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The North-South Divide
154/Emma Miller
A pernicious result of globalisation is that television increasingly sees the developing world either as a disaster area or as a place to go for exotic holidays, writes Emma Miller, whose book "Viewing the World: How Western television and globalisation distort representations of the developing world" is available from Wordpower.
DATELINE: 14/11/06The age of globalisation has created a paradox in British international television coverage. As global interconnectedness intensifies, television offers audiences an ever-narrowing worldview with coverage increasingly weighted towards rich white countries. When countries in the South are featured, the range of formats and genres used is diminishing. The challenge for television, which remains the British public's key information source, is to resist the pressure to commercialise resulting from corporate globalisation.
When we see countries in the Southern hemisphere on television, most coverage falls into one of two contrasting categories: the doom, gloom and disaster approach, prevalent in mainstream news, and consumer-oriented holiday programmes. Within these formats, local people are presented in tired and circumscribed ways. This absence of local voices often has serious implications not just for viewer understanding, but in the shaping of political responses.
When conflict is the focus, there is a tendency to rely on stereotypes, with little or no attempt to provide explanations which help make sense of events. In the current context of globalisation it is impossible to provide coherent coverage without at least considering the role of the West and the international financial institutions which determine people's living conditions. Although television audiences may be unaware of the context shaping events, they are increasingly frustrated by tribal approaches to covering conflict particularly, as my research shows, since public scepticism has increased over Afghanistan and Iraq.
Another key area in the gloom and doom category of coverage is the reporting of disasters - which are inevitably increasing as climate change impacts. Disaster reporting from poor countries mimics soap opera formats: the heroic Western aid workers, the poor helpless black victims, the inept and corrupt local leaders. The truth is usually very different. Many viewers remember the story of the woman who gave birth to a baby in a tree during the Mozambique floods of 2000. What was not reported was how local authorities responded quickly and effectively to the flood, saving thousands of lives before the argument in the British parliament about whether or not to send helicopters had even been resolved.
In the UK, our expectations and understandings of disaster responses are misinformed by this type of coverage, often influenced by British aid agencies, which have a strong interest in perpetuating such stereotypes. This matters because, time and again, British responses to disasters result in exacerbating the circumstances of disaster survivors.
In contrast to the conflict and disaster categories, consumer programmes, specifically holiday shows, present overwhelmingly positive imagery of developing countries. However, other than background portrayals of tourist industry staff and displays of dancing by "indigenous" people, locals are again excluded from the picture. Audience groups in my research tended to be less critical of such portrayals. To an extent, this may be explained by the pervasiveness of the genre, and the passivity engendered by the consumer-oriented format. Such programmes are a major source of consumerist propaganda and help to mislead viewers about the real effects of consumerism and the exploitation of developing countries by the tourist industry.
Given the paucity of coverage of the South on British television, the following comment from an Edinburgh nurse is unsurprising: "At one point I did actively seek out information about the world. I used to know quite a lot. I haven't a clue any more… To me our Government is only going to do what America says that our Government can do… And one of the reasons I don't want to know is because I feel powerless to do anything about it."
One purpose of my research was to identify programming which did set events in the South in context, and test audience responses to these examples. The audience work showed programmes about ordinary people in the South, engaged viewers by enabling them to make connections with their own lives. Better still were programmes which set those lives in context, bringing in considerations of the role of international capital, without getting bogged down in detail. The combination of context and connection appears particularly effective, and manageable.
To make sense of the world as it really is television must adopt a truly global focus. Increasing inequality, declining labour standards, climate change and the democratic deficit are all direct impacts of capitalist globalisation, and are apparent everywhere. Viewers in Britain are just as concerned by the increasing poverty they see on their doorsteps, as they are by images of famine from afar. Where are the programmes exploring the connections between impacts of globalisation North and South? But, further to this, television needs to engage with the various forms of resistance to the impacts of globalisation, as well as explaining them.
The challenge is to re-engage the nurse in Edinburgh who became overwhelmed by negative coverage and the democratic deficit. Television retains the potential to play a role as a democratic medium.
Last modified: Tuesday, November 14, 2006
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