A different perspective
Samia Nkrumah in Rome looks at an alternative peace media project
A debate is now raging in Italy about the conflict of interest involved in having the two major broadcasting networks under the control of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. State-run RAI normally comes under the political authority of the current government, while Berlusconi himself owns its main competitor, Mediaset. Between them, RAI and Mediaset control the six main channels in the country, and as things stand, with a few exceptions, they articulate the official government line. Last month, all six channels failed to broadcast the peace demonstrations that drew a record number of protesters and were shown by non-Italian networks, thereby prompting the resignation of RAI's then president.
In this climate, there have been some attempts to break the government's media monopoly. In the months preceding the war on Iraq, Giulietto Chiesa, a political journalist and analyst, writer and staunch anti-war voice, began the difficult task of launching a television channel that would counter the mainstream media in Italy. The newly- created NO WAR satellite television channel has begun broadcasting for two hours a day since the war on Iraq started. Given the one-sided flow of information, the timing of the launch of the channel was critical.
In his book La Guerra Infinita (The Infinite War) Chiesa argued that after the war on Afghanistan, Iraq would be next, followed by so-called "rogue" states and "enemies" in various parts of the world, whether states, organisations or political opponents, in order to ensure American military and economic hegemony.
The idea of a television channel first came to Chiesa during his time in Moscow as correspondent for the Italian daily La Stampa, he told Al-Ahram Weekly. He discovered that the international media, including the most powerful publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, showed an ideological bias that completely distorted the situation. "They were just lies, lies and more lies", he said.
"The problem with Western society is that we say that we have pluralism, freedom of speech and democracy, but what we have instead is the monopolisation of the information system and lack of democracy in information," argued Chiesa, who added that he "cannot imagine a society where you can exercise democracy if you are not informed".
As things stand today, the information system is now dominated by a unified few. Chiesa believes that the bulk of the war coverage in Italy, for example, is from an American perspective and is based on American sources. As a result, even in Italy, the war coverage is far from objective.
Without power or money, but with energy and a sense of urgency, a group of like-minded people decided to create a mass movement on a cultural level that would be able to counter the mass media. What better medium than television to reach a wide audience. "We are moving away from a civilisation of people reading to people seeing," Chiesa said. "Television is not superficial. It is money and not structure that limits television coverage and analysis, given that 60 per cent of our television is devoted to advertising," he added.
Chiesa's initiative won support from very different political and social forces. Far-left activists, moderate leftists, trade unionists and Catholic groups all expressed their interest.
The first attempt to launch the television channel was a one-day experiment last December that was realised with the help of Emergency, the Italian aid NGO founded by Gino Strada, a surgeon and anti-war activist who is now in Kurdistan. Emergency is one of the few aid groups to remain in Baghdad during the ongoing war.
Some 30 mayors from the central Italian region of Toscana, a traditionally left-wing constituency, were among the first to lend their support to the NO WAR project. Others followed, most notably, the publishing house of Baldini & Castoldi and Banca Etica, a modest Italian bank. Between the bank and the Toscana supporters, a committee was formed to sell shares to the public.
The backing of Catholic groups has been a big boost to the budding channel. Telepace, a Catholic television station that waged a campaign to avert the war, expressed a wish to air NO WAR programming. Chiesa is a member of the Italian committee Tavola della Pace, which includes 52 Catholic organisations, many of whom agreed to assist in raising funds for NO WAR television. There are 650 local stations in Italy, and half of these are Catholic stations.
Chiesa wants his television channel to convey to Italians what people in different parts of the world think and feel and so the team is working on collaborating with as many foreign sources as possible.
"We don't want to project only a Western perspective of events. One of the reasons for the Qatari-based Al- Jazeera's success and fame here is that for the first time we have not just another perspective but another language, another culture, another people talking to us. They managed to make us see the war not just from another perspective but through the eyes of another culture. We know next to nothing about what the people in China, India or Russia think. How can we have just one viewpoint in the whole world?" commented Chiesa, who hopes to expand the discourse to include other issues in addition to the war, such as democracy in communication, poverty and ecological concerns.
