How cool is this article from the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual Chinese talking shop, on how Asian media will rise up to challenge western media juggernauts. It seems that Asians take offense that they are 96.2% of the world's population and yet produce only 0.3% of its international media. By the way I got published in the August 13 issue of Singapore's Business Times, but you guessed it right, the article was in someone else's byline. It is called View from the Top and is supposedly written by a Singapore CEO, well he is 'me', lol. Talk about individual achievement, am in no way near there.
So, to continue the BOA forum article I have read raised a lot of interesting issues:
"The world is not flat actually," Liu Jiang, deputy editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency, said at the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), which was held over the weekend in the south China town of Boao.
"The world is in reality a slop on which information flows downward from developed countries to developing countries and regions," Liu said. "The World Is Flat" by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has been frequently quoted to prove an alleged "magic power" of globalization by Bill Gates and other lecturers at the conference.
The book figures out ten driving forces to grind the world flat,in each of which media play an important role. "Developed contrives, which have one seventh of the world population, have dominated two thirds of the total information flow," Liu said. "However, globalization does not balance a horizontal world when it is grinding the world."
"Why do Asian media always yield to Western culture?" Felix Soh,deputy editor-in-chief of The Straits Times headquartered in Singapore, questioned in his speech at the sub-forum discussing globalization and the media.
Not to demean but I agree with one blogger of note, Asian media do suck. Oh there are fine Asian filmmakers and writers but on the whole I agree we have played on the precarious brink of irredeemability. Whose fault?
Look what blogger Imagethief has to say here.
The Straits Times took the last train to dullsville and fell asleep in its seat and missed the stop. I know. I subscribed for years. The tragedy of this --the great, majestic, swooping tragedy-- is that if any country was going to produce a credible pan-Asian newspaper it would be Singapore. It's in the right place, it's got the right people, and it speaks the right languages. It really is a regional hub. But it will never happen. I blame government. Governments, by and large, should not involve themselves in media. But Asia's governments cannot, for the life of them, keep their grubby mitts off the media. And damned if they don't have a near mystical talent for boiling the life out of it.
Well, hey Asia, if you truly need a clearer, louder voice in the world, if you're tired of being walked all over by western media, if you think you are being misrepresented on the global media scene, then try lick em don't join em. Set our own media free. It will probably be worth the effort, and may bring us somewhere, I suspect.
1 comment:
Well written article.
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