January 26, 2005
By Edelberto Behs

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil – The I World Information and Communication Forum, which brought together some 300 journalists and communicators from different countries proposed alternatives to change the current information and communication system, dominated by the powerful.

During the forum, one of the events leading up to the World Social Forum meeting until January 31, proposed the need to build a network of journalists, a network of alternative media and a virtual journalism school.

The general secretary of Media Watch Global (MWG), Roberto Savio, noted the difficult situation is not that different from what was observed 30 years ago, when debates began about a New International Information and Communication Order (NIICO). In reality, he said, there is an NIICO but it prioritizes commerce as the foundation for information.

Given the current domination in media ownership, who decide what is published, the creation of a virtual journalism school will make it possible to form communicators for civilian society, based on their values and concerns. This school would produce different journalists, he said.

Existing journalism schools teach people how to produce material that sells and not what is needed for common good. For this reason, news is guided by the law of the spectacle, by supply and demand and is not a true reflection of reality, said the president of MWG and the daily Le Monde Diplomatique Ignacio Ramonet.

According to Ramonet, communication media are currently the central problem in democratic regimes. He said that we live under a system of informative insecurity because we do not receive the necessary information and we do not know if what we receive is true or false.

Italian Journalists Giulietto Chiesa and a member of the European parliament affirmed that the main dailies and radio and television media instruct journalists to lie.

Flavio Lotti, coordinator of the Peace Table, said that social communication is a "battle field because the lords of war and the terrorist try to disfigure reality." Professor Andrew Calabrese, of the University of Colorado said that there is collusion between the press and the federal government.

An analysis of 1,600 interviews published in North American media in the three weeks following the war in Iraq demonstrated that 63 percent of the interviews were with government civil or military officials.

In recent US elections nearly 60% of all voters were convinced that Hussein had organized the tragic September 11 attacks, which is not true.

This meant that a "liar and assassin" was re-elected as president said Chiesa. He added that without the "great dream factory" primarily manipulated by the television, American-style globalization would not have been possible. We need to invent a massive vaccination against TV, which is the main obstacle for democracy, he said.

In the increasingly concentrated media world there is a loss of independence in journalistic work as well a lack of citizen control, said Latin American Information Agency representative Sally Burch.

Following the slogan of the World Social Forum, "Another World is Possible," the forum proclaimed "Another Communication is possible," but Uruguayan journalist Esteban Valenti said that the slogan should be "Other Communications Are possible."

The World Communication and Information Forum was sponsored by the World Association of Community Radios (AMARC), the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE), Inter Press Service, Le Monde Diplomatique, Media Watch Global and Oxfam/Novib.

Latin American and Caribbean News Agency