Give us programmes with "Asian" values, say region's media chiefs
Give us programmes with "Asian" values, say region's media chiefs
MANILA (AFP): Media executives called on TV stations yesterday
to promote programming and publications with "Asian" values as
they warned against the dominance of Western TV programs in Asian
homes.
"My intention is to warn producers: what are they doing by
buying so many imported programs? They have to be reminded that
we have (Asian) values," said Naohiro Kato, director-general of
the Asian Broadcasting Union in Malaysia.
Kato, along with several other delegates at the first Asian
Summit on Media and Children's Rights, sought to define "Asian"
values while trying to avoid debate on the widely held view that
"Western" -- mostly American -- media were eroding Asian values.
"There is a tendency to equate Asian values with good values
but no single culture has a monopoly over good values," said Khoo
Kim Choo, director of Singapore's Early Childhood Educational
Research Center.
Khoo defined Asian values as "communal", emphasizing the
family over the individual, and placing importance on respect for
authority, obedience, sacrifice for the greater good and filial
piety.
Western values were characterized as "individualistic",
focusing on equality and individual rights, and promoting
frankness and permissiveness, Khoo said.
She cited Singapore's cross-cultural diversity, which has led
to government efforts to promote a set of core values including
the Asian value of filial piety and the Western value of openness
in communication.
"This (openness) is not Asian. But it is necessary to be more
effective and functional as a family," Khoo said.
She was among the 250 delegates in the Philippine capital to
attend the summit, which hopes to create policies to develop
indigenous, child-friendly media in Asia.
Delegates lauded a statement from Mafuz Anam, editor-in-chief
of Bangladesh's Daily Star newspaper, who argued the issue was
not one of Asian versus Western values, but of Asian adults who
"aspire to be Western."
"Can I blame my children then for becoming Western?" he asked.
On Tuesday, Patricia Edgar of the Australian Children's
Television Foundation branded four major American networks as
"culturally subversive" to Asian children.
"Wherever American media has gone in the world, trade and
influence follow. So many of the U.S. models are inappropriate
and they do much more damage in our cultures than they do in our
own," she said.
Edgar supported a Malaysian move to ban Barbie dolls, which
she called "oversexed bimboes with endless legs and overly
assertive mammaries... what kind of toy is this for Asian
children?"
Asian countries were not, however, spared the blame for the
negative influence of their media on children. Mafuz Anam also
criticized India, one of the biggest producers of films, and
Japan, one of the biggest exporters of cartoons.
"The bigger budgets they get, the more violence and sex there
is," he said.