Media Rights: Articles

Author: Tomaselli, Keyan
Date: 2000
Other Authors: George Gerbner>br>Type of Product: Seminar paper, International Summer / Winter Term in Human Rights Bard College / University of Cape Town
Place: Cape Town
Published: draws on an article first published in Communication 23(1) 1997, co-authored with George Gerbner.
Copyright: Tomaselli and George Gerbner
Human rights are about power relations.

Human slights are a manifestion of power relations.

On receiving my invitation to participate in this workshop, I was not very sure about its intentions, or why I personally had been approached. My feelings about human rights discourses during our struggle against apartheid were tempered by a sense that at the global level they igored issues of political economy, within which systematic abuses agianst populations occurred actoss the world. Conflict resolution seemed to me to be mainly treating the symptoms.

However, since the end of the Cold War the options available to securing freedom and rights have to be sought within a contemporary period in which the USA is dominant. New communiation technologies have also opened up the possibility of `speaking back’ to those who wield global power in both the state and commercial sectors.

My first sustain encounter with human rights charters occurred in May 1996 when I found myself delivering a keynote address at the launch of the Cultural Environment Movement in St. Louis (Culturelink 1996). Here I found 250+ organisations from civil society, from the far left to conservative, from all over the world, agreeing on their similarities rather than fighting over their differences. What bound these organisations and their constituencies together was an attempt to recover the power of audiences and readers in relation to the behaviour of global media companies. Their aims was to restore communication to human and community levels, and to act as a brake on the unchecked excesses of the media industry as a whole and to contest the negative mortgaging of our children’s cultural future to transnational media corporations.

CEM is a coalition of a wide range of affiliated and supporting organizations and concerned people. The Movement is united in working for freedom, fairness, diversity, respect for cultural integrity, the protection of children and health, and the revival of democratic decision-making in the cultural mainstream of all countries.

It was here that I first came across the People’s Communication Charter (see below). Since then I have been one of thousands of participants in the drawing up of other Charters, such as Videazimut’s The Universal Communication Rights Charter(for people, users and media workers), and so on. In 1998 the Human South African Right Commission (SAHRC) asked me to chair a workshop on freedom of expressiopn for its National Action Plan. We were given the UN Charter on Human Rights and the African Charter as discussion documents. The SAHRC was unaware of The People’s Communication Charter. On discussing this document I was struck at how much it resonated with opinions expressed at the workshop, especially amongst those delegates who represented children’s rights. We learned there that the SABC had developed a children’s Rights Charter with regard to TV.

The writing of charters was thus an ongoing activity in the global media sector, but few of these appeared to be known to the human rights community, especially in South Africa. This meeting here in Cape Town, then, seems to offer an opportunity to bring the legalistic and the media related human rights discourses into a sustained and productive dialogue.

The value of these Charters is that they are not definitive statements, but are living documents in that they are placed on the table for public debate, for modification and interpretation with regard to specific contexts, and with the aim of recuperating agency for audiences and readers vis-a-vis big media capital. They may be naive in places, and inappropiate in specific contexts, but they offer starting points for ensuring the integrity of receivers, communities and nations as both receivers and makers of messages.

The People’s Communication Charter

is aimed at restoring the right to TV viewers – parents and children in particular – to reclaim the right to take control of their cultural environment and shape it to meet human – rather than corporate – needs.

The originators of the Charter are the Centre for Communication and Human Rights (The Netherlands), the Third World Network (Malaysia), the AMARC-World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (Peru/Canada), and the Cultural Environment Movement (USA). The Cultural Environemnt Movement (CEM) holds the following truths to be self-evident:

That all persons are endowed with the right to live in a cultural environment that is respectful of their humanity and supportive of their potentials.

That all children are endowed with the right to grow up in a cultural environment that fosters responsibility, trust, and mutuality rather then irresponsibility, fear, and violence.

That when a media system drifts out of democratic reach and becomes destructive of these rights, it is the duty of people to alter it.

The Movement was formed to reclaim these rights. These rights are not only under threat in the First World, especially the United States, but in South Africa where the media have become commercially-driven and where the future of public broadasting is under threat.

The prime issues investigated at the Founding Convention of the movement in March 1996 included:

• Moral and ethical issues relating to depictions of unnecessary violence in the media, especially TV, drugs and stereotypical representation of women, blacks and other `minorities’.
• Issues of regulation and privatisation of the electronic media, with reference to public access and accountability. How to develop policy which protects the public sphere from market economics as the only legitimate form of regulation, and which has declared war on journalism, was a recurring question.
• Identification of the relationship between global ownership and violence-driven images.
• Identification of strategies on how to empower parental authority over children’s programming in an age when children often know more about how to manipulate technology than do their parents. How to replace `stories that sell’ with `stories that tell’ underlined an imperative to restore storytelling to a non-commercial cultural domain.

The US stands almost alone in failing to have developed policy on the above issues. The South African link with Bard college thus provides an opportunity for the propsosed courses to directly engage with this lack in the USA.

This cooperation between academics and institutions of civil

society should assist in redefining academic-community relations

in both the USA and South Africa. I have not heard the term `academic activist’ for many years, as South African academics got onto the gravy train after liberation and pursued their own interests. We need to reactivate this practice again in this country

Even that academic constituency drawing on critical

theory is now in the post-Cold War era largely characterised by disinterest in fostering social action. Alternatively, academics working for social change have been disempowered by institutional and corporatising dynamics beyond their control. The Movement identified ways of animating academia through developing strategic relationships with concerned citizens’ groups.

Declaring Viewer Independence

The following are some of the causes, injuries and usurpations that impel us to declare our cultural independence and assume an active role in making policy decisions about the cultural environment into which our children are born:

1. The roles we grow into and the ways we see others and the world are no longer mostly home-made, hand-crafted, community-inspired. They are the results of a complex mass-production and marketing process. For those with high media access, most of the stories about people, life and the world are told no longer by parents, schools, churches, or others in the community who have something to tell, but increasingly by a handful of global conglomerates that have things to sell.

2. This is a radical change in the way we employ creative talent, raise our children and manage our affairs. Channels proliferate and new technologies pervade home and office while mergers and bottom-line pressures shrink creative alternatives, reduce diversity of content, and concentrate control in a few hands. Media blend into an integrated communication structure that transcends boundaries and constrains life’s choices as the degradation of the physical environment limits life’s chances.

3. This condition did not emerge spontaneously or after thoughtful deliberation. It was imposed over significant public opposition. It is now embodied in legislation passed without media scrutiny or public debate of consequences, and embodied in marketing formulas forced on creative people and foisted on the children of the world. Its world-wide fallout and human implications have only recently been studied and are just beginning to be understood.

4. Our airwaves, which are a global commons for all the people, have been given away to media empires not accountable to the people. We have been disfranchised in the arena of policy-making most crucial to our humanity.

5. We are told that in exchange for allowing the business establishment to subsidize and control cultural production and policy, we receive entertainment and news free or substantially below cost. But in truth, we pay for all of it as consumers. In effect, we pay when we wash, not when we watch.

6. This is taxation without representation. For advertisers, it is tax-deductible business expense, costing the public treasury tens of millions of rands annually, that buys the right to discharge their stories into the common cultural environment. For society it is a way of limiting freedom of press to those who own the mass media, and denying meaningful public participation in cultural decision-making.

7. The cultural environment resulting from these distortions of the democratic process is unacceptable to any self-respecting and self-governing country or community. Its consequences include the promotion of unhealthy practices that pollute, drug, hurt, poison, and kill thousands every day; the portrayals that dehumanize and stigmatize; the cult of media violence and expertly choreographed brutality that desensitise and terrorise; and the sensationalised stories that polarise and drive the growing siege mentality of our cities.

8. At the same time, these distortions disguise or ignore the drift toward ecological suicide, the silent crumbling of our infrastructure, the cruel neglect of the arts and education, the most glaring inequalities in the industrial world, and the basic needs and aspirations of people in the Third World.

The Cultural Environment Movement challenges us to mobilize to act as a public as effectively as commercials mobilize us to buy as consumers. The declaration continues:

We shall reclaim freedom of speech and press from their current use as shielding mostly private privilege. We shall no longer beg for favours where we have constitutional rights, human rights, and civil rights. We pledge to heal the wounds of all the stories that are hurting and tearing us apart.

We shall put culture-power to liberating ends and break the constraints that distort and debilitate. We will no longer be the only country (i.e the USA) calling itself democratic that not only tolerates cultural domination but dumps it on all parts of the world.

CEM gathered to launch a strong, enduring coalition, approve this Declaration, a People’s Communication Charter, and develop an action program designed to offer the liberating alternative:

• Roll back media monopolies
• More freedom and support for the creative workers
• Respect for cultural integrity
• Teach critical awareness and skills
• Work together for a freer, fairer and more diverse cultural environment and broadly-based participation in cultural decisions that shape the lives of our children.

THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNICATION CHARTER

An International Covenant of Standards

We, the Signatories of this Charter, recognize that:

• Communication is basic to the life of all individuals and their communities.
• All people are entitled to participate in communication, and in making decisions about communication within and between societies.
• The majority of the world’s peoples lack minimal technological resources for survival and communication. Over half of them have not yet made a single telephone call.
• Commercialization of media and concentration of media ownership erode the public sphere and fail to provide for cultural and information needs, including the plurality of opinions and the diversity of cultural expressions and languages necessary for democracy.
• Massive and pervasive media violence polarizes societies, exacerbates conflict, and cultivates fear and mistrust, making people vulnerable and dependent.
• Stereotypical portrayals misrepresent all of us and stigmatize those who are the most vulnerable.

Therefore, we ratify this Charter defining communication rights and responsibilities to be observed in democratic countries and in international law.

Article 1. Respect

All people are entitled to be treated with respect, according to the basic human rights and standards of dignity, integrity, identity,and non-discrimination.

Article 2. Freedom

All people have the right of access to communication channels independent of governmental or commercial control.

Article 3. Access

In order to exercise their rights, people should have fair and equitable access to local and global resources and facilities for conventional and advanced channels of communication; to receive opinions, information and ideas in a language they normally use and understand; to receive a range of cultural products designed for a wide variety of tastes and interests; and to have easy access to facts about ownership of media and sources of information. Restrictions on access to information should be permissible only for good and compelling reason, as when prescribed by international human rights standards or necessary for the protection of a democratic society or the basic rights of others.

Article 4. Independence

The realization of people’s right to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from the development of self-reliant communication structures requires national and international assistance. This includes support of development communication and of independent media; training programs for professional media workers; the establishment of independent, representative media associations, syndicates or trade unions; and the international adoption of standards.

Article 5. Literacy

All people have the right to acquire information and skills necessary to participate fully in public deliberation and communication. This requires facility in reading, writing, and story-telling; critical media awareness; computer literacy; and education about the role of communication in society.

Article 6. Protection of journalists

Journalists must be accorded full protection of the law, including international humanitarian law, especially in areas of conflict. They must have safe, unrestricted access to sources of information, and must be able to seek remedy, when required, through an international body.

Article 7. Right of reply and redress

All people have the right of reply and to demand penalties for damage from media misinformation. Individuals concerned should have an opportunity to correct, without undue delay, statements relating to them which they deem to be false and which they have a justified interest in having corrected. Such corrections should be given the same prominence as the original expression. States should impose penalties for proven damage, or require corrections, where a court of law has determined that an information provider has wilfully disseminated inaccurate or misleading and damaging information, or has facilitated the dissemination of such information.

Article 8. Cultural identity

All people have the right to protect their cultural identity. This includes respect for people’s pursuit of cultural development and the right to free expression in languages they understand. People’s right to the protection of their cultural space and heritage should not violate other human rights or provisions of this Charter.

Article 9. Diversity of Languages

All people have the right to a diversity of languages. This includes the right to express themselves and have access to information in their own language, the right to use their languages in educational institutions funded by the state, and the right to have adequate provision created for the use of minority languages where needed.

Article 10. Participation in policy making

All people have the right to participate in public decision-making about the provision of information; the development and utilization of knowledge; the preservation, protection and development of culture; the choice and application of communication technologies; and the structure and policies of media industries.

Article 11. Children’s rights

Children have the right to mass media products that are designed to meet their needs and interests and foster their healthy physical, mental and emotional development. They should be protected from harmful media products and from commercial and other exploitation at home, in school, and at places of play, work, or business. Nations should take steps to produce and distribute widely high quality cultural and entertainment materials created for children in their own languages.

Article 12. Cyberspace

All people have a right to universal access to and equitable use of cyberspace. Their rights to free and open communities in cyberspace, their freedom of electronic expression, and their freedom from electronic surveillance and intrusion, should be protected.

Article 13. Privacy

All people have the right to be protected from the publication of allegations irrelevant to the public interest, or of private photographs or other private communication without authorization, or of personal information given or received in confidence. Databases derived from personal or workplace communications and transactions should not be used for unauthorized commercial or general surveillance purposes. However, nations should take care that the protection of privacy does not unduly interfere with the freedom of expression or the administration of justice.

Article 14. Harm

People have the right to demand that media actively counter incitement to hate, prejudice, violence, and war. Violence should not presented normal, “manly,” or entertaining, and true consequences of and alternatives to violence should be shown. Other violations of human dignity and integrity to be avoided include stereotypic images that distort the realities and complexities of people’s lives. Media should not ridicule, stigmatize, or demonize people on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, and physical or mental condition.

Article 15. Justice

People have the right to demand that media respect standards of due process in the coverage of trials. This implies that media should not presume guilt before a verdict of guilt, invade the privacy of defendants or others, and should not televise criminal trials in real time while the trial is in progress.

Article 16. Consumption

People have the right to useful and factual consumer information, and to be protected from misleading and distorted advertising. Media should avoid and, if necessary, expose, promotion disguised as news and entertainment (infomercials, product placement, children’s programs that use franchised characters and toys, etc.), and the creation of wasteful, unnecessary, harmful or ecologically damaging needs, wants, products, and activities. Advertising directed at children should receive special scrutiny.

Article 17. Accountability

People have the right to hold media accountable to the general public for their adherence to the standards established in this Charter. For that purpose, media should establish mechanisms, including self- regulatory bodies, that monitor and account for measures taken to achieve compliance.

Article 18. Implementation

In consultation with Signatories, national and international mechanisms will be organized to publicize this Charter; implement it in as many countries as possible and in international law; monitor and assess the performance of countries and media in light of these Standards; receive complaints about violations; advise on adequate remedial measures; and to establish procedures for the periodic review, development and modification of this Charter.

INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS AND OTHER WORKS INFORMING THIS CHARTER

With regard to freedom of information: Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; UNESCO Resolutions 3.2. of 1983 and 4.1 of 1991 on the Right to Communicate; the provisions on information of the 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe; the 1991 UNESCO Declaration of Windhoek; and Article 13 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

With regard to the social responsibility of mass media: The 1978 UNESCO Declaration on Fundamental Principles Concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid and Incitement to War; Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Article 5 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by the Beijing Platform of Action of the 1995 UN World Conference on Women; and Article 17 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

With regard to the development of communication: The UN Declaration on the Right to Development of 1986; and the UNESCO Resolution 4.1 of 1991 statement on Communication for Development.

With regard to the protection of cultural and linguistic rights: Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and the 1966 UNESCO Declaration of the Principles of International Cultural Co-operation.

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Author: Skjerdal, Terje Steinulfsson
Date: 1997
Place: Durban, South Africa
Published: No
Type of product: Paper
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings on the media 15–17 September 1997 are probably unique in a world perspective. In contrast to attempts made other places in the world to investigate the role of the media, the TRC process specifically called for the media to part-take in the reconciliation process that is taking place in the new South Africa. The link between past and future is thus of absolute importance, stressing that the media do not simply stand trial but also have a role to play in the transition to an emerging democracy.

The focus of this paper is on the press. Whereas the broadcasting industry often denotes large financial resources, extensive production equipment and more or less immense state regulations (notably the South African Broadcasting Corporation; SABC), the print industry enjoys greater independence in its technical and creative flexibility. Thus, despite the apartheid government’s numerous attempts to tame the press, vastly different publications were on the scene, spanning from social-democrat alternative newspapers such as Vrye Weekblad and Indicator to bantustan products such as Ilanga and English conservative-liberal newspapers such as Sunday Times and The Star. They all sought to equip their readers with what they thought should be a preferred reading of the government and its apartheid politics.

With peculiar social phenomena come academics. Academics try to make sense of the world and unravel what is not visible in the first place. With regard to the South African press, academics have in particular focused on the relationship between newspapers and the government. Central areas of study have been the freedom of the press (see for instance De Beer, 1989a), the newspapers as carriers of ideology (Tomaselli, Tomaselli and Muller, 1987) and the role of the alternative press (Tomaselli and Louw, 1991).

This paper seeks to bring together academic insights and press practices. I set forth to explore the debate that occurred around the TRC media hearings, showing how media theories can serve to a better understanding of the complex processes that take place in the tensions between state, press and the people. These three pillars — the state, the press and the people — create a triangle which can clarify the different purposes and agendas that are at play. At the same time, however, it should be noted that a more sophisticated understanding of the press must take into account that there is no fixed relationship between state, press and people. Various intentions cause people on every level to form linkages that are not easily explained in theoretical terms, for instance when individuals in certain circumstances subscribe to more than one group. I believe this is one reason why press theories at times appear to be simplified and unable to provide the desired link to actual newsroom practice. Hence, the press under apartheid most clearly illustrates that the newspaper industry is not one big group ‘out there’, somewhat naively assumed to be separate from the state (also ‘out there’) and ourselves (‘here’).

The structure of this paper is twofold. I will first assess and explain the process around the TRC media hearings (again, with emphasis on the press). The concentration in this section is on the disputes that arose between media practitioners before and under the hearings in Johannesburg 15–17 September 1997, as well as the perceived ‘truth’ that emerged. I will then turn to academic approaches and identify the main explanatory models that have been used to make sense of the role of the press under apartheid. My conclusions are twofold: Firstly, that the process around the TRC media hearings misleadingly served to strengthen the perception that the South African press is best understood in terms of the differences between the English liberal, the Afrikaans and the alternative presses; thereby reinforcing politico-cultural differences. Secondly, that there are two main approaches to an academic understanding of the South African press, broadly speaking. These are the functional and the critical approaches. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but they are not, as some tend to argue, mutually exclusive.

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Author: Skjerdal, Terje Steinulfsson
Date: 1997
Bill on demand: How South African newspapers fought the abortion issue 1995-96

Author: Shepperson, Arnold
Date:

A Critical Appraisal

The originators of The People’s Communication Charter are the Centre for Communication and Human Rights (The Netherlands), the Third World Network (Malaysia), the AMARC-World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (Peru/Canada), and the Cultural Environment Movement (USA).

The Founding Convention of the Cultural Environment Movement, meeting in St. Louis on March 17, 1996, ratified the Charter and referred it to a committee for refinement. The present draft reflects the comments, interests and concerns of the Cultural Environment Movement (CEM) and the other Signatories. It has also been informed by the international agreements listed below and the statements and publications noted in the Bibliography.

In this article, we outline some of the issues raised by the Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban, during the process of discussion which led to the present draft of the Charter.

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Author: Luthuli, Prosper
Date: 2001
Type of product: MA. Dissertation
Copyright: Culture, Communication and Media Studies University of Natal, Durban.

Abstract

In its report titled News in Black and White: An Investigation Into Racial Stereotyping in the Media (1999), one of several reports published by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) during the course of its recent inquiry into issues of racism in this country’s media, the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) purports to have used discourse analysis (DA) and content analysis (CA) alongside each other in order to carry out its part of the mentioned inquiry. Paradoxically, however, a careful examination of its report raises questions not only about this media monitoring agency’s conception and application of discourse analysis, but also about the understanding of this method of inquiry by some of the media scholars and practitioners who evaluated various reports that resulted from the SAHRC Inquiry. With regards to the latter, for instance, some scholars have variously identified the methods of research used by MMP and the independent researcher, Claudia Braude, (even to the extent of negating the claims of these researchers) during the media inquiry.

Using the MMP report cited above as a primary text or point of reference, this dissertation attempts to critically examine the basis and validity of the perceptions alluded to in the foregoing. In particular, it addresses itself to two different, and yet related questions. Firstly, did MMP misconceive and misapply discourse analysis, as some media scholars have argued? In other words, do these criticisms have a sound basis and validity? Secondly, do differences in the manner in which some media scholars have characterised or identified the respective methods of research used by Braude and MMP, suggest a lack of a clear understanding of these methods on the part of MMP and these scholars? Chapter One, begins with an attempt to define the problem to which the study pertains, and offers an account on the following aspects: a brief background to the study; its aims, relevance, and significance; the theoretical framework and the methods and methodology on which it is based; and the structure thereof. Chapter Two defines and maps out the scope of discourse analysis against the backdrop of content analysis, a research technique that some scholars see the former (DA) as an alternative to. Chapter Two further provides an exposition on various insights on content analysis and discourse analysis, as well examples of how these methods are generally applied in practical research situations, with a view to using these as a benchmark against which to critique the MMP report in Chapter Three. Chapter Three, which forms the body of the study, offers a critique of MMP’s conception and application of discourse analysis. A summary of the findings of the study is offered in Chapter Four, and these are followed by a synoptic account of the concluding remarks in Chapter Five.

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