Frank Connolly, head of communications for Ireland's SIPTU, speaks to participants and is recorded by Dublic Community TV on Jun. 24, 2013, as part of the OURMedia conference. Credit: Jane Regan/IPS

By Jane Regan
DUBLIN, Ireland, Jul 1 2013 (IPS)

Communications scholars from around the world deplored the global financial crisis and called on their peers to take more active roles in the search for solutions at a recent four-day conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Over 1,400 professors and researchers from the International Association for Media and Communications Research (IAMCR) spoke, listened, lamented and argued at its Jun. 25-29 annual conference, this year centred on the theme “Crises, ‘Creative Destruction’ and the Global Power and Communication Orders.”

The term “creative destruction” comes from conservative Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who borrowed the idea from Karl Marx.

“I proposed the theme,” DCU Professor Paschal Preston, head of the organising committee, told IPS. “I chose it to get away from the media-centred and media-centric analyses… Scholars are too often ignoring the growing and glaring failures of democracy in the West.”

The Dublin conference attracted a record number of academic papers from over 80 countries. At the plenaries and in the panels, academics spoke about the challenges facing the media, communications scholars, and the planet as a whole.

Anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist speakers

Ireland’s President Michael B. Higgins opened the conference speaking Irish and then switching to English. The former head of Ireland’s Labour Party lamented the fact that media consumers get more and more “formulised, homogenised content” and criticised the concentration of media ownership at the global level by mostly U.S. corporations.

“We don’t even know which conglomerate owns which media,” Higgins told the audience.

Later in the week, scholars from Africa, Europe and the U.S. challenged the assembled academics – perhaps half of whom came from Europe and North America – to get out of the classroom and grapple with the crises facing the planet.

In a talk delivered via internet, University of Cape Town Professor Francis Nyamnjoh noted that the crisis scaring Western Europe is nothing new for those in Africa or Latin America.

“As a 50-year-old African I am used to life as a constant crisis,” he said.

Annabelle Sreberny, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a former president of IAMCR, said the world is facing “many crises… the academy is in crisis and indeed our democracies are in crisis.”

Sreberny, whose recent research focused on the U.S. government-manufactured Stuxnet computer worm, condemned the U.S. and British “cyber-military industrial complex”.

Speaking later to IPS, she warned of “the dark side of the internet”.

“I think that academics in this field, who have worked through a great period of ‘cyber-utopianism,’ need to take seriously the revelations and hypocrisy of our governments,” the professor said.

University of Oregon sociologist John Bellamy Foster was among several speakers on panels that discussed the environmental crisis. Editor of the New York-based Monthly Review and author of several books, Foster said the capitalist system “is falling apart” and urged academics to open their minds to alternatives.

“There is no existing alternative – we have to create it,” he said. “Capitalism isn’t an alternative unless you think the destruction of the species is an alternative.”

A day later, U.S.-based Professor Jodi Dean echoed his call

In a talk on what she calls “mass personalised media” – Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms – the professor and author from Hobart and William Smith Colleges urged scholars to think more critically. Explaining her theory of “communicative capitalism”, Dean explained how social media obfuscate class while intensifying individualism, and said they are not “free”.

“We pay with attention, and the cost is focus,” Dean told her audience.

Calls for new theory, renewed engagement

The IAMCR was founded in 1957, with the blessing of UNESCO, and is both an academic and an advocacy organisation, but some in Dublin voiced criticisms. At several sessions, participants called on the association to take more proactive stances on the government spying scandals and other issues.

Stefania Milan, of Tilburg University in The Netherlands, was one of several who noted the growing influence of corporate funding on universities and the fact that in the U.S., full-time professors are being replaced by part-time teachers and by MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Several studies peg the number of courses taught by adjuncts in the U.S. at about 70 percent, with Europe following close behind. Milan urged the IAMCR to speak out.

“We need to be an organisation that takes sides,” Milan said at a session called to examine IAMCR’s future.

At another forward-looking panel, this one called to “rethink” communication theory, scholars from Jamaica, China and India urged theorists to look beyond Western theory. Among the speakers was Pradip Thomas, from the University of Queensland, who said the global capitalist crisis “offers us an opportunity to deal with the underbelly: communication capitalism.”

Hopeton Dunn, director of the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, told IPS he organised the discussion in order to look at the “conceptual and theoretical crisis” of the field.

“There is a major gap between what is happening in the poor countries and the analysis taking place that is informed by thinkers in the rich countries,” he said. “The Academy is not playing enough of a role in addressing the real needs of real people.”

Crisis dominates

Panels, book launch parties and even some of the music at the IAMCR were dominated by the “crisis” theme. A song by Irish singer Clara Sidine, who entertained one evening, was accompanied by images of Rolex watches, mansions and roulette wheels, followed by photos of foreclosed houses and boarded-up shops.

Sidine told the crowd that Ireland’s economic crisis had inspired her to write “What’s a Boy To Do?” about a month ago.

Last week, Ireland’s government announced the economy had slipped back into recession. Ireland’s official unemployment rate stands at about 14 percent, and the state has one of the highest debts compared to GDP in Europe, at 118 percent.

“Ireland has gone from being the neoliberal pin-up to ‘failed state’ or bankrupt state,” explained DCU’s Preston, whose area of specialisation is political economy. “The Irish people have been carrying huge burdens of debt, way beyond other countries.”

Preston’s own department has also felt the crunch. In the past four years, DCU’s School of Communications has shrunk from 25 to 20 full-time staff, he said, and everyone has had to accept 20-percent pay cuts.

Asked what might come out of the IAMCR conference, the professor said he hoped it would help create “a more engaged community of communications scholars.”

“We need to link media issues to the deeper and structural crises of democracies in our societies,” he said.

Saddled with a long list of woes brought on by an economic crisis, debt-stricken Greece now finds itself tackling a different kind of austerity than the one implemented by its European creditors: this time it is press freedom, not public budgets, on the chopping block.

Journalists claim their working environment is deteriorating so rapidly that Greece will soon top the list of European countries with the worst press freedom indicators.

Already the country meets all the negative criteria included in a resolution on media freedom passed by the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament last Thursday.

The resolution focuses heavily on the protection of independent journalists and media outlets, both of which have watched their freedom wane rapidly over the last five years.

According to the 2013 Press Freedom Index, issued by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (known by its French acronym RSF), Greece dropped 14 places – down to 84^th – on a list of 179 countries, which the organisation termed “a disturbingly dramatic fall”.

At the beginning of the economic crisis in 2009 Greece was ranked 35^th on the index – its plunge represents the most dramatic deterioration among European countries.

In addition to frequent intimidation of reporters, the rights group noted, “The social and professional environment for journalists, who are exposed to public condemnation and violence from both extremist groups and the police, is disastrous.”

The New Year opened on a bad note for reporters here: the night of Jan. 10 saw home-made bombs lobbed into the residences of five journalists working for mainstream private TV channels and public media.

The attacks were allegedly the work of left-wing radicals who regarded the journalists as “pawns” in the corrupt relationship between media moguls and corporate interests that unquestioningly support the ruling authorities as well as the actions of the Troika, the three European institutions responsible for implementing what many Greeks see as a devastating austerity plan.

But though such incidents represent a worsening of the environment for journalists, the issue of press freedom here is not a new one.

Even before the financial crash hit Greece, capitulation of the majority of mainstream media to elite interests had become a thorn in the sides of citizens and independent media practitioners.

As a 2006 U.S. Embassy cable, made public last year by the whistleblower website Wikileaks, explained, “The private media outlets in Athens are owned by a small group of people who have made or inherited fortunes in shipping, banking, telecommunications, sports, oil, insurance, etc. and who are or have been related by blood, marriage, or adultery to political and government officials and/or other media and business magnates”.

All major private TV channels in the country are corporate-owned. Most major publications and radio stations also have direct links to private corporations.

Reports indicate that 500 to 600 journalists are currently, or have been, on government payrolls.

Independent journalists hounded

For the past year the few existing independent investigative journalists in the country have experienced severe aggression from government authorities, as well as a host of other difficulties including death threats, stalking and defamation and denouncement by a domestic media that experts say is increasingly submissive to corporate agendas.

Just one example of the hostile environment journalists are forced to operate in came earlier this year, when UNFOLLOW magazine published a cover story on oil smuggling involving Aegean Oil, a major private multinational company, and Hellenic Petroleum, a private-public energy conglomerate.

The story explained how the companies buy oil at reduced tax rates and channel it back into the market at the normal price; the exposé also contained two reports by the 7^th Piraeus Customs Authority, detailing the practice.

The day after the story’s publication, Lefteris Charalabopoulos, the reporter in charge of the investigation, received a phone call at the magazine’s office from a person going by the name of Dimitris Melissanidis, head of Aegean Oil.

The reporter told IPS the entrepreneur initially threatened legal measures against the magazine, then went on to issue a stream of invective, shouting, “Screw you and the authorities. You will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to go out, I’ll be your nightmare. Fear of me will haunt you. They will come to your house and blow you up in your sleep.”

When Charalabopoulos answered back, the caller warned, “I want you to tell me that with a gun to your head.”

Though a spokesperson for the company subsequently denied that such a phone call had taken place, Charalabopoulos told IPS, “When the number of the call was traced back it was easily identified as a number registered with the central offices of Aegean Oil.”

“I have no doubts about the identity of the person I spoke with on the phone,” he said, adding that almost all mainstream media ignored this incident of blatant intimidation.

When the centre-left opposition group, Syriza, brought the issue to the Greek parliament, Makis Voridis – a popular MP with the ruling New Democracy Party – made dismissive remarks about a “superfluous opposition that annoys parliamentary proceedings with legally insignificant issues like an intimidation case between two private entities.”

In another example of the government’s unfriendly stance towards independent media, Kwstas Vaxevanis, a popular investigative journalist, was brought to trial last November when his magazine ‘Hot Doc’ published a copy of the hitherto unseen Lagarde List.

The document contained over 2,000 accounts of possible tax evasion by individuals or mirror companies, amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.

The argument that Vaxevanis had violated the “privacy” of those on the list fell apart, but when the acquitted journalist walked out of the courthouse, he was greeted only by a flock of major international media – the domestic mainstream stayed far away from the case.

Despite international denunciation of the whole issue, Vaxevanis is now pending re-trial.

“In Greece the law is abused by politicians and media practitioners who try to protect their tycoon patrons against anyone who dares to speak up against them,” Vaxevanis told IPS. “During the …dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974), press freedom was targeted in the name of national interests.

“Today, press freedom is (jeopardised) by manipulation of the law. Unfortunately this country is governed today by a closed group of professional politicians, businessmen and celebrity journalists,” he added.

Meanwhile, experts say intimidation is also spreading.

Nikolas Leodopoulos, a Thomson Reuters reporter involved in investigating major banking scandals, is regularly pictured by news outlets with ties to elite and corporate agendas as a “fake reporter” or as a suspect of “criminal deeds”.

The last four years have witnessed at least three attacks on journalists by security and police personnel that caused serious harm.

Many less serious attacks, as well as widespread intimidation by radical leftists or neo-Nazis, are regularly reported during strikes and riots.

(END)

Sustained by editors and readers convinced that another kind of communication is possible, independent magazines are growing and strengthening in Argentina, offering a view different from the mainstream media coverage of political, cultural and advocacy issues.

The sign above the magazine rack reads: “To read is to know”. Credit: Dvortygirl/CC-BY-SA-2.0

Overshadowed by more than 450 magazines belonging to 40 big publishing houses, some of them multimedia offerings, another 241 publications read in Argentina are devoted to literature, film, philosophy, humour, ideological and partisan discussions, history, music, visual arts, performing arts, design or gender issues.

These are not endeavours taken up by editors in their free time, but a thriving industry with an estimated 1.4 million readers monthly, providing employment to small printers across the country.

Publications such as Barcelona, THC, Alternativa Teatral (Alternative Theatre), El Ojo del Músico (The Musician’s Eye), Haciendo Cine (Making Films), La Garganta Poderosa (The Powerful Voice), Clitoris, El Teje (Weaving) and Diario de Poesía (Poetry Diary) are just a small sample of the diverse offerings of the alternative media world.

These publications do not receive subsidies either from the government or businesses, and have little advertising.

They live practically by the sale of each copy, something forgotten by commercial magazines, which have practically become advertising catalogues, satisfied with only being displayed or circulated among the public.

Since 2011, the large majority of these alternative media have been united in the Association of Independent Cultural Magazines of Argentina (Arecia), demanding a bill that would help to strengthen a non-profit but sustainable sector.

“The purpose of the association is to show that we are an economically active sector, providing decent employment conditions, living off sales and paying cash,” journalist Claudia Acuña, president of Arecia, told IPS.

Acuña is editor of the independent magazine Mu, which was born in the heat of the economic and social crisis of late 2001 as part of La Vaca (The Cow), a cooperative that now drives other alternative communication projects.

The cooperative also provides training in self-management projects, a service journalism courses fail to provide and represents a gap in the curriculum, according to Acuña.

A survey conducted by Arecia in October indicated that 241 independent cultural magazines exist in Argentina, 95 percent of them published on paper and the rest only on the Internet.

The phenomenon is not limited to Buenos Aires – in fact, 48 percent of the publications come from the country’s interior, as a response to local concerns.

Editors united in Arecia managed to sign distribution agreements with the postal service and resisted multiple attempts by the commercial magazines to remove them from distribution and sales channels.

Big business groups like Clarín and La Nación (The Nation), for instance, collectively control 60 percent of the graphics market and own distribution networks and retail outlets.

“There is a lot of concentration and commercial magazines no longer sell hard copies. They live on private and public advertising. They are almost advertising catalogues,” said Acuña.

“The sector was losing credibility with its readers. They themselves admit to it.  By contrast, we are a market sustained by readers, a dispersed market of many titles. We are something different and we’re growing,” she said.

In the framework of this debate, the president of Arecia believes that a law can help strengthen and raise new projects. “We do not want privileges,” she said, but “equal treatment without discrimination.”

The initiative, which will begin to be debated in March, claims tax benefits, better access to financing, interest rate subsidies and state quotas for purchases that circulate among more than 3,000 public libraries in the country.

Fundamentally, the project maintains that a new rule would serve to settle the debt owed to independent magazines by the 2008 Audiovisual Services Act, whose application the Clarín group has resisted through several ploys before the judiciary.

The proposed rule democratises television and radio spaces, “but has omitted the graphics and Internet publications, as well as the independent and self-governed (media), without which the law could not have counted on the channels of discussion and dissemination,” independent media practitioners claim.

The text of the proposed law argues that strengthening these magazines is a way to “battle monopolisation, not just of products but of content”, and that it is also a way to “enshrine socially the idea that other types of communication are possible”.

It adds that these alternative publications “do not encourage competition, but the coexistence of different ways of perceiving and expressing life.”

(END)