The head of a large media group in Latin America yesterday accused global media companies of acting in a ‘predatory” way in distributing cultural content to small national and regional media organisations in the developing countries.
José Roberto Marinho, Vice-President of Rede Globo, said such predatory behavior has led many countries ‘to lose their identity and their economies to become enfeebled”.
Marinho was speaking to electronic media owners, government officials and representatives of civil societies gathered during the second day of the World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF) meeting in Geneva.
He said media freedom does not exist in the current climate where citizens in many developing countries have no alternative but to receive foreign cultural products and information that lack any common ground with their culture and are frequently presented in a different language than their own. This has created a tendency towards cultural uniformity, he pointed out and has caused people ‘to lose their identity and their countries’ economies become enfeebled”.
Communication without distribution is ‘a show for the privileged few, bringing no benefits to the population as a whole”, Marinho said. ‘The control of the communication companies by the distribution segment creates a powerful gatekeeper and relegates editorial responsibility in the production of cultural assets to a secondary role, creating barriers to the free access of citizens to diversified content.”
Also speaking on what media freedom means in the current global media environment and what kind of media freedom is needed, he emphasised the importance of countries having media freedom that allows them to protect their cultural diversity and local content. He said each nation should have the freedom to control the wealth created by its own cultural assets and the freedom to create a national brand name in the globalised market.
If a country is not recognised globally, ‘it becomes invisible and its products debased” he said, explaining how things are difficult for developing countries.
Marinho noted, however, that although the survival of local content and culture in the developing world might be difficult, it would not be impossible, pointing out that more than 80 percent of the shows in Brazilian TV are locally made.
Brazil is one of the very few developing countries earning foreign currency for its local content in programmes shown all over the world. ‘We export our own Brazilian content to over 100 countries,” he said.
‘We have survived the global competition from big media companies in keeping our own content and language in our TV programmes, but not many in developing countries are able to do that,” Marinho said, adding that this is an area where the World Summit on the Information Society can assist. — Hana