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Radio
as a Model for Democratic Participation
By Benjamín
Fernández
The high
levels of illiteracy in Latin America, as high as 40 per cent
in some countries, lead us to recognize a harsh reality: people
read little but listen a lot.
This
non-reading, auditory culture has spurred the development
of various models of radio to reach the people. They range
from distance-learning to telephone debates as methods for
connecting with the audience.
Because
of commercial interests or the mere desire to be polemical,
radio has often denied us the possibility of becoming a substitute
for the town square where opinions used to be debated.
What's
the reason for this position? On one hand, those who work
in radio tend to have an inferiority complex as to the capacity
and role of radio. They generally believe theirs is a secondary
endeavor; that they have less impact than television and that
their work is not as penetrating as that of newspapers. The
first thing that has to be done is to reappraise the media
and plan new programs with attractive angles that will appeal
to listeners.
It
is important to note that if an attractive strategy is lacking,
listeners of AM radio will continue to migrate to FM, where
the level of discussion and participation is markedly lower.
Programming to bring back children and young people should
be one of the key issues of discussion of the future of AM
radio in a democracy.
Technology
as an opportunity
Technological advances and the imminent launch of digital
AM stations that will better utilize the bandwidth, increasing
the possibility of improved sound, will also make AM attractive
once more. Technology, the Internet and transmissions via
fiber optics can be other allies or competitors on the road
to the consolidation of stations or the eventual loss of listeners.
It
must be understood that technology is another challenge to
us from the creative angle. It's not enough to say it's available
if we don't know how to use it or if we're passive about its
approach. We must rediscover the possibilities and, just like
the printing press changed the concept of man and knowledge,
the Internet, the symbol of globalization, challenges us to
find new ways of producing radio with new elements and new
talent. There are neither limits nor censorship in the way.
Mexico
has tried to limit access to the news media, but during the
recent electoral campaign one saw in the capital signs telling
the public where to find radio stations on the Internet. The
public was able to receive live coverage of the candidates
without any possible censorship.
Another
element in thinking about the radio of the future is what
the studios will be like. Will we make the same programs we've
done in the past or will we have to adapt to the changes?
Programs will be made by someone from his bed, by someone
out in his garden, thus avoiding the traffic that now almost
makes a martyr of any professional.
Public
broadcasting, which supposedly deals with ideas and political
projects and is usually transmitted via short-wave, will also
have to adapt to the new transmission technology. Our listeners
have changed. To continue thinking along the same old parameters
is to concede a space for the multiplication of the message,
and thereby reduce the capacity of the medium and the power
of its message.
Within
the scheme of changes, where technology, politics and sociology
are intertwined, radio also has a commitment with democracy.
It must confront the concrete reality of illiteracy with programs
designed to promote knowledge and do it in a way that is neither
boring nor complex. We're going to need new codifiers in a
world that permanently reinvents itself.
This crisis
should present not only threats but opportunities. Mechanisms
will have to be found to convert our radio programming into
the far-off and distant public plaza where questions of state
were debated and where the concept of our democracy first
appeared. This is impossible today. If we add the lack of
credibility the citizenry gives our political actors, we see
that radio in a democracy has the obligation to develop new
scenarios and, why not, new approaches.
Radio
and democracy
The serious changes posed by globalization require of those
in radio calm analysis, proper information, dispassionate
discourse and, above all, a pro-active approach. A media that
will convince us of the advantages of a globalization that
implies not only fears and instability but certainty and confidence.
We should rethink radio from the point of view of its natural
advantages, but with new formulas that allow us to make it
a media for the new millennium, and make a clear commitment
to understand the new technology, to understand the listener
and his limited time, and above all: to strengthen a democracy
which is poorly served by evasion, sterile polemics and lack
of imagination.
We must
rediscover ourselves in radio and through it understand the
new dimension of the public square, the new commitment with
the citizenry and the new opportunities. This is the starting
point and the finish line for a media born in the last century
and which needs today, more than ever, our genius to strengthen
and enrich itself.
Benjamín
Fernández is director of Radio Libre in Asunción,
Paraguay, and a 1999-2000 Nieman fellow at Harvard University.
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