Raising
New Voices
Three countries, three journeys toward developing diverse media offerings.
Five years ago, Kenyan television viewers—accustomed to reruns of foreign soap operas and uninspired local programming—began tuning in to an entirely different kind of show. It was called "Tazama!" ("Look!"), and it featured young Kenyan journalists airing investigative reports on everything from political corruption to health problems caused by polluting industries to an illegal land grab near Nairobi. "Tazama!" journalists fanned out across Kenya to produce compelling stories, including one segment in which a reporter visited a counseling center to be tested for HIV/AIDS. The camera rolled as the journalist—who had never been checked for HIV—experienced a bad case of nerves during the test, then euphoria when the results came back negative. Looking into a hand-held camera, reporter Angelo Kinyua told viewers, "I was very nervous, but I did it, and so can you. Go and get tested today."
"Tazama!" is one of several high-quality, low-cost, locally produced shows that are transforming television in Kenya and helping to strengthen its young democracy. In the last decade, the Ford Foundation has supported grantees around the world who are helping to strengthen media across a wide spectrum—from newspapers to documentary films, to community radio stations—in societies grappling with the stresses and benefits that befall evolving democracies. In recognition of each country's unique circumstances, grantees across the globe are experimenting with a variety of projects that utilize both arts and media in their efforts to create space for public expression and dialogue.
Ford is currently supporting international media work in roughly 10 countries. These include Vietnam, where the foundation funds documentary film projects; Egypt, where it underwrites an exchange program for journalists with the West; and Mexico, where it works with press organizations on media ethics and safety issues.
Activities in three particular countries offer vivid portraits of the accomplishments and challenges faced by local organizations working on media initiatives:
In Brazil, organizations are addressing major institutional issues, such as concentration of media power in the hands of political and economic elites; in Kenya, local groups are pressing for more high-quality indigenous programming and better training of journalists; and in Russia, work continues to search for nuanced ways to support freedom of expression in an increasingly authoritarian milieu.
Democratizing Brazil's
Vibrant Media
After emerging from a military dictatorship 22 years ago, Brazil is a young, thriving democracy with a vibrant media sector no longer hobbled by censorship and government control. But the challenges facing the Brazilian media are significant and deep-seated: The nation's media are largely controlled by a few families and politicians; the country lacks national public radio and television networks; the press and TV overwhelmingly reflect the concerns of the power centers of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the country's southeast; and television sometimes broadcasts programming that some observers characterize as racist, homophobic or misogynistic.
"Our focus is to support the movement to democratize the media in Brazil and to help make the discussion about an adequate media policy in the new era of technological convergence a priority," says Ana Toni, the Ford Foundation's representative in Rio de Janeiro. "We do not have a problem of freedom of expression. Most of Brazilian media is privatized, and there's a huge concentration of power in the hands of few. We are looking at the power of these players and its effect on plurality, diversity and regionalization."
Ford's Rio office has focused its efforts in several areas, including supporting organizations and university departments that monitor and analyze the media. One of the most active media watchdogs in Brazil is Intervozes, a leading organization of journalists that monitors the murky world of media ownership in Brazil and campaigns against discriminatory programming.
Intervozes, a Ford grantee, won a major victory in 2005 when it took legal action against Rede TV, which broadcasts shows filled with anti-gay slurs and aired a program in which men strike women whom they suspect of infidelity. Intervozes filed a complaint against Rede TV in federal court and, after initially defying a judge's order, the network was forced to fund and broadcast 30 programs on human rights issues in Brazil. "We felt that TV channels should know that they just can't do whatever they want," says Joao Brant, a journalist who is one of six Intervozes coordinators. "We want to preserve freedom of expression, but it has to be in keeping with other human rights. This was a yellow light to TV networks telling them that they have to follow basic rights in the constitution."
Intervozes also is working to ensure that Brazil's emerging digital TV networks include public-access channels, and the group is campaigning to give poor and marginalized segments of Brazilian society a greater voice in the media. A small number of families and conglomerates control nearly all of Brazil's broadcast media, but licenses are also dispensed by committees in the federal legislature—frequently to their fellow lawmakers. Media ownership is often hidden, but estimates suggest 10 percent of the 513 members in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies directly own media licenses, which is forbidden by law, and almost 40 percent are indirect owners, with licenses held by relatives.
"Media licensing is very connected with politics," says Brant. "We have a very strong private sector in the media without a counterbalance of public media. We don't have any fresh air coming from community media or public media. Big media talks about having freedom of expression in Brazil, but it's really only freedom of expression for that small group that controls 88 percent of the media. There's not freedom of expression for 180 million other people."
Joining Intervozes in the effort to broaden access is the Media Observatory, which has brought legal action to bar Brazilian legislators from granting media licenses to other lawmakers. Alberto Dines, Media Observatory's chief editor, calls ownership of media companies by politicians "the original sin of the Brazilian press." This issue, and virtually every other aspect of Brazilian media, is dissected on weekly television and radio programs produced by the Media Observatory, as well as on its Web site, with the goal of nudging the state of Brazilian media out of the shadows and into the open.
Paulo Teixeira, a member of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, says the main achievement of Ford-supported grantees was to help open up the closed world of the media and act as a catalyst for democratization and reform. As Teixeira puts it, powerful, privately owned media companies no longer "swim alone in this lake." For example, he says, old-line media interests have resisted opening up radio and television airwaves to smaller, community-run stations. But now local groups are pushing old-line media interests to create smaller community-run radio and television stations, both digitally and on traditional broadcast bands. "We have new technology in our country and a new government," says Teixeira. "I think we have a chance to change the laws and to democratize communications in Brazil and to give people in our society more and more access to the media. Now there is a real opportunity for change."
Training a New Generation of Kenyan Journalists
When Polly Renton, a young documentary filmmaker from England, arrived in Nairobi seven years ago, Kenya's independent media had only recently emerged from a period of control and repression. Her timing was fortuitous. The media community lacked standards, experience and infrastructure, and the Ford Foundation was looking for ways to nurture its development. The goals were lofty—create high-quality local television programming, train a new generation of journalists and develop a set of professional and ethical standards—but Renton had the background to help address them. With the foundation's support, she began recruiting aspiring journalists, many from poor areas, and teaching them the fundamentals of documentary filmmaking. She taught the young trainees to pick gripping narrative subjects and film with a sense of gritty urgency. They left their tripods behind, following people through their daily lives.
The result was "Tazama!," the show that has been captivating Kenyans with compelling stories such as the reporter being tested for HIV/AIDS. "Tazama!" is now the second-most popular show on Kenyan television, behind Kenyan TV News, attracting 4.5 million television viewers and radio listeners—more than 10 percent of Kenya's population of 36.9 million—each week. The show has also been the training ground for more than 100 Kenyan reporters and filmmakers, two of whom have been named CNN's journalist of the year in Africa. "Tazama!" reporters, wearing the show's signature blue polo shirts with green collars, are now recognized by many Kenyans who have taken to the show's hip, street-smart tone.
"Tazama!" is not the only program changing the television landscape of Kenya, which began to emerge from years of dictatorship and misrule in the late 1990s. Medeva TV, Renton's production company, extended its national reach five years ago with "AgendaKenya," a lively public affairs talk show in which audience members ask pointed questions to politicians, academics and public officials. The show's power was on display two years ago when, in advance of a referendum on a proposed new constitution, "AgendaKenya" broadcast four consecutive prime-time shows highlighting the document's flaws. Voters rejected it.
Even soap operas are influencing civic dialogue. "Makutano Junction" has attracted large numbers of viewers who tune in to see characters struggling with timely issues such as the sexual rights of Kenyan girls. In a developing democracy, such shows have an impact disproportionate to their relatively modest budgets. "I worked on big-budget documentaries in the United Kingdom, and I don't feel that any of that work comes close to having the impact that this work does," Renton says.
When Medeva TV launched "AgendaKenya," Renton feared the audience, wary after years of dictatorship, would not speak out. She needn't have worried.
"The audience on 'AgendaKenya' has been spectacularly brave and articulate," she says. "In the U.K., politics is often about schools or taxes, but here politics is life and death. It's about whether you have access to justice or food or get caught up in some tribal skirmish."
Renton is confident that shows such as "AgendaKenya" and "Tazama!" are contributing to building a more open, democratic society. "For Kenyans it's like a slow drip where you realize that your voice counts, that you're allowed to hold elected officials accountable, that maybe after seeing a story about someone from a tribe that you never really liked, that you can change how you feel about that tribe," she says.
Medeva's programs have had a significant impact on Kenya, and helped create a more robust media. "They have demonstrated the creative energy and potential that exist in the region and have shown that social, political and cultural issues could be addressed in a creative, aesthetic way," says Tade Aina, who serves as representative for the Ford Foundation's Eastern Africa Office in Nairobi.
"It has made it possible for Kenyans to interact with a fairly wide range of opinions and views. It has put on the public agenda many issues that otherwise would not have been there," says Tom Mshindi, former CEO and managing director of Kenya's second-largest media conglomerate and now the managing director of a major media company in Uganda. Among the topics being more openly discussed in Kenya, Mshindi says, are political corruption, tribalization, governmental transparency and women's rights.
Walking the Tightrope in Russia
While the media in countries such as Kenya and Brazil have recently been moving in a more democratic direction, the environment in Russia is more precarious. After a period of post-Soviet freedom in the 1990s, Russia's media has been subjected to increasingly authoritarian control by the Russian federal government in this decade. The retrenchment is challenging, not only because of the sensitivity of supporting freedom of expression in Russia, but also because the Kremlin has grown increasingly hostile to foreign foundations and nongovernmental organizations, some of which it accuses of being agents of Western governments. Tensions escalated in the spring of 2007, when Russian authorities shut down the Educated Media Foundation, formerly known as Internews.
"Right now, the prospects for a free and independent press in Russia are not promising, so we have chosen to work primarily on issues of tolerance and diversity and direct our media grant making in that direction," says Steven Solnick, the Ford Foundation's Moscow representative, who has worked off and on in Russia since the 1980s. "We have tried to find some ways to create more protected space for the development of media professionals, to find different ways to strengthen professional journalism and diverse modes of expression." Ford's media program began in earnest in the late 1990s when it funded an Internews effort to revive the country's storied documentary film tradition, which had atrophied with the breakdown of the state film system in post-communist Russia. Through a documentary film project, Internews supported the completion of 34 unfinished films. It also distributed hundreds of documentaries from Russia and around the world to more than 360 regional television stations across the vast country.
In 2000, the Ford Foundation underwrote a successor program called Open Skies—Culture for the New Millennium, which financed writing and production of six documentaries by leading Russian filmmakers. The documentaries on subjects ranging from the Russian poet Andrei Bely to early Soviet filmmakers, won numerous international and Russian awards and were broadcast on Russian national television.
"Documentary films in Russia were in a very dire situation," says Grigory Libergal, programming director of the Open Skies project. "The production of Russian-produced films was stalled because the main source of financing was the state and the state was out of money. Documentaries had disappeared almost completely from TV. Open Skies was very successful and groundbreaking and other projects followed suit. Now documentary film production in Russia is flourishing."
The foundation has also supported organizations working to expand and improve cultural coverage by Russia's regional newspapers and television and radio stations. The Union of Media and Culture, a Russian nongovernmental organization, sponsored national competitions for cultural coverage, helped create 10 regional newspapers and magazines focusing on culture, held seminars for cultural reporters and editors, and has set up a method for regional television stations to exchange reports on cultural and social issues. The foundation also partially underwrote a program to train radio journalists at Moscow State University. Today, the foundation is supporting production of a series of documentary films on Russia's indigenous populations. For now, the foundation's media programs will continue in Russia, with the same objectives—to nurture a variety of voices in an increasingly monolithic environment, Solnick says. Although the path the foundation must navigate is more complex than those in Brazil or Kenya, a common theme of media programming is adapting to the reality on the ground.
"Our goal has been to support a plurality of voices, whether by supporting documentary filmmakers, training journalists in cultural diversity or training radio reporters," Solnick says. "We're impressed with the work our grantees are doing in difficult circumstances with limited resources."
Three Evolving Media Sectors
The media climates in Russia, Kenya and Brazil are dissimilar, but they all reveal the importance of developing and strengthening journalistic enterprises and spaces for free expression. As these nations transition, the presence of healthy media institutions is a vital element of their success.
The programs the foundation supports aim to strengthen professional standards and ethics, but more important, they promote media networks that analyze and discuss pressing issues and present the diverse faces and stories essential to enlightened discourse.
"There's a real hunger among people to see themselves in the media, and these projects create an opportunity to introduce critical social issues and dramas that people are struggling with in their daily lives," says Orlando Bagwell, the Ford Foundation's director of Media, Arts and Culture.
"We see both the arts and media as creating that kind of space for free expression."