Press Release
PI/1166

TELEVISION FORUM ON “THE IMPACT OF TELEVISION ON PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT” COMES TO AN END

The World Television Forum came to a close this afternoon, in the presence of Mr. Kensaku Hogen, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. The closing session was an opportunity for three leading figures from the world of television to take stock of the challenges identified during the Forum, which has been running since yesterday. Speaking on the role of television in development, Jennifer Sibanda, Executive Director of the Federation of African Presswomen, denounced the risk, in this era of globalization, of cultural supremacy conveyed by the images of countries that hold media power. Believing that sustainable development requires the diversity of cultures and needs to be taken into account, she called for the establishment of diversified information flows. She questioned current definitions of development and called on African peoples to develop their own conception of development.

Mr. Joseph Flaherty, Senior Vice President of Technology, CBS Corporation (USA), took stock of advances in television technology. He noted that digital television and high-definition television (HDTV) are taking the place of today's analog television systems. The highest image quality is currently provided by HDTV. The challenge for us now, he believes, is to provide the best possible information, education, training and cultural programs for the world's population. To this end, we should subscribe to the objectives of the International Telecommunication Union, which are to redistribute the benefits of the new communication technologies to all the planet's inhabitants.

Mr. Xavier Gouyou Beauchamps, Chairman of the Groupement des radiodiffuseurs français, took stock of the situation in educational and children's programming. The latter sector, he explained, is faced with the need to draw on moral values due to extreme competitiveness. Educational television, for its part, is facing an increased demand for knowledge due to the unbridled development of modern communication technologies. The boom in television

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is a good thing, but is it significant? he asked, explaining that these channels give access to education to those who already have a high standard. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, author of the book “Space Odyssey” and who took part in the Forum by videoconference from Sri Lanka, expressed concern about the extent of the images of brutality contained, in particular, in children's programs. He welcomed recent calls for program makers to adopt a more ethical approach.

The Minister of Press, Television, Broadcasting and Telecommunications of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Lessin, issued a statement.

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Challenges and opportunities identified at the Media Forum workshops

Mr. MIKHAIL LESSIN, Minister of Press, Television, Broadcasting and Telecommunications of the Russian Federation, felt that the participants had made the Forum a real event. Russia is still in its infancy when it comes to modern information technologies. We have launched a communications and information project against a backdrop of difficult freedoms and socio-economic reforms. Competition law will contribute to progress. Russian society must not be a prisoner of the information world. Consumers have the right to demand access to culture and education from the media.

Mr. XAVIER GOUYOU BEAUCHAMPS, President of the Groupement des radiodiffuseurs français, spoke on the subject of educational programming and children's television. He explained that children's television requires a large number of higher-quality programs. Children's programming is in a special situation. The market is booming, particularly in France. It is subject to very strong competition. The need to find capital and partners makes this a sector where the choice of values is crucial. We are moving away from the quest for profit towards the search for cultural identity, which justifies measures to encourage local production of children's programs. The exemplary value of schools must be extended to children's television. The European elites, who often have a contemptuous attitude towards television, need to be made aware of the learning power of images. It is also important to support and encourage concerted international activities in the field of children's television.

The workshop on educational television showed that there are many forms of educational television. Developing countries tend to see school and university television as a substitute for traditional educational media. Another type of educational television focuses on socialization and a global vision of contemporary knowledge. Another form is cultural television, which sets very high standards. The Arte channel corresponds to this model. The acceleration of new means of communication has increased the demand for knowledge. Every society needs to communicate in order to maintain its unity and social cohesion, and television represents one of the elements of social cohesion. The role of educational television is to promote learning and responsible citizenship. However, the transition from theory to practice is hampered by access to information and budgetary constraints. The rise of educational television due to developments in digital technology is a good thing. But don't these channels give access to education to those who already have a high level of education? We have every right to expect them to contribute to the dissemination of humanist and democratic values. In this respect, the record of television in general is not as negative as one might be tempted to believe.

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Mr. JOSEPH FLAHERTY, Senior Vice President of Technology, CBS Corporation (USA), said that while it was clear from the two days of the forum that the television industry had shortcomings, its short-term potential was considerable. Technical changes in the industry are of the utmost importance. At the root of these changes are advances in digital technology. Digital television and high-definition television (HDTV) are taking the place of today's analog television systems, and offer a glimpse of a very different future from the advent of color television. Referring to the French author Paul Valéry's quote “le problème avec notre époque, c'est que l'avenir n'est plus ce qu'il était” (the problem with our times is that the future is not what it used to be), Mr. Flaherty pointed out that, since the birth of digital television and HDTV on June 1, 1990, when General Instrument proposed an all-digital, high-definition television system, television has been changing forever. Today, television is the most important means of communication on the planet, capable of educating, informing, entertaining and amusing people everywhere.

Giving an overview of recent advances in television technology, Mr. Flaherty pointed out that the highest image quality is currently provided by HDTV, which enables a six-fold increase in the number of lines or pixels on the screen, compared with images currently transmitted by television. High-definition technology involves compressing audio and video signals, enabling more efficient use of recording media. In 1935, high definition represented 343 lines, whereas today it represents 1080 lines for 1920 line samples. Projected onto large screens, high-definition technology will create a new projection experience for homes, schools and cinemas. Broadcast quality has always been the television “mark of excellence” that many strive for, and few are able to match. HDTV delivers twice the vertical and horizontal resolution of today's television. The challenge now is to provide the best possible programs for information, education, training and culture. To this end, we should subscribe to the objectives of the International Telecommunication Union, which are to promote the benefits of new telecommunications so that all the planet's inhabitants can enjoy them. The next step is to avoid further investment in analog equipment, which will soon become obsolete. We also need to study viewers' preferences for wide screens and digital receivers, and pass this data on to manufacturers.

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The international broadcast market is also moving towards high definition, especially for sports programs. The quality of digital TV will provide all kinds of new opportunities for higher-quality service. HDTV will find applications in all fields, including e-commerce, news reporting, and the broadcasting of sporting events such as the soccer World Cup. 15 hours of high-definition programming are broadcast weekly on CBS in large evening audiences. Research indicates that viewers want high definition, and will use it as a purchasing criterion. By the end of the month, more than 100,000 TV sets will have been sold in the US, whereas it took nearly four years to sell 1 million VCRs and nearly three years to sell 1 million CD players. The era of digital television has thus truly begun, and in this respect, it seems that the countries that have not yet invested in analog technology are those best placed to make the transition to high-definition technology straight away.

JENNIFER SIBANDA, Managing Director of the Federation of African Presswomen, spoke on the theme of the role of television in development. She spoke of the immense power of television in a rapidly changing environment. The planet has shrunk to the size of a village. Populations are increasingly open to information, which has led governments to become more democratic and accountable. Global television services contribute to a better understanding of events taking place in distant countries, generating greater understanding and solidarity between peoples. Fears have been expressed about the risk of cultural supremacy conveyed by images, she pointed out. And yet, to guarantee sustainable development, the needs of the people must be taken into account. Without the participation of the masses, television offers a single, top-down vision of the world. What's needed is a diversified, rather than unidirectional, flow of information, because the world is not homogeneous. In most cases, the dominant culture is the one that holds media power. Some foreign programs in Africa run counter to our cultural values. Yet development and culture are interdependent. Culture can reinforce or hinder development when it is foreign. But how do we define development? We Africans must define the development of our masses ourselves, because any strategy that relies on external values is doomed to failure.

The other theme of the workshops was language, which is, after all, the vehicle of our culture and national identity. Local languages are dying out because of the supremacy of the dominant languages carried over the airwaves. Another theme was the speed with which technology evolves. In the age of the Internet, he explained

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Mrs. Sibanda, our newsrooms in Africa are still equipped with typewriters. Three quarters of the world's population have no access to a telephone service. Electricity is still a dream in many countries. Five percent of developing countries have television sets, while 20 to 30% of these countries have radio sets. Radio, which uses the local language, remains the most appropriate technology in Africa. Ninety percent of the African population has access to radio. Mr. Sibanda spoke of the imbalances in gender representation in the African media. All these factors run counter to the imperatives of development. How, in this context, can we move away from a narrow definition of development? How can technology foster development?

Sir ARTHUR C. CLARKE, author of some 80 books, including “Space Odyssey”, was unable to attend the conference in person for health reasons, but participated remotely by videoconference from Sri Lanka. He said that the development of television represents the most significant technological revolution in history, recalling the early days of television when video cassettes did not yet exist and each program had to be repeated four times to cover all time zones. In such circumstances, it was difficult to remain spontaneous after the second or third attempt. Although the images delivered to us today by television are of excellent quality, considerable efforts are still underway to improve them still further and - perhaps even more importantly - to establish universally accepted standards, which represents another major challenge for the United Nations. But perhaps we've already reached the point at which any further improvements would be marginal, and the limitations we're talking about are no longer purely technical in nature; they're also economic, political, not to mention cultural.

Sir Arthur said that his biggest criticism of television in general was the massive amount of brutality and sheer atrocity contained in so many programs, particularly those aimed at children. In this respect, he welcomed Steve Allen's recent call for program-makers to adopt a more ethical approach, noting also that the US Congress has recently made some attempts, albeit without much conviction, to tackle this problem. It should also be recognized that there are many programs that have enriched countless lives and educated entire generations like never before. Perhaps most significantly, television has been the main force behind the creation of the global village - or, more accurately, the global “family”. For the first time in history, anyone, anywhere in the world, can see their global neighbors and share their joys and sorrows, their victories and tragedies.

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Television currently plays a key role in raising funds and delivering emergency relief to places where natural disasters or wars occur. Television has often revealed atrocities and, in some cases, prevented them. In a far less dramatic field, global television has contributed to what Arnold Toynbee called “the unification of the world”. Although much remains to be done, this is the direction we are inevitably heading in. It is to be hoped, however, that this unification does not destroy diversity. Television has often helped to save customs and perhaps even entire cultures which, without it, would have died out forever. Concluding on the possibilities of television's technical development, Sir Arthur threw down several challenges to technology: will it ever be possible to achieve “real” television, in the literal sense of “remote viewing”, and see everything that's going on all over the world without needing a camera at the other end of the channel? Going even further, can you imagine a device that would enable you to see all events of the past, thus freeing you from temporal boundaries, just as we are currently transgressing the boundaries of space? Even if the theoretical feasibility of this question depends on physical principles, the question remains: can we really lose information altogether? If there is some cosmic principle of conservation that can be applied to information, as is the case for matter and energy, then a sufficiently advanced means of technology should make it possible to recover all information.

Television programs emanating from Planet Earth currently occupy a volume of space whose circumference exceeds 100 light-years, which seems to prove, Sir Arthur concluded, that there are no advanced civilizations in Earth's vicinity; the contrary would have already alerted the “cops” whose cars would set off their sirens across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Closing statement

Mr. KENSAKU HOGEN, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, concluded the Forum by emphasizing that its highlight had been the examination of the contributions that television can make to the objectives of the United Nations. What the United Nations expected from the Forum was that television professionals would have a better understanding of the goals and work of the United Nations. If this is the case, Mr. Hogen believes the Forum will have been a success. The United Nations must take full advantage of television as a formidable tool. We must now continue to examine how television professionals can help the United Nations in its fight for peace and development.