DEVELOPMENT: Media Concentration, Simplification of News Leads to Disinformation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Feb 4 2002 (IPS) - Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, proposed, at the second World Social Forum winding up in this southern Brazilian city, an “ecology of communications” for confronting the contamination of the media by the globalising powers, which through the force of repetition often turn the truth into lies, and lies into truth.

Ramonet, a panellist at the World Social Forum (WSF) seminar on “Democratising Communications and the Media”, said yesterday that counter-information from independent sources and civil society contributes towards “decontamination”, but that it must be rigorous and precise in order to avoid falling into the same manipulation of the news as “the Establishment”.

“With the truth, we shall overcome,” declared the French journalist, who spoke in flawless Spanish before an audience that rewarded him with enthusiastic applause every time he had something to contribute to the panel discussion.

Communication based on citizens’ values must be take precedence over news that is governed by the principles of globalisation, such as profit, efficiency and competition, said Argentine-Italian journalist Roberto Savio, president emeritus of Inter Press Service