy to know that this kind of conference is going, especially when about 15 newspaper and television journalists from Asia, Africa and Europe are assembled in Berlin Germany by the Capacity Building International Germany or INWENT to discuss the issue of blogs and how to abide by the rules in ensuring that the 'We Media' does not float the ethics of journalism. Because no matter how you look at information dissemination is basically the same, the audience is there and the message is also there. The channel of communication may not be the same, but the I think there is nothing different from what is the traditional medium of communication which has been modified to suit the present world.
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Excellent marketing, promotion, big names and awfully nice and glossy, but as some others have said, possibly a bit too top down and Western-led? Why such a huge registration cost anyway? If this is really about WEMEDIA and not commercial possibilities, why a registration cost at all and why hold it in London and not out in a developing part of the world? Wouldn't it have said something about the commitment of all the speakers had they battled it over to someplace like Katmandu for such an event. Isn't it about time we faced up to the hard fact that as new technologies mean new delivery mechanisms and ways of reporting, so it also means that if there ever really was one, the age of the global (ie Western) media player is over and audiences are fast fragmenting -often ominously into ethnic, national and religious groupings? Surely the challenge then is to acknowledge this changing reality while building in new safeguards to help ensure 'local' doesn't exclude or antagonise but only means to explain in a way outsiders can never fully do: On this World Press Freedom Day how effective anyway is western media coverage of Iraq, Uzbekistan, Burma, Somalia, Zimbabwe and so on? Are we really any more informed about the world around us or are we simply all assuming rolling news means more news when it probably means the opposite (people too busy feeding the 'beast' to leave the bureau and go and find out what is actually happening). If wemedia really is going to stand for and mean something more than a useful slogan to capture attention by corporate players, it needs to be seriously looking into the issue of the democratisation of media at a global level which does not forget about those places which are currently closed to most of the world. Let's focus more on local and regional portals, exchanges, platforming the best in local voices. Only when we start learning that local people given the support and means to communicate effectively and reliably to neighbours near and far are the best placed people to do the reporting, will we be in a position to know and appreciate much more the state of the world around us. So it goes....(blah blah...hic)
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I met a woman at a party the other day who was ex-大象传媒 World Service. She said that the WS to many countries was being cut in order to find funds for a new Arabic television channel.
Anyone know if this is true?
If so, it certainly looks like the WS is being organized around a propaganda effort to support political aims rather than something "close to its audience and listening to its listeners."
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