Beyond CNN.

ASIAN MEDIA INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE

BEIJING, CHINA

JULY 18-21, 2005

The Motion Picture Association and the entertainment industry in general portray a singular image of Asia as a place of piracy where copy criminals armed with computers conspire to destroy transnational media profits. However, more than 300 communications scholars, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), activists and media practitioners from 30 countries attending the 15th annual Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) conference held in Beijing July 18-21 presented a far more complex picture--less homogeneous and more urgent, diverse and pluralistic. (Established in 1971 as an NGO, AMIC encourages democratic access and social responsibility in media and creates opportunities to empower disadvantaged communication sectors in the Asia-Pacific region.)

Under the theme of "Media and Society in Asia: Transformations and Transitions," the conference probed issues related to development, social and political empowerment, human rights, crisis reporting and the multi-layered connections between the global, regional, national and local. "What passes for global media in the west is really the media of the west," observed Shashi Tharoor, undersecretary general for communication and public information of the United Nations (UN) in his compelling keynote, "Weapons of Mass Distraction? UN Perspectives on the Future of Media." "There is the occasional third world voice, but it speaks a first world language," according to Tharoor. "The truth is our region is no longer simply a 'market' for western media. It has become a source of global media." As evidence, Tharoor noted international export of Bollywood films as well as Chinese wuxia and kung fu films.

With delegates from India, China, the Philippines, North and South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, Thailand, Australia, England, Germany and the United States, the AMIC gathering shifted the vectors of critical media analysis away from U.S.-owned media transnationals to media in other parts of the globe. Many delegates discussed how Asian media confronts the fissures between democracy and the global market economy. T.S. Dashdondov and T.S. Enkhbat (Mongolia) discussed how the 1990 Mongolian Democratic Revolution enabled a free press. Yet Mongolian journalists ignored organized crime, corruption, bribery and abuse of power during this market economy transition. On one end, highly-developed Singapore is spurring a feature film industry with national arts support, a controversial proposal. The country has high mobile phone usage and one of the most open Internet systems in Asia. On the other end, Palphol Rodloytuk (Australia) demonstrated how Buddhist dialogic communication practices have mobilized development efforts in rural areas of Thailand--without media technology.

The empowerment possibilities offered by gaming, mobile phones, blogs, satellites and the Internet loomed large. N. Usha Rani (India) showed how GRAMSAT, a village satellite program in rural India, created more access to education for women, 45% of whom are illiterate. Miranda Ma Lai Yee (Hong Kong) described how youth cyber activism mobilized the 500,000-strong July 1, 2003 protests in Hong Kong, providing on-going forums for pro-democracy communities.

The relationship between media and health infused many presentations. Scholars analyzed the media's pivotal role during the 2003 SARS crisis in Singapore and the print media representation of the continuing HIV/AIDS crisis in Bangladesh. Madanmohan Rao (India) investigated the usage of mobile phones and wireless computers during health crises in India. The December 2004 tsunami figured prominently in the International Red Cross plenary session "Covering Conflicts and Disasters." Alan Knight (Australia) revealed how western mass media tsunami coverage focused on corpse counts, presented Asians as passive victims and overwhelmingly relied on government sources. Mohammed Zin Nordin and Shanthi Balraj (Malaysia) showed that even the Malaysian media drew on limited sources and marginalized the tsunami's environmental issues. However, amateur media, from digital video to blogs to the Internet, opened up a more global outlook. It provided eyewitness testimony and helped to locate people. Chanuka Wattegama (Sri Lanka) pointed out that none of the Sri Lankan media had the capability to issue a tsunami warning. Yet Buddhist and Gandhi-inspired Sarvodaya, the largest NGO in Sri Lanka, marshalled the Internet (www.sarvodaya.org) and a handful of volunteer webmasters to provide highly effective humanitarian relief and communications. Ruth Gidley (England) discussed how Reuters' Alertnet (www.alertnet.org) bridges the media and the international aid organizations by packaging accessible humanitarian news, crisis profiles, weekly summaries and country and region briefings.

War, terrorism and human rights issues were salient--but from a decidedly different perspective than the western media, with their almost exclusive focus on the war in Iraq and the U.S. "War on Terror." At a 2003 UN press conference where UN Secretary General Kofi Annan raised 16 urgent international issues, Tharoor observed, every single assembled journalist asked about Iraq while ignoring life and death issues in other parts of the globe. Roy Guttman, an award-winning Newsday reporter, underscored that both western and Asian media ignored the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia and the 1998 Taliban assault on Mazur El Sharif in Afghanistan. He argued that journalists everywhere should be watchdogs for humanitarian conduct in war by knowing the Geneva Conventions and watching for war crimes. "Journalists should not just be looking for the causes of wars," he said, "but at how wars are being fought." Veteran Indian journalist Ravi Velloor observed that western media "label South Asia as a region in perpetual crisis." As a result, they oversimplify complex regional politics.

Several scholars probed the representation of human rights and civil wars in Indonesia, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, China, Malaysia and the Philippines. Y.A. Nunung Prajarto (Indonesia) demonstrated how the Indonesian press focuses on human rights rather than the Aceh conflict.

In response to the western media axis, the UN has launched an annual list of overlooked global stories: peace in Somalia, campaigns to prevent crippling childbirth injuries, violence against women and girls, the promise of the Internet for Cameroonian cocoa farmers. "I believe the media can educate while it entertains, enlighten while it informs," Tharoor argued. "So let me leave you with a question: is this too much to ask of our Asian media?"

PATRICIA R. ZIMMERMANN is the author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film (1995), States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies (2000) and co-editor of Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories (forthcoming in 2006).