REPRESENTING
THE VIEWER AND LISTENER:
ISSUES OF GENDER AND MARGINALISATION

Indian International Centre, New Delhi
14-16 February 2002

TABLE OF CONTENTS

14 February	INAUGURAL SESSION David Page, IDS; Gowher Rizvi, Representative, Ford Foundation; Dilip Padgaonkar, Managing Editor, Times of India; Khushboo Sunder; Rajiv Kumar, DDG Doordarshan; Jaya Ramanathan, Vice-President, Star India; Kanak Dixit, Himal Association.
15 February	ARE THE ELECTRONIC MEDIA RESPONSIVE TO CIVIL SOCIETY? Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM; Manju Thapa of Asmita; Nayeem ul Islam Khan of BCDJC; Dr Sunil Wijesiriwardena of Vibhavi, Rajiv Mehrota of PSBT; Nitin Paranjpye of Abhivaykti.
	WHY MONITOR THE MEDIA CFAR Presentation I
	RESPONSE BY MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES Radhika Surjit, Producer, Jaya TV; Ajai Sinha, Ananda Films ; Nupur Basu, NDTV; Ananya Chatterjee, Tara Bangla.
	GROUP MONITORING EXERCISES
16 February	THE ROLE OF METHODOLOGY CFAR presentation II
	DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO ADVOCACY Muneera Sen, Madhyam; Sazzad Hossain, BCDJC; S. Thiruchandran, Women’s Education and Research Centre; K.Bharati, AIDWA; Dr Suresh, PUCL; Gargi Sen, Magic Lantern Foundation; Chandita Mukherjee, Comet Media Foundation
	HOW CAN THE MEDIA BE MORE RESPONSIVE TO THE PUBLIC INTEREST? D.K.Bose, Consultant, Development Communication; B. Narayanaswami, Indica Research; Santosh Desai, McCann-Erickson India Ltd.
	CONCLUDING SESSION

14 February 2002

1800 INAUGURAL SESSION

THE ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND CIVIL SOCIETY - ARE WOMEN AND MARGINALISED GROUPS BEING HEARD?

Opening remarks - David Page, Co-Director, Media South Asia project, Institute for Development Studies, Sussex University.

David Page welcomed the participants on behalf of the Media South Asia project and the Centre for Advocacy and Research. He explained the background to the MSA project and the research which had led to the publication of ‘Satellites over South Asia’. The research had attempted to evaluate the impact of the satellite revolution regionally as well as nationally. Satellite broadcasts did not respect national borders and the most popular channels were being seen across the whole region. The state monopoly of broadcasting had been broken but the state had been slow to see what its role should be in the new situation. Programme makers had also been slow to assume responsibility to audiences beyond their prime target areas. As far as civil society is concerned, the research showed that public opinion, even in the districts, was extraordinarily resilient but it was not making itself felt very effectively. Though many organisations were concerned about the impact of the new media, few were monitoring it systematically and engaging with the channels on behalf of civil society.

One aim of the workshop was to bring together a range of different organisations from across South Asia with an interest in media monitoring and advocacy, to explore their concerns and to see what they had in common. If the satellite channels were creating some sort of new South Asian popular culture, was there anything that could be defined as a South Asian civil society response? The other aim was to provide an introduction to the work of the Centre for Advocacy and Research, to look at how it does its work and to explore what might be replicable nationally and regionally.

Gowher Rizvi, Representative, Ford Foundation, New Delhi outlined some of India’s economic and social achievements in the past 50 years - the increase in food production, life expectancy and literacy. But he said global comparisons put south Asia in a less favourable light in terms of poverty, literacy and health - the overlapping categories of marginalisation. The Ford Foundation had decided to concentrate its activity in future on the mainstream social and economic challenges faced by south Asia. He welcomed the workshop because of its concentration on issues of marginalisation and the role the media could play in addressing them.


Dilip Padgaonkar, Executive Managing Editor, Times of India said that sponsorship and commercial pressures meant that it was difficult to tell the difference between the truths, half truths and lies carried by the media. Entertainment had become the bugbear. But from the point of view of the print media he said there were encouraging changes in the newsrooms. There were more women staff and a greater sensitivity which could be a catalyst for change; writing on food was one example of this. He noted particularly a greater sensitivity in Marathi newspapers, reflecting a tradition of social reform in Maharashtra. But he said that change in the print media would have to come from readers making newsrooms aware of their concerns. Letters from listeners had an important influence on media planners and had helped in creating a sharp focus on changes in society.

Khushboo Sunder, TV and Film Actress, said that television portrayed only two kinds of women, the sari-clad heroine or the ‘bad woman’ - the vamp. But she said that in her own series the heroine was not a traditional woman. She stressed a need to present women as strong and fully able to manage both a family and a career. Women want to fight vicarious battles for their independence and rights; to be shown standing up to their mother in law for example. Cinema tended to reinforce stereotypes but the risks of portraying strong women were smaller on TV. TV viewership should be aimed at women and should also portray the problems they face from other women. She said that rural women do not believe in the stereotype of the ‘godlike husband’ - the ‘pati-devta’ myth.

Rajiv Kumar, DDG, Prasar Bharati, representing DG S.Y.Qureishi, affirmed the strong public broadcasting concerns of Prasar Bharati. Doordarshan had been overburdened by commissioning programmes from outside producers and it needed to go back to its core public service broadcasting commitment, bearing in mind that public service programmes have to compete with other channels. Rajiv Kumar said that Doordarshan was open to discussion of issues raised by workshop participants and other critics. These included concerns about the increasing commercial origination of public service programmes and about challenges to the independence of TV; it was also claimed that Doordarshan had rejected programmes on issues of major public interest such as communalism.

Jaya Ramanathan, Vice-President, Star India asked how realistic it was to expect private commercial media to report on development. She made a comparison with the ‘development page’ of newspapers: in television terms, such dedicated slots meant a loss of viewership, though development stories were now incorporated into news bulletins. But she said that private channels carried public service messages with inputs from NGOs and other agencies. There was such keen competition between them that sometimes they lost sight of the fundamental objective. Jaya Ramanathan concluded by saying that there was a responsibility on the part of viewers and civil society to ensure that public service broadcasting was maintained.

Kanak Dixit, Editor, Himal Magazine Kathmandu, underlined the need for monitoring which leads to a critique of the print media, television and the neglected medium of radio. At present, he said, such monitoring barely exists. One influence of film is that gestures defined externally are spreading all over south Asia - the so-called ‘Harlem gesture’ previously was not recognised in south Asia. For the international TV channels, audiences in Kathmandu as in Baluchistan or Dhaka were regarded as ‘add-on’ audiences by media planners. No consideration was given to their perspective. In times of instability, body language on TV was important; for example an interviewer’s ‘indulgent smile’ when interviewing someone from Pakistan created a dissonance which was a major problem. It was too much to expect that there could be a strong south Asian regional voice, but there were voices within India itself which could achieve much the same purpose. Zee TV took no account of the Nepalese market; for example the coverage of the hijack of IC814 had been unfair to the state of Nepal. It was in the advertisers’ interest to talk to Zee TV because this lack of awareness meant that they were losing out in an important market. The structure of the media was too far from the ground; the advent of regional TV was welcome but they were emulating the big channels when what was needed was greater localisation - ‘let a thousand TV channels bloom’. News, he said, was meant to be objective not to be dictated by the sentiments of the populace. Since satellite TV, the Indian intellectual critique of ‘cultural imperialism’ had disappeared .

Nayeemul Islam Khan of BCDJC (Bangladesh Centre for Development Journalism and Communication) Dhaka, commented that so far no Indian channel had taken any notice of the February 21st commemoration in Bangladesh of the language martyrs of 1952, although the day was recognised by the United Nations as International Mother Tongue Day, - a symbol of a common heritage and a basis of solidarity in south Asia.

Akhila Sivadas, Executive Director, Centre for Advocacy and Research, gave a vote of thanks to the speakers and welcomed delegates to the workshop with an outline of the programme for the following two days.

2030 - DINNER AT INDIAN INTERNATIONAL CENTRE

15 February 2002

0930-1100: Are the ELECTRONIC media responsive to Civil Society? - A Regional assesssment ?

Chairperson- Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM

Manju Thapa, Editor of Asmita, the Nepali women’s mgazine, explained that she had started a mediawatch column in the magazine which looked at the print media, TV and radio. Asmita was also producing a radio programme for Radio Sagarmatha on women’s issues and had begun TV monitoring of teleserials. She said many women ‘ do not find themselves in teleserials ’ which project the upper middle class. Fictional conflict leads to emulation of the bad characteristics of upper middle class families and discourages marriage. Post Beijing, Nepali media were ‘ a little more sensitive’ but journalists still did not have the concepts or the skill to project these issues. There was no feedback to media organisations. She was hoping to develop a specific programme and methodology to promote greater awareness in the media and civil society of these issues.

Nayeem ul Islam Khan of the Bangladesh Centre for Development Journalism and Communication outlined the work his organisation is doing to foster impartiality in the divided Bangladeshi media, particularly the press. As part of FEMA (the Fair Election Monitoring Alliance) it had appealed to the press to cover all the main political parties. In some cases, political leaders had not been covered at all by papers supporting their opponents. His own paper had abandoned regular editorials and had set out to be a forum for all points of view - summarising news covered in other papers and analysing content in particular fields like the environment and women’s representation.The paper had different editions for different regions but people also wanted regional problems to be known at a policy making level in Dhaka. Nayeem hosts a daily TV programme on Channel I which looks at news coverage and a weekly programme in which people are asked for their opinions on particular stories. As far as Bangladesh television is concerned, Nayeem thought that cumulatively the available channels do cover most stories, and there had been some innovative programming for adolescents and children on Ekushey TV. He argued that TV does engage with civil society but that monitoring and advocacy were still in their early stages and there was a need for more systematic work.

Dr Sunil Wijesiriwardena, Executive Director of Vibhavi, said that in Sri Lanka commercial TV programmes had been welcomed in the 1990s as ‘ different’ after years of a politicised, state controlled media and a deterioration of programme standards. But he argued that the electronic media were not responsive to civil society in Sri Lanka nor civil society to the electronic media. Civil society had been more active in the print media field. He had been a member of the Free Media Movement which had campaigned for less state control and greater freedom of expression. But electronic media personnel had not joined. In Sri Lanka now, he said, ‘young people cannot conceptualise an ad-free medium.... they think it would be boring.... they think they have to go with the commercialisation model’ Even when the licence fee was in operation, only 30% paid up, and why should they, he asked, for the kind of public service broadcasting represented by the state sector? They do not know that there are other models. Two years ago, the TV licence had been cancelled without any significant response from civil society. He had written a number of articles at that time without any effect. Dr Wijesiriwardena said that the practice of public service broadcasting was not well developed in Sri Lanka. Some SLBC radio broadcasters were fully committed to the concept, loved the broadcasting profession and had carried out valuable local experiments. But the media had been deeply politicised by the swing of the political pendulum between SLFP and UNP governments. The commercial stations had been welcomed and had the potential to become the mainstream model of public service broadcasting. But he expressed concern that citizens are now being treated as ‘one-dimensional consumers’. A large section of society was unhappy with the electronic media but did not respond to it in an organised way. There is currently little media monitoring, though there are big civil society networks which could be influential if they took up these issues. Changes were required in civil society to enable these issues to be addressed. Dr Wijesiriwardena said that the development NGO Sarvodaya was one organisation which through its work in 15,000 villages and its links with bigger networks. could carry out practical work to counter the influences of politicisation and commercialisation.

Rajiv Mehrotra, Managing Trustee, Public Service Broadcasting Trust, New Delhi, gave the background to the formation of the trust which he said had been ‘ born of the frustrations of a practitioner’ and a passionate belief in the capacity of the individual to make a difference. Looking at the generality of television output, there was a need to work harder to make interesting stories about issues that may not be immediately saleable, to encourage craft and technique and to create processes of accountability on the basis of regular media monitoring which were accepted by programme makers themselves. The idea of the trust had grown out of a regular meeting at the India International Centre to review programmes. It was designed to meet the need for an independent voice in media coverage of business, politics and the media itself and to provide some space for creative endeavour between the state on the one hand and commercial interests on the other. It had begun in the field of documentary, though he had been reminded that Public Service Broadcasting should also include cutting edge consumer programmes, children’s programmes and ‘public access’ programmes which were a means of addressing issues of marginalisation. With funding from the Ford Foundation meeting half the cost, PSBT had negotiated an hour a week on Doordarshan for documentaries from independents which it had commissioned. It had shown that ‘partnership rather than confrontation’ could pay dividends and that ‘ change is incrementally possible’ by this route. The discourse on public service broadcasting needed to shift away from development support programming to the wider aim of creating a plural public culture, which was accessible to the public, not talking down to it. The PSBT had taken a small step but one which he hoped would have wider repercussions.

Nitin Paranjape of Abhivaykti, a development and communications NGO working in Nasik, gave his view that a media model in which ‘ a few will produce and thousands will watch... will not work’. The electronic media were not responsive to civil society and the mission of Abhivaykti was ‘ to strengthen the voice of the voiceless’. It was trying to do this by producing low cost materials for dissemination to both children and parents’ groups, by providing a critique of the media and by engaging with the channels. It was making progress in the first two areas but not being very fruitful in the third.

As far as materials are concerned, Abhivaykti is building up an archive documenting important social struggles like the one against the Narmada dam. It is also making cassettes of songs and stories chronicling these kind of realities. In the second field, it has developed a Children’s Film Park, which meets on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month, and is intended to be an answer to TV. Now there are 12 organisations of parents showing films and trying to increase understanding of the medium and of social issues.

Abhivaykti is also providing courses in media training and criticism for students in 6th, 7th and 8th classes in some Nasik schools. Most children had seen Lagaan and most liked it. But they did not realise it bore little resemblance to historical reality. In the context of recent Indo-Pak tensions, most children favoured war. They found pleasure in defeating others. These are some of the dangers fostered by the media. Abhivaykti’s strategy for dealing with this was to encourage ‘localness’. ‘Their belief in localness is being destroyed’ said Nitin Paranjpye. No TV channel is local and there are few local newspapers in the interior. Educated young people were reluctant to go into agriculture. There is a need to strengthen the local, to build local experience and culture, value it, and to encourage diversity.

Reflecting on the presentations, Kiran Karnik said it was important to decide on what conceptual stance to take towards the media. Are programme makers giving the audience what they want? or are we in the business of re-engineering society and building taste? There were many examples of ‘good media getting a good audience’. Can we all be producers? What are we trying to achieve? And what difference will the internet make? Is there a danger that search engines will become monopoly providers like Doordarshan was before?

One option was to work towards the localisation of the media, for example through community radio. With localisation there were shorter correction times. Bigger organisations had longer feedback chains and longer correction times. But the cost and viability of localisation needed to be worked out. Pilot projects were one thing but could they be multiplied?

As far as coordinating the responses of civil society is concerned, Kiran Karnik said there were obvious advantages in tapping into organised groups. But in India, large numbers of groups are religious in character. Do we want to engage with them? Many of them do good work but what about their agendas? .

In his view, pamphleteering does not work. There were also dangers in tokenism. The important question was: how do you affect the mainstream? One way to do this was to increase the sensitivity of those already working in communication and Kiran Karnik endorsed the suggestion that there should be regular meetings to promote this aim.

1100-1130 Coffee

1130-1215 Introductory Presentation by CFAR- WHY Monitor the Media?

In this session, CFAR explained how it uses media monitoring as a research tool to measure and qualify the level of marginalisation or stereotyping that different groups in civil society, especially women and less-privileged groups, experience in the manner in which media treats the issues related to their lives.

Akhila Sivadas gave a brief history of the development of CFAR. It had begun work as the Media Advocacy Group in late 1992, a critical time when media and politics were ‘on the hinge’ and Satellite TV was in its very early stages. DD was still dominant, with its 6 kendras across the country, but the commercial and cable onslaught was about to begin. At that time, they were arguing that public service broadcasting was possible and women’s representation needed to be improved but they had ‘ not quite grappled with the challenge they were facing’. Everyone listened but there was no change. The real response was: ‘ You don’t know our business’ and in some sense that was right.

Their conclusion was that they needed to study the media more systematically. New 24 hour news channels had created an upsurge of political interest. Drawing initially on Swedish formats for broadcasting monitoring, they began to compare privatised and state-controlled news, setting benchmarks and looking at the entire way stories were crafted. How is hard and soft news constructed? What are the priorities? What does the viewer make of it? They began listener research and developed a methodology for different types of programmes - soap operas, panel discussions and chat shows and the mediation of public opinion around the electoral process. They also looked at how viewers relate to advertising in terms of individual values. Current approaches had grown out of these early steps.

Shubra Gupta, film and TV critic and member of the CFAR advisory committee focussed on responses to fictional programmes on TV. Viewing was not a passive act; viewers’ likes and dislikes were brought to bear in watching them. In that sense, TV was an inclusive medium and the popularity of fiction on TV made it powerful. The popularity of Hasratein had made it a catalyst for the discussion of issues of marital discord, in spite of the embarrassment the serial generated for many people. As with radio fiction, different viewers and listeners read the messages differently. The baseline for successful programmes was that of good story telling; all points of view matter and must be given weight.

Shailaja Bajpai gave a briefing on how CFAR had developed its election monitoring for India’s first multi-channel election in 1998. Their objective was to find out what difference the coverage had made - for the politicians and for the public. This involved drawing up a research and monitoring programme which involved detailed examination of the broadcasts and public responses to them. They had taped two weeks coverage on six channels and they looked at it quantitatively and qualitatively. Viewers’ forum members were asked to keep diaries. They were particularly interested in how satellite channels with largely middle class audiences covered the whole electoral universe and what sort of coverage was given to women.

The results were instructive. They showed that coverage had been extensive and very similar in character across the different channels. 70% was common; only 30% was different. Doordardshan had the most extensive coverage of India. TVi was good on the North East. Star did best on development issues. But there were omissions. The Congress and BJP dominated coverage, with 50% of the total, despite the fact that 43 recognised parties contested. There had been more coverage of regional parties in the 1999 election campaign.
There was a strong emphasis on personalities - Vajpayee, Advani and Sonia Gandhi. Because of Sonia Gandhi’s prominence the Bofors issue had been high on the agenda. The public tended to be featured in special programmes on issues like water and electricity. Star’s Village Voice programme provided regular coverage of such issues; there were also special programmes on Zee. Important issues were raised not by politicians but by ordinary people. But these ‘people’s concerns’ had tended to be compartmentalised; the ‘vox pop’ had been an essential but token element of programmes.

Responses from viewers were mixed. They were pleased at the extensiveness of election news but dissatisfied that politicians were not dealing with real issues. Women and young people felt they had been included more than before. DD’s campaign encouraging people to vote had worked.

From an advocacy point of view, it was positive that there were some programmes on women. But coverage needed to change. There was too much of the two parties bickering and not enough on social and economic realities. There needed to be more effort ‘ to bring politicians to account’ over these issues.

Commenting on the CFAR presentation, Latika Padgaonkar said she thought that politicians had learnt to use the media as they wanted. They had ‘played games with the public’. On programmes like Aap ke Adaalat, they were self-consciously adapting and playing to the cameras. TV coverage had quickly become a disappointment

Shangon Dasgupta of Communication for Development and Learning said that they had done some monitoring of the press, but the press had not been very interested in the results. Gargi Sen said that in analysing the media there was a need to be clear about the use of terminology. Chandita Mukherjee spoke of the need to understand the context in which programmes were made. Muneera Sen thought it important to focus on ‘apathy’ among the public and to analyse the role of image managers.

Akhila Sivadas said that CFAR had decided to target its advocacy on the Election Commission. CFAR had sought the cooperation of the channels in an awareness campaign among the middle classes who she said were often indifferent to their obligations as citizens. They had drawn attention to the fact that some channels had been glorifying criminal elements. As a result the Election Commission held a meeting to try to establish norms. Although CFAR’s suggested charter of demands had not been accepted, Akhila said ‘ if a point is well reasoned, it does count.’

1215-1330 Response from representatives of the media

Radhika Surajit, Producer, Jaya TV, Raj TV
Ajai Sinha, Ananda Films and Telecommunication Pvt. Ltd.
Nupur Basu, Correspondent, NDTV and documentary film maker
Ananya Chatterjee, Chief Producer, Tara Bangla.

Radhika Surajit said she had made programmes on classical dance, the environment and AIDS, which had been both popular and commercial. But she complained of mega-serials which she said were full of ‘negativity and perversion’ and ‘ totally men-dominated’. Their purpose was to make money and there was a neglect of real issues. The melodrama and negative characterisation of these serials had a damaging effect on family relationships and society. Chiti, a current mega-serial, was ‘an unbelievable success’ in the South, but worrying for its violence. Her own programme, shown at 10 am on Sundays, was popular with the public but it was difficult to find sponsors. She suggested that sponsors should be persuaded to ‘ put a proportion of their funding into better programmes.’ If programmes are good the channels would benefit. Parents were shocked that their children were growing up without even a simple knowledge of the elements of Indian culture. She was also concerned that channels were showing ‘porno stuff’ late at night. In her view, these kind of programmes should be censored.

Ajai Sinha, the director of Hasratein, said that people don’t have to watch programmes. ‘ If viewers are still watching a soap after one year, they must bear the responsibility.’ Warning of the pitfalls of TV censorship, he said that the problem with speed breakers was that their size was not decided by qualified people. It was the same with TV programmes; censorship by unqualified people created a vicious circle. Channels had to earn their bread and they were all trying to do something. His role as a director was ‘ taking people ahead of time’. 10 years ago, TV was ‘ brighter’ than today. In those days, the fate of a film was decided by the masses. In a reference to the theme of his latest soap opera he said that in discussing a relationship (based on a true story) between a sister in law and brother in law, he was not advocating the practice but recognising that the world has many bad aspects and seeing it as tragedy.

Nupur Basu of NDTV challenged the view that civil society is not represented in the media She referred to coverage by Star TV of rural problems and of the situation in Gujarat one year after the earthquake and argued that people under-estimated how much had been achieved by the new TV channels. ‘Zilch is unfair’ she said, referring to various negative comments from around the workshop. The Tirulnelveli firing had been given two column inches in the newspapers but television had investigated it fully. There were other examples. She stressed the benefits of the independent news channels; there should be no going back to government censored news. But there were problems of commerce and commodification. In many channels and newspapers, the iron curtain between editorial and marketing was disappearing, though it was still there in NDTV. There was also a certain ‘ cosiness with politicians’ which was allowing them to run away with the media. These were trends which needed to be countered. ‘Let us not tolerate media illiteracy’ she said.

Ananya Chatterjee said she shared Kanak Dixit’s view of TV as an ‘imperialistic medium’. Fears of homogenisation were real. Indeed it had ‘happened partially’. The character of youth had changed as a result of exposure to certain kinds of programmes. In her view, ‘ TV cannot be democratic. It has to follow the market or it won’t survive.’ She said: ‘We have to take cultural imperialism because of the cost of the technology’... ‘Radio is much more democratic that TV.’ On TV ratings in her home state of West Bengal, she said the problem was that they were ‘only Calcutta-based’. She had made a programme which was very popular in the districts but it had been taken off the air because it did not get highTRPs in Calcutta. There is a need for much more feedback to the channels from civil society.

Ananya had previously worked with Tvi for 5 years and had been able to do all sorts of programmes with them which were not possible on other channels. Why had Tvi folded? She put it down to poor marketing skills. It was not enough to have good intentions and good craft. You need good marketing to get a good civil response.

In discussion, Gargi Sen said she thought the main problem was that ‘ we are not organised’. Revenue need not only come from the government or the market. Other initiatives were possible. Dr Suresh said ‘ perhaps we will be forced to engage with the media’. It was a matter of finding ‘ the chinks and holes in media organisations’, to understand how they work. This was an area in which advertising agencies could help. There was also a need to capitalise on existing pressure groups, to bring them into media campaigns. Film stars could also be a means of attracting attention to a cause.

D.K.Bose, formerly with Ogilvy and Mather, made the point that extending TRPs to the rural areas would cost ‘ 30 to 40 crores of rupees’. He also said he preferred the term ‘Research’ to ‘Monitoring’. A monitor puts space between self and viewer and does not do justice to the viewing experience.

1330-1430 Lunch


1430-1630 Practical Group Monitoring Exercises-

Chairperson: D.K.Bose, President, Rural Communication, O&M.

Analysis of clips of TV footage centring on issues of marginalisation, dis-empowerment, gender roles were provided for analysis. This included clips from news and current affairs programs as well as from TV fiction. The workshop broke up into three groups to consider a selection of clips and reported back in the plenary session.

Simantini Dhuru reported on how her group had reacted to a BBC World TV report on the first anniversary of the Gujarat earthquake. The piece had combined three separate stories: a report from a school where girls were doing emergency drill and the headmistress boldly criticised government for not doing enough, a report from Anjar where people were protesting about their conditions, and another on efforts at rebuilding which brought out differences between town and country. The group felt that the piece ‘ looked like a quick job’. It did not provide much detail and there was no use of data. The emphasis was on people who were complaining. Positive news, for example that no child had missed her exams, despite the upheaval, was not highlighted. The group felt it was a missed opportunity, a half told story, an outsider’s view made for an international audience.

Chandita Mukherjee, reporting on her group’s assessment of the fiction clips, said that ‘they might have all come from one serial’. There was a sameness to them which was ‘fatiguing’. The women ‘ seemed to be under the control of men, struggling to assert themselves.’ The only oasis of difference was the Bengali clip in which the viewer was drawn into an intimacy with the characters which was refreshing and unusual.

16 February 2002

0930-1100: Presentation continues - CFAR response - the role of methodology.

Akhila Sivadas analysed the clips and commented on reactions to them as a means of highlighting how CFAR does its own research. With the help of a video, she also illustrated the role of the Viewers’ Forum in CFAR’s work.

In judging a news story, it was important to study a bulletin over a period of time in order to place it in context. In general, she said, in international bulletins ‘ Asia is projected as an area of strife - rich, variegated, challenging and with a volatile past.’ India watchers should not be underestimated. Many of them were of a high calibre. A responsible methodology involved looking at the consistency of the story and working from the text. Analysing the earthquake story, she said it focussed on ‘people’ rebuilding their lives. There were a number of vignettes of people. In the first sequence, the voice of the teacher criticising lack of action by government ‘clinched everything’. Throughout ‘the dominant theme’ was the child. Advocacy was strong. ‘The grit of civil society is reflected’. At the same time, it was ‘an outside view’. Everything was coalesced - urban, rural, young, old. The piece ‘ projects the stoic Indian and takes away agency in some sense’. Akhila did not agree that it was ‘a quickie’ but she thought there was inconsistency of treatment. It touched on rehabilitation but not in detail. ‘If you touch on it, you should be responsible’ she said.

She regarded the CNN story about Islam and women’s rights as ‘ very problematic’. Post September 11th, women’s issues had been ‘ further wracked’. Every single paragraph on women’s rights had been reopened. For this particular story, a westerner had been brought in deliberately to replace the normal, capable, Muslim presenter. The whole story had been ‘ handled like trapezing’.

Akhila then made a short presentation, with video illustrations, on the development of CFAR’s work and the role of the Viewers’ forum in generating consumer responses to the media and in advocacy with the channels. She stressed the importance of study and data in all media monitoring exercises. In dealing with the mass media, she stressed the need to distinguish between different points of view and between different levels of government. It was a dialectical struggle in which the activist had to be able to conduct an internal check with an awareness of her own intellectual baggage. The monitor should be prepared to negotiate as viewer to viewer and not make assumptions about him or her. The individual voice cannot be stifled in TV; producers are themselves subject to stress and insecurity. A dialogue with the industry had to be conducted as an open debate not in accordance with a party line.

Dr Suresh warned that one should not ‘fetishise objectivity’ but ask why people do things, and be prepared to see the common elements in subjective viewpoints .

Gargi Sen approved CFAR’s efforts to develop a rigorous methodology. She said if you go to the Press Council, you need real data. It is not sufficient to be reflecting the personal opinion of five or ten women.

D.K.Bose said that the media researcher or scientist should know the context in which a programme is made and be able to interpret the creativity which goes into it, the mindset and the body language. The two other levels of analysis were the images projected and the words used and how they are received by the viewing public.

1100-1130- Coffee

1130-1300: Exploring Different Approaches to Advocacy: Sharing Experiences

Chairperson- Urvashi Butalia, Co Founder, Kali for Women

Speakers:
Muneera Sen, Director, Madhyam
Sazzad Hossain, Bangladesh Centre for Development Journalism and Communication
S. Thiruchandran, Director, Women’s Education and Research Centre, Sri Lanka
K.Bharati, All India Democratic Women’s Organisation, Chennai
Dr Suresh, People Union for Civil Liberties
Gargi Sen, Director , Magic Lantern Foundation
Chandita Mukherjee, Director, Comet Media Foundation

Muneera Sen explained that Madhyam is involved in cultural action in eight states. It works with folk artists, a very marginalised community, and does advocacy for them, with DD and elsewhere. Madhyam also produces a journal. It has produced 9 films on issues like child rights and AIDS. She also contributed a column on women and law for the Times of India which ran for three and a half years.

More recently, Madhyam has been making spots on child enrolment in schools to be shown on Star and Sony. Muneera underlined the need to have systems in place to deal with responses to any major public campaign of this kind. An earlier initiative by Jerry Pinto of UNICEF, setting up a child line, had fallen down in this area and the damage was still being felt.

Madhyam is attempting to make ‘strategic interventions’ with the media. There are some sensitive disc jockeys working on radio in Bangalore and they are one promising area. They are holding events to reach young people. They are also trying to ‘ conscientise’ serial makers. They are planning seminars with advertisers and channels. They are also targeting media training institutes.

Sazzad Hossain of the BCDJC outlined its work in supporting journalistic freedom and ensuring protection of journalists from harassment. For the 2001 parliamentary elections, they had held media colloquiums for journalists in different parts of the country and produced a code of conduct. They had also monitored media coverage of the campaign.

At the moment, there is no mechanism in Bangladesh for reflecting viewers’ opinions. They plan to form a Media Consumers Club to reflect the views of audiences. They are working on a project on gender issues to ensure greater involvement of women in the media. They plan to start a newsletter and to build a countrywide network.

Selvy Thiruchandran spoke about the work of the Sri Lanka Women’s Education and Research Centre. They produce a journal called Vivodini. They do media research. They promote interraction with producers. They have developed a code of ethics for producers in collaboration with the channels. Under the previous government, they planned but did not conduct training programmes with managers. They hope to get these going under the new government as a result of negotiations with the new chairman of Rupavahini. Their work on television has included a film about violence against women which was shown on Rupavahini. In Sri Lanka’s ethnically divided society, which is neither homogeneous nor necessarily progressive, there is a problem identifying what constitutes ‘civil society’. There are also important issues around ‘freedom of speech’. How far should it go? There are professors of mathematics and prominent lawyers talking racist language.

In Sri Lanka only 2% speak English. BBC and CNN don’t have a wide impact. Her centre’s priority is to monitor local productions. There is no real monitoring and analysis of ethnic or racist issues in the local media. She is hoping to form a group in Sri Lanka to meet and discuss these issues.

K.Bharati talked about AIDWA’s work monitoring serials in South India. She referred to the most recent success among the mega serials - CHITI - which had stopped the traffic. There was even a case of a woman burning herself to death because her husband had switched off the set.

AIDWA had serious concerns about advertising. There was a high level of viewership for the satellite channels in Tamilnadu but this wide audience was not involved in the ideological debate. There were women in South India who were buying a tin of Farex powdered milk and making it last for three months.

AIDWA had done a survey in the districts about the serials. It believed that the Film Censor Board should be more sensitive in awarding certificates. AIDWA was concentrating on students and trying to improve their media literacy.

Dr Suresh of PCCL, Chennai, described the media as ‘our protection against police harassment’. He said in many respects Tamil Nadu was ‘a police state’ and the media could play an important role in setting the discourse and agenda and creating ‘a democratic landscape’. He referred in particular to the role of the media in exposing the role of the police in the Tirulnelveli massacre on 17 September 1997. The Justice Mohan report had brought this out and provided a trigger for a dialogue with the media.

Dr Suresh spoke of the need to ‘ unlearn’ certain attitudes towards the media in order to create a new relationship with it - or as he put ‘ to allow the self to meet the self of the producers’. At the moment, the media was not playing as full a role as it could. For example, caste conflict in Tamil Nadu had been ‘ so intense’ in recent years but had gone largely unreported. An analysis of coverage of the place of dalits in society revealed that they were largely featured as victims not as protagonists. ‘How long to do you want to keep dalits as victims?’ he asked.

He also spoke of the widening gulf in the language of different generations and the role of the media in creating it. He had recently gone on a long car journey with his 9 year old daughter and two 18 year old law students. ‘There was no common language’. This was an urgent problem that needed to be addressed.

Gargi Sen of Magic Lantern gave an account of the organisation’s work in Uttar Pradesh since its inception in 1987. It began in the rights field, working with dalits, taking videos round the villages, showing films like Anand Patwardhan’s ‘ Bombay humara shehr hai’. It had then moved on to critiquing satellite TV and the passivity which TV inculcates and trying to create new spaces for other voices. It had sponsored a number of travelling film festivals from the 1980s onwards which also covered other states.

One problem in arguing for new spaces and new kinds of media is the lack of data on the views of rural audiences. ‘Nobody has the figures’. Dalits themselves are often misrepresented and misunderstood.

For the future, Magic Lantern has a three point strategy: :
1) Alternative Media Times - a way of critiquing the media, produced in English but its views more widely disseminated through links with the regional press.
2) Improving distribution - recognising that marketing is important. This is an area which has proved very difficult to get right.
3) Media education. They are taking a campus initiative in Delhi - the aim being to educate students on ‘ how to see TV’.

Chandita Mukherjee of the Comet Media Foundation began by highlighting what she saw as a fundamental difficulty in carrying forward the kind of work being done by organisations represented at the workshop - the problem of finding members of the younger generation to take up these issues.

The Comet Media Foundation works largely in films but it has also used low-cost media - for example slide shows with Anjali Monteiro. She also commended the work of Avehi in Bombay which has been bringing media makers and users together. Avehi has a ‘non-book’ library which has been built up over twenty years and which contains maps, charts, streetplays and other material. There are about 350 members of the library.

Recently, the Foundation have been promoting Development Resource Fairs - known as Bal Vidya - which take up a theme and offer alternative approaches to education. They offer workshops on alternative systems of education, a film festival, book releases. They attract a good audience (12,000 people attended the last one) and good media coverage. Future fairs will take up health and environment themes.

Looking to strategy for the future, Chandita suggested that there needs to be a shift of focus away from the state, given its diminishing role, and towards the market, which is now the key mechanism. The market can create new spaces and ‘we could make a greater difference now’ she said. But it might involve a different approach. ‘If people are being portrayed as consumer groups, we need to get into consumer groups’. The media is also a product sensitive to market pressures.

Chandita spoke of a number of pressure groups which could influence the new market. Apart from consumer cooperatives, gender activists and human rights activists, there were parent-teacher associations whichcould help to make a difference in schools. ‘Advocacy has to be a part of schooling’ she said. It would also be useful to work with producers on content ( many had tried to do this already but more could be done), and with advertisers. Other avenues were local cable channels participatory programmes and phone-in programmes. Work also needed to be done, as Dr Suresh had suggested, on the projection of ‘victims’.

Lastly, she spoke of the larger context of programme viewing and cautioned against paternalism. ‘Media beyond intentionality, beyond message’ needed to be explored, and the right vehicle created for generating a response. ‘It is power relations - mediating the disadvantaged - which is the essence of what we are addressing’ she concluded.

In opening the discussion, Urvashi Butalia highlighted a number of priorities - among them the need for a constructive dialogue with the channels, rather than overdeveloped criticism; human rights and safeguards for journalists, especially in times of conflict; and the need to move beyond monitoring on gender towards a sustainable and replicable system where the levers of influence were less arbitrary. Anita De spoke about the projection of disability in the media as an add-on category in the rubric of gender and marginalisation. The metaphor ‘ being a woman is a form of disability’ ignored the reality of being disabled and should be avoided. She said that there were ‘multiple levels of disability’ affecting women and dalits as well as the physically disabled. She regretted that a promising dialogue over a three month period with the producers of Kaun Banega Crorepati, on the involvement of people with disabilities, had been stopped without producing results. Ananya Chatterjee, commenting on the suggestion that more work could be done with Vjs and Djs, said she did not think they had much say in what they wore or said. Simantini Dhruva spoke about her work for Avehi on media education in schools in Mumbai over the previous 12 years. Important concerns about caste, class and gender were raised in schools. She took the story of the Ganesh images drinking milk - which had been picked up and shown in London and relayed back to India - as an example of the role of the media in promoting and developing a story. She said that developing an awareness of this process should be an integral, not an occasional, part of the schools’ agenda.

Kanak Dixit said ‘we neglect radio at our peril’. Radio had the ability to address community and locality more economically and more effectively than television which was very expensive and for the most part focussed on the nation state. There was a theory that a diversified radio network would undermine the nation state, but in Nepal, which he described as the weakest of the south Asian nation states, radio had been released to the public without destroying the state. Local radio was cheap and its staff were easily trained. It was not helpful to think of South Asia just in terms of 7 nations - it was in fact a sub-continent of 17 regions, all with distinct linguistic and other media needs. For both television and radio, localisation was the answer to those needs. Pre-recorded video programmes could have evolved into localised programmes, but video was destroyed by satellite TV. Commenting on the visual media, Kanak said he believed documentary had a key role to play. The Himal-sponsored South Asia documentary film festival and travelling film festivals were an atttempt to fill a gap. ‘The public is there; the grammar is known to the public’. What was needed was to increase the receptivity of the public to non-fiction.

Gargi Sen said: ‘ Don’t forget cable’. It had considerable potential to serve community but had not developed this role. David Page pointed out that the consolidation of cable services had restricted the space for local cable channels which had earlier been created by local cable operators. In conclusion Akhila Sivadas noted that TV channel executives were averse both to the idea of doing any favours and to open public negotiations.
1300-1400 Lunch

1400-1530 How can the Commercial Media be responsive to the public interest? A professional response.

Chairperson: David Page
D.K.Bose, Consultant, Development Communication, Ogilvey and Mather.
B.Narayanaswami, President , Indica Research.
Santosh Desia, Senior VP ( Strategic Planning), McCann-Erickson India Ltd.

D.K.Bose asked if there were media that were not commercial? If the commercial media do not serve the public interest, they will die, he said. Looking at how media are funded, he said that ‘ subscription does not generally pay’, though the Readers Digest was a prominent exception to this rule. Most media survive through advertising. As to the channels, they want participation, he said, and they might well be susceptible to media pressure to shoulder their corporate responsibility to the community. In the USA, rankings are published for corporate philanthropy and something similar could be attempted in India.

B.Narayanaswamy spoke about media perceptions of public needs. The media are ‘extremely responsive to consumer interests’, he said. Everything was measured in terms of ‘eyeballs’ and ‘ eyeball hang time’. But there was ‘ a disconnect between what media management thinks the public wants and what they actually want’.

Narayanaswamy identified a number of trends and made some suggestions. One trend was towards the global consolidation of the media into 5 huge companies and the development of sophisticated means of selling things to the viewer. He maintained that the media could be more responsive to civil society ‘ if they knew that they were unresponsive’. There is a problem of communication with the media which needs to be addressed. ‘ You need to be on the same kick’, he said, if you are to make your points successfully, and he mentioned three key areas for development: research, strategy and spin.

Santosh Desai said that the media and its critics tended to live in self-contained worlds: ‘ one world hides and the other berates’. The challenge was to build a bridge between them. The question was: what brings about change? His view was that India was going through a process of ‘televisionisation’. This was not just about content. ‘TV changes the consumer’, he said. Unlike the print world, which ‘hierarchises’ and hands down opinion, TV ‘individualises’, short circuiting that hierarchy. TV is about the ‘democracy of desire’. It gives primacy to individual desire and promotes the ‘self-confidence of consumption’.

Santosh Desai said that ‘ change is best accepted when you expand tradition’, as in the ‘arranged love marriage’. ‘ It is possible to co-opt anything if you salute the flag’, he said. He then gave a further elaborate and amusing example: the Indianisation of the nightie. This had been sold to Indian consumers as a new ‘freedom from shape’, a development of the maxi-smock and not of the negligee. In the same way traditional religious bhajans had been incorporated into film. Modernity, he concluded, is a negotiated, expanded form of tradition. In the same way, ‘ if democracy is to work with reality, it is important to build on the existing pillars of society’. He said it was not useful to pronounce judgement on this process; it was better to understand the mechanics of reality and to strengthen the counterpoint between modernity and tradition.

Gargi Sen said that the market was very often a dictator rather than an instrument. It promoted a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and made one take sides ‘ for’ or ‘against’. This was an area of widespread concern and debate. She wondered if there might be common approaches to marketing which called on ‘ our experience’ and ‘your expertise’. At present, she said the marketing sector was not creative in this field. There was a great variety of experience in India which was not tapped by the market. Nupur Basu objected to the irrational use of women in advertising products - for example why does an electric fan turn into a woman? Anita De observed that advertising requires perfection and ignores the fact that there are many different kinds of woman.

1530-1600 Tea

1600-1730 Concluding session

In the final session, participants gave their impressions of the workshop and looked to possible future areas of collaboration. It was agreed that it had been useful to bring together a range of organisations with a common interest in engaging with the media. The workshop demonstrated that though the new satellite media are an increasingly powerful influence on the lives of South Asians as yet civil society has only been responding to new media developments in a very piecemeal fashion. One positive outcome of the workshop was a sense of future possibilities which came from the special chemistry generated by mix of organisations involved.

There was much interest in the work of CFAR and appreciation for its contribution to the workshop. Several participants hoped there would be opportunities to work more closely with CFAR in future. CFAR expressed its own interest in extending its working relationships. It is already attempting to doing some South Asia-wide research and hopes to work more closely in future with some of the participants from other countries.

No formal resolutions were passed but it was agreed that an e-mail server list would be set up to keep participants in touch with each other.

End.