Media Grappling with MDG Stories

By Lynette Lee Corporal

BANGKOK, May 2 (AMF) - The good news is that media, whether mainstream or community-based, can be effective tools in helping to make the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) a reality by 2015. The bad news? It's not happening.

Halfway into the 15-year development plan set by the world’s governments to promote human development and address some of communities’ most basic problems, many countries in the Asia-Pacific region are in danger of failing to meet all of the eight MDGs, states a report by the U.N. and the Asian Development Bank released Apr. 29.

Entitled 'A Future Within Reach 2008', the report cites as reasons for this lackluster performance the financing gap as well as governments' sluggish pursuit of pro-MDG growth, lack of coordinated support and action by concerned groups.

"Helping the 14 least developed countries in Asia achieve goals will need an extra 8 billion U.S. dollars between now and 2015. Enabling all 29 of the countries that receive support from ADB's Asian Development Fund to achieve the MDGs will require an additional 25 billion dollars annually," says the report. Two-thirds of the world's poorest — or 641 million people — live in the Asia-Pacific region.

"The media have the power to give voice to the voiceless. One of the problems of MDGs is the face of the poor is hidden behind aggregate data. The challenge for us is how to give a face to these statistics," says Minar Pimple, Asia deputy director of the U.N. Millennium Campaign at a just-finished two-day seminar on the mainstreaming of MDGs.

Organised by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) in collaboration with UNESCO and Thailand's Rangsit University, 'Partnering Community and Mainstream Media for U.N. MDGs' brought together journalists, research think-tanks, and funding agencies to discuss how to resolve the 'media gap' in carrying out MDGs to the grassroots level.

The seminar was the culmination of a study on how community-based media products addressing MDGs are carried in mainstream media outlets. The survey was conducted on eight Asian countries — India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Excessive commercialisation of the media in Asia and lack of political will are among the barriers that prevent the MDG message from getting to the public, says AMIC head of research Kalinga Seneviratne. The lack of partnerships and coordination between mainstream and grassroots media are also contributing factors. "It was difficult to identify the type of practices the media used in mainstreaming MDGs because they didn't exist in these countries," he said.

Government policies and a volatile political situation were common complaints by participants from Sri Lanka, Nepal and Malaysia.

"The Sri Lankan constitution prohibits the community to own radio frequencies. In this kind of setup, how do you expect the grassroots to set up their own independent radio stations and present their own programmes?" said researcher Sameera Tilakawardena of Sri Lanka.

To make matters worse, MDG topics do not usually interest mainstream media, busy as they are with commercial ventures and more popular material.

In Nepal, community radio struggles to get a license. "The government is scared of providing radio licenses to the private sector due to recent political turmoil,” said Ghama Raj Luitel, station manager of Radio Sagamartha, the country's first-ever independent community radio.

In a similar vein, alternative and community media in Malaysia are, according to Mediaplus Research Consultancy managing partner Dr Sankaran Ramanathan, "often viewed as the voice of the opposition or as independent voices".

The lack of commitment from the government is also a problem for Nepal's community media. Added Luitel: "It is necessary for policymakers and authorities to make their commitments on air, with regular follow-up."

Although Malaysia is generally on track in the MDG, Ramanathan said: "The partnerships between mainstream and community media are more on an ad hoc basis as there seems to be a reluctance from the former to recognise the importance of the latter. There is also a high level of complacency in mainstream media toward MDGs.”

Thai media researcher and lecturer Palphol Rodloytuk agrees that there is no unified effort to promote discussion of MDGs among the Thai media, which are highly commercialised.

For Shantha Bloemen, UNICEF communications specialist for East Asia and the Pacific, the media is "a difficult beast to conquer, increasingly becoming privatised and dependent on commercial revenue".

"The word 'MDG' itself is problematic and a lot of people are either puzzled or not interested in the topic because they find it an alien concept," added Palphol. Then there's also the question of packaging and how local media can translate these ideas into local dialects."

"The MDGs have been segregated and elevated from the whole programming of the media and are now seen as a totally alien entity," Evelyn Agato, Radyo Pilipinas Overseas Service station manager, remarked. "To make matters worse, broadcasters are not experts on development and thus usually take the MDGs for granted."

"It is important to know how we can bring media together to work with the government and the communities," said UNESCO Thailand's national programme officer for communication and information, Lapapan Choovong.

The question of sustainability — financial and manpower — is a real challenge, a fact admitted by donor agencies. "Sustainability is indeed a problem. Much depends on key staff and the long-term commitments of volunteers," said Susanne Ornager, advisor for communication and information in Asia for UNESCO.

She lamented however that community media, while diverse, are often not up to standard of mainstream media.

But there is hope, says Pimple, as there are many ways to get the media to promote MDGs and tell relevant stories about them. In fact, he added, several awareness campaigns using mainstream media have become success stories in different countries.

"Examples would be the 'P36 (36-Peso) Challenge' in the Philippines, which resulted in the change from 36 to 42 pesos as the poverty line, and the '9 is Mine' campaign in India which is about a child's right to 6 percent education and 3 percent health of the government's budget. Media can be pitched in such a way as to attract and be understood by the people," he said.

The challenge for the electronic media is, he added, how to get the MDG message across in 30 seconds.

"There should be efforts to make community media feel that their role is important. Both community and mainstream media have to develop a sense of ownership toward MDGs," said Agato, who added that questions like 'What's in it for me?' or 'How will it help me?' are worth exploring and finding answers to.

The achievements over the last eight years of the MDG campaign could be for naught if people — the media included — do not act on time, warns Pimple. "With the rising prices and food shortage, 100 million people are being pushed back into the hunger and poverty trap." (END/AMF/IPSAP/LLC/JS/020508)