Relief camp at Government School Kotwal

[Karachi] The Pakistan floods have displaced millions of people. In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, there are 84,000 registered IDPs in 54 relief camps. We visited one of the camps at Government School Kotwal, opposite the Dow Medical University. It is nominally a Government run facility but is being managed by volunteers from Pakistan People’s Party. There are around 650 people in the camp. At the time we visited there was a queue assembling for breakfast. We were met be Mr Rattilal, a government official, who was joined by PPP activists who were keen that we should know that PPP was mobilizing the bulk of the material support and volunteers for the camp. The government has little choice, given the scale of the disaster, than to welcome any such support. Several of the government run camps also operate in partnership with local NGOs, while other camps are run autonomously by political parties, religious organizations and relief agencies.

We met with several of the residents at the camp. Most are subsistence farmers or engaged in associated economic activity. Mohammad earns a living driving a donkey and cart. Both the donkey and the cart were washed away in the floods. Amadilal is a farmer. He described how suddenly the flood had arrived. Although they had heard reports of the floods further north, they didn’t expect it to reach their village. Flooding in nearby Dadu had already washed out the only local radio station so in the days preceding there was no reliable information. The flood arrived without warning at 4 o’clock in the morning and he had no choice but to get up and evacuate from the village his family of 22 members. One of the newest arrivals at the camp was a baby just seven days old. His mother had arrived at the camp heavily pregnant and given birth shortly after. The family had named the boy Zulfiqar after the founder of Pakistan Peoples Party, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The maximum stay at this camp is three months and most arrivals are encouraged to return to the towns and villages within a month. Most of them are without work but some, especially the men, have been found temporary employment. The Government is offering a cash support and incentive scheme to encourage people to go home, once the waters have subsided. A total payment of 100,000 Rupees (about 1200 USD) is offered on the basis of the first 20 per cent up front and the remainder after they have returned home. The scheme is administered through the banks using a specially purposed ATM card.

We asked what media and communications were available to people staying at the camp. There is a single television set which is brought out to view on the courtyard in the evening, with loudspeakers to relay the sound. Fifty cellphones that include FM radio have also been distributed. FM radios and mobile phones are seen as being among the most important means of communication particularly in the rural communities. Television is widely available but dependent on access to adequate electricity supply.

Benefits of community broadcasting

Beijing, 26 May 2010 (Part 3 of 3): A recent UNESCO survey of good practice in community broadcasting shows that the contribution of community broadcasting to improving people’s lives and livelihoods is complex and many layered. It carries both intrinsic and instrumental dimensions.

To be able to communicate through community media has intrinsic value to people’s well being and quality of life. When people can speak out and be heard through the media they benefit from recognition and gain respect for their identity. For example, in Papua New Guinea, indigenous tribes are operating their own community radio stations. In the Jakarta slums the urban poor have access to the airwaves. In Gurgaon and many other fast growing urban areas, community broadcasting is serving migrant workers.

In these and other examples, communities that are not well served by the mainstream media have sought to and succeeded in establishing and operating their own media. This in turn can contribute to social cohesion and to facilitating peaceful relations. It also provides an important tool for self help and for local development.

If we turn to the instrumental functions of community broadcasting we can consider three broad areas that are important: the first is safety and protection; the second is access to information; and the third is the formation of shared knowledge and values.

As an example of the first of these – the protective function - we can look at disaster response. Two years ago AMARC undertook a survey of community radio practice in natural disaster management in Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan and Nepal, among others. The stations surveyed reported responding to floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions. Programming responses included information about post-disaster risks and mitigation, missing persons, logistics distribution, trauma healing, and facilitating community dialogue. Many of the stations surveyed explained their role in organizing community-level meetings and assisting to mobilize local response.

Now let us look at the second function - access to information. This function is particularly important not only in enabling people to make informed decisions but also in allowing the critical scrutiny that is necessary in holding decision makers to account, and in identifying wrongdoing and corruption. The media’s role in these matters is well documented but community broadcasting brings an additional dimension, by providing information in a form that is accessible to local communities, including in vernacular languages, and by focusing on a level of detail that can have immediate impact on people’s lives and livelihoods, such as ensuring proper accounting for educational resources and timely action by authorities in the repair and provision of services.

The third function – of value formation – is at the core of community broadcasting because these media are not simple one way channels of communication but they are participatory and dialogical. Community broadcasting can facilitate the appropriation of knowledge into local contexts and the development of shared values in processes of social change. This might include, for example, changes in agricultural practice to adapt to climate change, combating discrimination and prejudice, improving health awareness and disease prevention. All have been a focus for community broadcasting practice.

Community broadcasting and diversity

Beijing, 26 May 2010 (Part 2 of 3): Media diversity refers not only to culture and language, but also the diversity of social, political and economic interests, as well as the diversity of opinion and of expression. Media scholars and analysts recognise three mechanisms as being important in bringing about media diversity. First there can be a requirement for a diversity of programme content. Second, there can be a requirement for a diversity of media ownership. And third, there can be a structural diversity in the types of broadcasting service available.

Our focus in this debate is on the last of these because community broadcasting is structurally different from the state, public service and private commercial models.

The structural models for state, public service and private media are quite well known. While state broadcasting operates structurally under government control and is linked to state planning and policy making, the public service model has editorial independence and a mandate to service the public interest rather than the government in power.

The private commercial model has a private ownership structure and a market orientation with a focus on maximizing the rate of financial return on investment. Private commercial media can contribute to the choice available but they tend to concentrate on the major urban centres and not on rural populations. They also pay more attention to the affluent and those with spending power than to the poorer sections of society.

The market orientation therefore leads to a situation in which those who are socially and economically marginalized are also excluded from the means of communication.

Some might argue that it is the responsibility of the state or public service media to fill this gap. Today, however, in most countries and in all regions of the world, community broadcasting has emerged as a grassroots response rooted in social organization and civil society. It has shown itself to be more effective in meeting the communications needs of poor and marginalized communities. This is for the very simple reason that these media are owned and controlled by the communities themselves, enabling them to participate directly in programme making as well as in the management of the service.

Although present throughout the world, community broadcasters also face challenges including the legal and regulatory framework, new technologies, and sustainability.

The legal framework remains the single most important barrier to the emergence of community broadcasting but the global trend is towards greater openness, and the growing evidence of the benefits of community broadcasting argue for that trend to continue. New media platforms provide new opportunities but they also come with new forms of gatekeeping and they are not always best suited to reaching the poorest and most marginalized communites. The challenge of sustainability is partly economic and governments can play a role in reducing the costs and assuring access to a diversity of financial support. But sustainability for community broadcasting is also related to the social base and to assuring good practice in governance and in management.

Despite such challenges community broadcasting is undoubtedly today one of the necessary pillars for a diverse media landscape that truly serves the people’s interest.

Community broadcasting - a brief history

Beijing, 26 May 2010 (Part 1 of 3): More than 800 participants took part in the Asia Media Summit 2010, Beijing, 25-26 May, hosted by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China. A panel on ‘Promoting on-air diversity: the case for community broadcasting’ provided a unique opportunity to engage with government officials, broadcasting leaders and academic experts, including over 300 from the host country. This and the two items which follow are based on my panel presentation.

The early origins of community broadcasting were in the Americas, more than 60 years ago – notably in Bolivia and Colombia, as well as in the United States. In Latin America the concept is often explained by reference to the work of the Brazilian educationalist, Paulo Freire, author of “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. Freire believed that education was not neutral. In his view it could function either as an instrument to bring about conformity to the system in place, or it could facilitate critical thinking enabling people to participate in public life and to contribute to the transformation of their world.

We can think of the media in similar terms. On the one hand the media – whether public or private – can serve as the instrument of the dominant elite. On the other hand, it can have an emancipatory role, not only by providing access to information that can enable people to take informed decisions but also by enabling a diversity of points of view to be heard and for new perspectives to emerge through public discussion and debate.

Community broadcasting can be considered, in this context, as the “media of the oppressed”, or the “voice of the voiceless” – of the rural populations, of the urban poor, of migrant workers, of people with disability, and of other marginalized groups – the people who are rarely seen and poorly served by mainstream media organizations.

Community broadcasting today has become a global movement. In the Americas it is extraordinarily diverse in its nature and recognized as making a distinct contribution to the media landscape. In Europe community media exist alongside public service and commercial media and are seen as contributing not only to diversity but also to social cohesion. Many European governments now make specific arrangements to encourage the sector to develop. In Africa community broadcasting emerged in the 1990s partly with the emergence of multiparty democracy and the end of the cold war but also in response to local circumstances such as the end of apartheid in South Africa. It is seen as having a vital role in broadening media access to poor and rural communities.

In the Asia Pacific region the development of community broadcasting has been uneven but it is widespread in South East Asia, especially in Thailand and Indonesia and it has a growing presence in South Asia, notably in Nepal and more recently in India since the introduction of a community radio policy in 2006. Only last month the government of Bangladesh confirmed that it would proceed to authorize the first community radios. It is also firmly established and recognised in public policy in Australia and in New Zealand.