Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

COMMUNICATIONS: Improving Media Content for Children

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 19 2004 (IPS) - Brazilian children between the ages of two and six ”spend more time in front of the TV set than with their mothers,” one of the 2,000 researchers, educators, media representatives and producers taking part in a week-long global summit on children and the media in Rio de Janeiro told IPS.

Marcio Schiavo is participating in the Fourth World Summit on Media for Children and Adolescents as an expert in education-entertainment – inserting awareness-raising messages or debates on social issues, like drug abuse, in soap operas or other fictional TV programmes.

A study carried out by the Brazilian communications consultancy Comunicarte found that the problem is not ”excessive TV-viewing” but a reduction of the time spent in family and a weakening of the relationship between parents and children, said Schiavo.

Parents ”renounce their authority” in raising their children and cede it to the media, because it is easier, he criticised.

How to reduce violence on TV and in video games is another of the challenges being discussed at the Apr. 19-23 conference, where participants will debate how to improve the quality of communication products aimed at children and teenagers, analyse troublesome issues, and exchange interesting and successful experiences.

This is the first time the conference is being held in a developing country. The aim is to make the forum an opportunity to discuss an international market in which developing countries are mere consumers of audiovisual ”trash” that is exported largely by the United States and Japan, Claudius Ceccon, a member of the summit’s committee of directors, said in an interview with IPS.

”We can show that we have the capacity to produce, and to assert that the children of the ‘first world’ have the right to learn about our cultural diversity,” said Ceccon, who argued that Brazilian, and Latin American products in general, should have greater access to other markets.

The summits began to be organised in 1995 by an Australian group headed by filmmaker Patricia Edgar, who has promoted the production of good quality local films and has successfully pushed for space on TV for national cultural products.

The first conference, held in the southeastern Australian city of Melbourne, which drew 637 participants from 71 countries, limited its focus to TV. The organisers realised the need to create an international movement, partly to ensure the success of Australian films, said Ceccon.

For that reason the second summit was held in London, in 1998. The third, which incorporated a focus on the media in general, was hosted by the northern Greek city of Thessalonika in 2001.

The forums are promoted by the World Summit on Media for Children Foundation, which is headed by Edgar. This week’s summit is also sponsored by the city government and organised by the state-run Municipal Multimedia Company (MultiRio) and three non-governmental organisations.

Despite the movement’s concern about the media in general and especially the newer tools of communication, like the Internet, TV is still the main focus, due to the size of the audience it reaches and the day-to-day influence it exercises.

Violence and sex, which are ever-present in the media, are controversial issues on the conference agenda, because of the pressure to come up with ideas for exercising some means of social control over the media, without falling into censorship.

”People complain about the poor quality of TV programming, but they don’t know what to do to improve it,” said Ceccon, director of the audiovisual production company Centre of Creation of the Popular Image (CECIP), who argued the need to broaden the debate on coming up with some way for society to exercise control over television.

”It’s not a question of censorship, as narrow-minded moralists want. Nor do we dislike television,” he said.

But many studies have already been carried out on the enormous content of violence in ”seemingly inoffensive” products, like cartoons that show acts of aggression to get laughs.

Ceccon is outspoken in his criticism of ”the garbage that production companies, especially in the U.S. and Japan, impose by charging very low prices to TV stations in developing countries.”

Even Brazilian children’s shows, like those of Xuxa, one of South America’s leading celebrities, are ”little more than advertising, to sell ‘Xuxa’ brand merchandise like clothes and sandals,” he complained.

”But it is possible to create mechanisms, for example through councils on which civil society is represented, to get the media to contribute to children’s development instead of merely promoting consumption.”

Society must also develop an ability to be discerning and critical, and for that reason it is important to bring together the media and education, said Ceccon, who works with projects in which youngsters produce their own videos.