Program #404
"Human Rights in the Media"
Host: Charlayne Hunter-Gault
TRT: 26:33
May 14, 1996

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Principal funding for "Rights & Wrongs" has been provided by The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Open Society Institute. Globalvision presents "Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Hello, I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault. This week on "Rights & Wrongs," the media and human rights. What's missing from the picture? Media watchdog Noam Chomsky will talk about it...

NOAM CHOMSKY: Like, let the media pick their favorite example of their courage. Okay, and we look at that one, find that that itself is a case of selling out to heavy interests....

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Jackson Browne will sing about it...

JACKSON BROWNE (LYRICS): Famine and disaster right in front of you. And the more you watch the less you do...

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And we'll hear from two of the world's best-known media moguls, Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner.

TED TURNER: So, I'm, you know, I'm one of them, you know. I'm one of these do-gooders, and I'm going to keep on doing it. And if the people don't watch the U.N. Programming on CNN, we're going to keep on running it.

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Globalvision presents "Rights & Wrongs: human rights television."

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In 1948, most nations in the world, including the United States, adopted the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Article 19, it upheld principles of free expression, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and, significantly, the right to receive information. But what happens when there is less information about the world to receive, especially on television, when experts say we may be watching more, but learning less? Is there a right to know? That is one of the underlying principles of democracies and of journalism. But in a world that is changing both rapidly and fundamentally, how well is that principle being preserved, especially when it comes to the issue of human rights, which is taking on a new urgency in an era of increasing ethnic, religious, and political conflict?

VARIOUS PEOPLE AT PARTY: Right here? Stand by...Hey, there he is.

TED TURNER: Now you are... I've met you before, haven't I?

ANDY ROONEY: You've taken a lot of pictures of me.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Here in one room, on one stage, are America's best-known TV journalists. Usually they're fierce competitors, but tonight they're cooperating, joining together to support a human rights cause, the work of the committee to protect journalists, or C.P.J., which defends reporters at risk. In 1995 alone, 51 journalists were killed in the line of duty. Bill Orme runs the committee.

BILL ORME: We rarely in the American news business think about the problems facing our colleagues abroad, and we're very lucky to have this chance to address this audience, and if you have to put on a tux to do it, we'll take that chance.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): But while the media establishment defends press freedom, there's been a falloff of coverage of human rights issues that these same reporters take so many risks to cover.


ANDREW TYNDALL: Over the last six, seven years, because of a cutback in their foreign bureaus, the networks have reduced the amount of overseas coverage on their nightly news almost in half.


CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Media analyst Andrew Tyndall monitors network news for an industry newsletter to determine what gets reported and how much time is devoted to each story.


ANDREW TYNDALL: The single overseas beat that gets coverage is when the United States troops are involved in war. That gets the networks to mobilize all their resources to go overseas. We saw it in Iraq, we saw it in... we see it now in Bosnia, we saw it in Somalia. There's crisis there, there's bloodshed, there's, there's violence, there's military pride at stake, and it gets headlines. What doesn't get the coverage are the human rights abuses which often lead to war, and the humanitarian disaster that often follows war.


CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): This trend is increasingly global.


PATRICE BARRAT: BBC, its coverage of international affairs, news and documentaries, has decreased by 40% over the last three years. Channel 4 in the U.K.. also, 15%. And this is a global trend. In every country, we devote less and less programming to what's happening elsewhere.

LOCAL NEWS (V.O.): Riot police respond in Quebec, Canada...

LOCAL ANCHOR (V.O.): And that story tops tonight's world watch...

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Local news programs, which are often the most popular, now cover the world, but usually like a headline hit parade, just a few seconds per story.

LOCAL NEWS (V.O.): ...and that's your world in a minute.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): On many stations there is no international coverage at all, according to monitoring by the Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a citizens group. This study of local news on 100 stations on one day in September 1995 found that only 4% of the news is international, and that 40% of the stations carried no news of the world. Less than 1% of the coverage dealt with human rights issues or organizations like the U.N.. that are dedicated to upholding human rights. At CNN, the only network that has expanded international coverage, the man at the top, Ted Turner, believes that, to interest Americans, you have to jam it down their throats.

TED TURNER: If the people don't watch the U.N. programming on CNN, we're going to keep on running it. You know, I... (laughter) cause we're going to do the right thing. (applause) That's right. We'll shove it down their throats. We'll shove it down their throats. That's.. (laughter) ...that's exactly right.
I'll run it. I'll keep on running it. I'll run little, itty-bitty pieces, you know, between... I'll say... "Here's the world... news from the U.N.., and then we'll go right back to the O.J. Simpson trial," you know, but... (laughter) You know, like the pill-- put it in a little orange juice, you know, and give it to your kids.


IAN WILLIAMS: It's because the "Times/Mirror" poll back in April showed that 70%, 60%, 70% of Americans not only care about the U.N.., but they support it. And what you mean is the political classes in Washington and the media that take their agenda from the Beltway, they don't care about it. They're completely antipathetic to it. I've been approached by about four or five different American journalists a week who tell me that they've been sent by their editors to do the waste, mismanagement, and corruption story at the U.N.., and it's the same story.
It just keeps getting recycled.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Ian Williams, the President of the U.N.. Correspondents Association, says another problem is that some American media rarely report other countries' criticisms of U.S. policy.

IAN WILLIAMS: They tend to reflect the popular political agenda.
They'd much prefer what the State Department says to what comes from the United Nations. If there's two alternative views, a U.N.. view and the State Department view, the State Department view is what they carry.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Here at the State Department, there are also criticisms, mostly about episodic, hit-and-run coverage of human rights crises. John Shattuck is Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights.

JOHN SHATTUCK: I think the danger, of course, always is that this is so ephemeral. It only lasts for a short period of time, and then the cameras are gone, and the real hard work of trying to do something about the situation remains.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): It's hard to do that when news organizations are closing overseas bureaus or assigning reporters to parachute from one crisis to another. Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Roy Gutman says that journalists need time to dig out the real stories.

ROY GUTMAN: I mean, I know a lot of reporters, particularly in television, who went from Bosnia to Somalia to Rwanda, back to Bosnia, and frankly, I think I'd go mad if that happened because I couldn't do any one of them well, and I'd do all of them very superficially.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Another question: do political considerations affect coverage? Media owner Rupert Murdoch refused to discuss his decision to drop BBC news from his satellite in Asia because of Beijing's objection to human rights reporting. He was asked about his dealings with China at a New York media conference.

RUPERT MURDOCH: No, I don't think I want to talk about that. (laughter) Every time I do, I get into trouble.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Even when there is TV attention to human rights stories, it's often driven more by images than information.
Some experts say viewers find it confusing, even numbing.

ROBERT DEUTSCH: You can get a knee jerk reaction from the visuals. People could go, "Oh, that's terrible!" but if you have no way to interpret and understand what's happening in a deeper sense, then that emotional reaction fades very quickly, very quickly.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Anthropologist Robert Deutsch does what he calls deep research with focus groups like these.

ROBERT DEUTSCH: Much of news, local and national, is not really news per se, no matter what the format is, no matter what the real intent is. It's very deceiving. It looks like news. It looks informative. It has all the entrapments--the logos, the music, the studio set, the elite anchors, the guru-expert commentators--and everything is set up to say, "this is the story." When we only have the official story, there is so much of the detail, so much of the nuance, so much of the subtlety that makes up meaning extracted that all we have is a cartoon, really, a twice-removed cartoon of what is really going on.

V.O. ANNOUNCE: You are watching "Rights & Wrongs: human rights television."

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Next we turn to a critic of TV news who rarely appears on television, and yet is considered one of the most provocative analysts of media coverage of human rights. He's not a journalist, but he's written many books and articles about the media. He is Noam Chomsky, a distinguished linguistics professor at M.I.T. We recently spoke with him at his Cambridge office.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Why should the public be interested in human rights and the media?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That's like asking why should the public be interested in questions like freedom and justice and torture and terror and so on. I mean, that's just the domain of any human being who regards themselves as a moral person.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Tell me your assessment of how the media cover human rights, the U.S. media in particular.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Take what just happened in Lebanon. Israel invaded Southern Lebanon, killed about 150 people, drove about half a million out of their homes, destroyed much of the infrastructure. What was the reason? Well, the reason was supposed to be that they were defending themselves against rockets fired by Hezbollah in violation of the 1993 agreement. Even the press itself has reported that that's not true.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So you're... but the press is reporting it. So what's the problem?

NOAM CHOMSKY: See, the facts are actually reported, but not seen. You have to remember-- "Wait a minute, there was a little item here, there was a little item there."

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But the press condemnation of this attack on the civilians has been widespread.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Has been zeroed. What they said is it went too far. The press did not condemn...

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But they reported it.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, look, you know, if somebody is really a media addict, like if you spend 20 hours a day reading the newspapers, filing them, remember what was said in some small item six months ago, and so on, yeah, then you can probably sort of put together a picture of what's happening.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you have other examples outside of this very dicey conflict?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Many. You pick it. I mean, there are thousands of pages...

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Bosnia, Rwanda...

NOAM CHOMSKY: Bosnia and Rwanda are a little bit different because these are among the few examples of atrocities where you cannot accuse the United States of primary responsibility for it. Correspondingly, they were covered. We're... the press does a fine job of covering other people's atrocities. I mean, probably the same is true of "Pravda." I'm sure it covered other people's atrocities reasonably well. I don't read it, but I imagine.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: I think the press was very critical of the United States for its lack of involvement in Bosnia.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, but notice what happened. Here you could blame it on someone else-- you know, horrible Serb peasants. So everybody is outraged--somebody else did an atrocity. And then you can say, "Look, we're not doing anything about it, isn't that terrible, but I have nothing to say about what we ought to do."

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But the press reported all of that.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Virtually none of this.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Oh, yeah. It was reported.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Did they report the numbers killed? Did they report the fact that U.S. forces were using massive force because of U.S. military doctrine, which is different from that of every other country, which is why we don't have peacekeepers?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Are you saying that the media in general only buy the government line, that they protect media interests? I mean, what is your basic point here?

NOAM CHOMSKY: About the media?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mm-hmm.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The basic point is that the media behave pretty much as you would expect them to on very elementary free-market assumptions. The media are huge corporations selling a product-- namely, audiences-- to other businesses. They are all very closely linked to state power, because corporate power and state power are closely linked. So not surprisingly, huge corporations, selling audiences to other businesses, and linked to other sectors of power, will present a picture of the world that reflects the interests and needs of their constituency. If that were not the case, it would be shocking. Now, when you say, "did the media always do this?", of course not. There are other things. It's a complicated system. So there are journalists with personal integrity, plenty of them. It's not like a total monolith. Nothing works that way.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Also journalism is not a science. I mean, it's been said that journalists write the rough draft of history. I mean, they're not historians. They're not social scientists.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, first of all, history is not very different. I mean, I'm talking about media because that's the discussion.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And you're saying all of this is because of corporate interests?

NOAM CHOMSKY: It's because of the self-interest of the institutions who are deciding what gets reported. I mean, you know, they have an interest.
If you're a big business or... Within the corporate system, there's no interest in having this stuff appear.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, how do you account for the public's knowing about these things.

NOAM CHOMSKY: About which things?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: About many of the things that you have talked about.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The public knows almost nothing about these things.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, you know.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Because, as I say, if you're a fanatic and you really work at it and you use plenty of other sources, which are available...

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is there some cabal, some conspiracy, some group of people who meet in the media and decide these things?
I mean, how does it...

NOAM CHOMSKY: They don't have to meet, any more than corporations have to meet to decide to spend whatever it is, a trillion dollars a year, on marketing to try to stimulate artificial wants and control the market share.
They don't have to meet to do that, that's their nature. That's the institutional structure.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the reporters who work under these people, none of them... they just go along blindly, not...

NOAM CHOMSKY: No, some of them are very aware of it.
Many of them... in fact, some of the best-known investigative reporters would be much more critical of the media than I am. They don't say it publicly often because, you know, obvious reasons. I'll bet there are people all through the media for whom what I just said would seem mild.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What's your... is there a solution?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Sure there's a solution. We should have democratic media.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And what would that mean? How would that work?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Democratic media? First of all, it would be public, not private, because private makes private tyranny. And it would be through community participation, with an informed public creating and supporting its own media in a democratic fashion. We know... we're supposed to understand what democracy means.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is that doable in this society?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Why not? I mean, was it doable to get rid of slavery? yeah. It wasn't easy, you couldn't do it with a, you know, flick of the wrists.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Noam Chomsky's criticisms of the media have stirred public debate about coverage of human rights, and also stimulated discussion among professional journalists. Longtime media watcher J. Max Robins is a senior editor at "TV guide."

J. MAX ROBINS: I think when working journalists who are part of these establishment news organization hear Chomsky's critique, almost as if there's this conspiracy going on, that what these reporters are doing is somehow in lockstep with the government, with whatever, with corporate America, I think they don't buy it. I think they see something very, very different going on, and in fact, a lot of the meat and potatoes of what they do is to critique these institutions. But I don't think there's somebody picking up a phone and calling down to some line producer on "ABC World News Tonight," saying, "Hey, I don't like the way you guys are covering the crisis in the Middle East-- cut it out." Look at the coverage of O.J. Simpson. That was... it seemed like that was the only story on the three evening newscasts last year, and it obscured many important stories about human rights, human rights abuses around the world. In that sense, I guess Chomsky does have a point, but I think you're talking about a bigger problem in the world of journalism, period; that we as journalists do have to be thinking more expansively to give a broader, more honest picture of the world.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: While the debate over professor Chomsky's critique will no doubt continue, some producers are already working on creating more democratic media. We'll showcase some examples from all over the world when we return.

V.O. ANNOUNCE: "Rights & Wrongs" is now on-line. Please be in touch with us by e-mail, and visit our internet site on the world wide web.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: All over the world, innovative producers are initiating democratic media projects, TV programs, video training projects, and comprehensive news coverage on the internet. Much of the focus is on human rights issues. Some of the programs are interactive. Patrice Barrat works for InterNews, an organization that helps people in conflict zones tell their own stories to each other first, and then to international audiences. They use a new technology called picture-tel to let people in different countries connect with each other.

PATRICE BARRAT: We discovered there was a technology called compressed video, video conferencing that enabled us to connect people directly from where the places they're living, from two ends... different ends of the planet that allow us to give them time-- time to discover each other visually, talking to each other from the real places.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): They created a show called "vis-a-vis," which allows people living through wars to share experiences. Here's an example of "vis-a-vis" which features a teenager in Belfast, Northern Ireland, talking to a teenager in Sarajevo about their common experiences with war.

REPORTER 1 (V.O.): Belfast, Northern Ireland: after 25 years of conflict between Catholics and Protestants, the city has now been at peace for just a few months. Kyra, nearly 18, is a catholic. She mixes with Protestants in one of Belfast's rare integrated schools. (sound of touch-tone dialing) Using a special video-phone link, Sajina and Kyra will be able to meet over several days.

KYRA: Sarajevo... and Belfast is way over here.

SAJINA: Can you see me?

KYRA: Yeah, I see you. Do you see me?

SAJINA: Yeah. Finally I see you.

KYRA: Sajina, you look really different from what I imagined you to be.
Uh, your complexion... I thought you would have been darker.

SAJINA: Darker? My skin's the same the same color as your's.

PATRICE BARRAT: Well, the results... I mean, they are not always the same, but overall, you have the impression that, it might sound a little bit naive, but when people get to know each other better, then the other is less dangerous. You tend to respect his point of view more.

KIM SPENCER: Well, let's talk about reaching, not the movers and the shakers, but the moved and the shaken on the planet, and we can do that with this technology by bringing real people into connection with the rest of the world.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): In newly democratic South Africa, we found two unique projects. This is "Peace Cafe," an interracial youth show designed to reduce violence and promote conflict resolution.

REPORTER 2 (V.O.): They made a video called, "Abantu Bayakana," --"the people turn out."

REPORTER 3 (V.O.): And after the experience, the video was shown back to the community, and it had some profound effects.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.):And also in South Africa, video diaries are being created to give voice to the voiceless, to let ordinary people document everyday life.

REPORTER 4 (V.O.): ... and who have never used a video camera before are trained and given cameras for a week to film themselves in their own environment.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): "Ghetto Diaries" is from "Mail & Guardian" television.

It's obviously more difficult to keep your shots steady when you're moving yourself.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Human rights groups are now teaching activists how to use video cameras to record abuses. The Witness Program of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, funded by Reebok, was recently honored by the cable music channel VH1. Actor-director Tim Robbins hosted.

(applause)

TIM ROBBINS: You see, a government that beats up on its own people can deny a story, but they can't deny a picture.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Today there is a new medium on the front lines of global human rights communication, the internet. Jim Bartlett covers Bosnia for a world wide web site he's called " Berserkistan."

JIM BARTLETT: The implications for human rights, and covering those kinds of stories, and just human interconnectivity around the globe is that you have a p.c., you have a computer, you can log on-line if you can get on-line, you can actually interact with the source of your news. From our site you can link extensively to other sites from anything from humanitarian aid organizations and other news-gathering agencies to "Rights & Wrongs" and the whole nine yards.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: We close with a different kind of media critique. It comes from the music world, Jackson Browne's new song, "Information Wars." I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Thank you for watching "Rights & Wrongs."

JACKSON BROWNE (LYRICS):
And in the flickering light
and the comforting glow
You get the world every night
as a TV show

The latest spin
on the [bleep] we're in
blow by blow

And the more you watch
The less you know

Beyond the hundred million
darkened living rooms
Out where
The human ocean roars

Into the failing light
The generations move
Heading for
The information wars...

JACKSON BROWNE: It's the most important war, because you can't... Whatever it is, whether it's an ecological struggle, whether it's a human rights struggle, you don't have a prayer of winning if you... if the truth about what you're doing is controlled by someone else. You can't get your message out if you cannot get the information to people.
You lose.

JACKSON BROWNE (LYRICS):
And there's a front-row seat
for the precious few
The latest war
As a pay-per-view

Famine and disaster
Right in front of you

And the more you watch
The less you do

Beyond the hundred million
Darkened living rooms
Out where
The human ocean roars

Into the failing light
The generations move
Heading for
The information wars...

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Principal funding for "Rights & Wrongs" has been provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Open Society Institute. "Rights & Wrongs" welcomes your written comments and suggestions. You can also order a transcript for $5, or a video cassette for $29.95, plus $5 shipping and handling, by writing to: The Global Center, P.O. Box 311, Radio City Station, New York, 10101. Checks or money orders only. Credit card holders may call 1-800-541-2535. You can also reach us by e-mail, and please visit our web site on the world wide web. You can also reach us by E-mail, and please visit our web site on the world wide web. "Rights & Wrongs" welcomes your ideas for promoting tolerance.