How the West's broadcast media views the world

By John Vidal

LONDON: Ten years ago, I traveled to Sudan to cover the food shortages. There in Khartoum were television crews from three British channels making very diverse programs. Africa, it seemed, was on the map and this was reflected in documentaries, news reports and debates.

Back in Britain, the nightly TV news was dominated by the seismic political changes taking place in eastern Europe and Russia. Channel 4's (commercial television) Dispatches program was airing remarkable documentaries about Tibet and the Balkans, there were peak-time programs on the BBC about life in China and Uganda, and it wasn't hard to find major TV exposes of international factory farming and ecological injustices. In short, there was a real sense of a wider world.

It was not to last. Even as TV foreign coverage was developing a loyal audience of millions, the great hype in London media circles was how the proposed new Broadcasting Act would provide viewers with more "choice". The politicians and heads of most TV channels were arguing strongly that freeing ITV from many of its public service commitments would usher in a new era of "diversity". Only a few Cassandras warned that the competitive rush for audiences would turn British TV inward, ignoring the rest of the world.

The Cassandras have been proved correct. We almost certainly know less about what is happening in the world today than we did 10 years ago. TV hardly gives us a clue what is happening in most parts of the world, the social and economic forces shaping people's lives, how other cultures think, or are responding on political or personal levels to some of the greatest scientific, ecological, cultural and societal changes in world history.

Even as business and politics has globalized, and as more people than ever are traveling abroad, so British TV -- the prime source of information about the 5 billion people living in the developing world -- has become more insular, shallower, more opinionated, narrower, consumer-led, less intelligent and more self-obsessed. Our world map is massively diminishing even as our ignorance is increasing.

The proof comes from a major study commissioned for Britain's leading international aid, development and environment charities. It shows how British terrestrial TV, despite having an extra channel, has willfully abandoned coverage of the developing world in the past decade.

The decline in the quantity and quality of coverage has been stark and dramatic: the total number of hours of factual programming on developing countries has declined by 50 percent; ITV (commercial television) has dropped its coverage by 74 percent; BBC2 by more than a third, Channel 4 by 56 percent. BBC 1 is increasingly obsessed with soft wildlife and travel programs and Channel 5 (commercial station), says the report, has commissioned almost nothing from non-western countries since it was set up.

The quality of coverage has shifted considerably, too, says the report done by the Third World and Environment Broadcasting Project (3WE) which was set up in 1989 by groups including Oxfam, Action Aid, the WWF, Save the Children, Voluntary Service Overseas, Christian Aid and the RSPB.

At the start of the decade, a large number of factual programs about developing countries were about human rights, the environment and development subjects -- they accounted for 30 percent of the output. These have almost entirely been replaced by travel and wildlife programs which, argues the report "do not offer complete portraits of the developing world".

Moreover, those few current affairs reports, international documentaries, and arts, culture and religious analysis programs still being made are now mostly broadcast at the margins of the schedules -- late night or very early in the morning. The vast majority of factual shows about poorer countries shown at peak times are now celebrity-led programs about travel or wildlife.

These two areas have, the report suggests, become the bastion of TV's coverage from developing countries. Are they supposed to be of use to people trying to understand what is happening in the lives of 80 percent of the world's population? Presumably yes, as together these two categories now make up almost 60 percent of all programming about poor countries.

This dismal picture, says the report, acidly, begs an analysis of TV's public service value: "A disproportionate number of these types of programs consist of either footage of animals without a broader social context or celebrities visiting resorts. Holiday- type travel programs figure more heavily than adventure travel programs."

BBC2 and C4 are both criticized here. The figures suggest a complete reversal of programming policies by channels once regarded as the flagships for minority interest and overseas coverage but which are now widely regarded as obsessed with sex and controversy.

Channel 4, notes the report, broadcast more factual programs on developing countries at the start of the decade than BBC1 and BBC2 combined. Today this trend is reversed and C4, despite having no higher overall share of the audience slice, is now showing 100 fewer hours a year while boasting of being more diverse than ever.

The report also notes that ecological programming, a major theme of the channel's overseas factual programming in 1989, is now "virtually extinct with little effort to innovate in this area". When it did offer four hours of prime time TV to rubbish global environmentalism -- in 1997's Against Nature -- it was castigated by the ITC for misrepresentation. The programs were widely attacked for being nonsensical and ignorant.

It gets worse. News programs rely to an increasing extent on reporting disaster and conflict. Overseas current affairs coverage has declined by 38 percent to just 12 hours a year across all five channels. But it is religious, cultural and arts programs which have been the hardest hit.

Where these categories made up 20 percent of all overseas factual programming 10 years ago, today they barely exist, with just 21 hours a year across all channels.

"This is a very significant reduction in an important area of programming which helps augment multicultural awareness within the UK," says the report.

"In the name of choice, it appears that the British viewer is now treated to a greater amount of travel and wildlife programming with a serious diminution in other categories. There is room for much greater production innovation."

So what is happening? The report's author, Jennie Stone, says that there are many factors responsible for the dwindling level of international factual programming in the past decade.

She cites diminishing budgets, the advent of new technology which allows images to be quickly and cheaply transmitted but which results in less in-depth analysis, and a changing production culture with staff more likely to move across program genres, with less overall commitment.

She also suggests that TV has moved rapidly to invest in online and Internet services with international filming being one of the first areas to have its budgets cut. Her report attacks the oft-repeated excuse that the British public is just not interested in factual programming from poor countries. "This is inadequate," she says, citing dozens of programs over the years that have reached huge audiences.

The report concludes by calling for a reversal of most of the trends: "TV remains the primary medium through which the British public is informed about the developing world. Increasing global links are the fabric of our societies and Britain stands in a unique international position at the heart of the UN, the EU, NATO, the Group of 8, the Commonwealth and many other influential global bodies. We believe broadcasters have a key responsibility towards coverage of these links."

-- Guardian News Service