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| Sunday, 2 May 2004 |
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Television in Sri Lanka : The need for an independent media training sector by Robert Crusz (Continued from last week (25/4/2004) Finding other media practices dedicated to evaluating, critiquing, and
providing alternatives to these twin ideologies within the mainstream But in radio and television the absence of such a practice is plainly evident. There have been no truly radical, alternative radio or television stations in Sri Lanka to date. Occasionally, a programme might be broadcast within the existing channels which would seem to go against the prevailing ideologies but these are too few and far between, and when they are placed within the general overwhelming programming which promotes globalized and nationalist values, their influence and effects are diluted and finally lost. The training of professionals to work in radio and television has always been geared to maintaining the status quo as far as ideological positioning is concerned. The Sri Lanka Radio and Television Training Institute was set-up by President Jayawardene with German and Japanese aid. Its training programmes are geared to creating competent technical broadcasting professionals for Sri Lanka and South Asia who will continue the processes of evolution and advancement inherent in these sophisticated technologies. But it remains to be seen whether these professionals will raise the many critical questions about the content, the ideologies, and the practices of current programming policies in both the state-run and private media sectors in which they will eventually work. The training in this institution is simply not geared in this direction. It is the same situation in some universities, colleges and NGOs who offer degree, diploma and certificate course in Mass Communication and Media. These are mainly theoretically focused with a little practical input. The main process of entry for young people keen to work in Sri Lanka's mass media sector is through personal initiative and personal contacts. In Sri Lanka, one needs to know someone, who knows someone else, who knows another someone with influence, to get a job in the media field. Urban, English educated young people are more likely to get into the private sector while Sinhala speaking, preferably well connected (politically or socially), sub-urban youngsters are favoured by the state-run media. With no formal media training generally and easily available in the country, the qualifications required by a young person to enter the media profession are the Advanced Level examination certificate or a University degree. The training is given in-house. This means that along with the practical, technical training, the ideological biases of the particular media institution are also transferred to the trainee. So it is thus that the system reproduces and renews itself. If the mass media ideological status quo is to be changed in Sri Lanka, then ways will have to be found to instill analytical and critical ways of thinking and working to the personnel who choose to work in these professions. We are in desperate need of a truly independent media research, training and production sector which will nurture future media professionals from the earliest stages. One way forward is suggested by the British Film and Video Workshop movement of the 1980s. British Workshop Agreement In the summer of 1981, the second and third generation of British youth who were descendants of African-Caribbean and Asian immigrants took to the streets in anger within the inner city ghettoes and started burning and destroying everything around them. They violently demanded that they be treated as equals, and that their aspirations and needs be recognized by the British state and society. Until then, Britain had treated them as second class outsiders since they did not fit into the prevailing and predominant ideology that the British national identity was white Anglo-Saxon and Christian. Institutional racism was rampant within the nation. Major structural changes took place within British society after these 'riots'. The police, the judiciary, local government, the education and health sectors, and the mass media were all forced to look at their institutionalized racism and make radical shifts in policy and in attitudes. Within broadcasting an interesting experiment was conducted. Back British people had for a long time been unhappy and angered at the patronizing way they had been represented in the mass media institutions, in all the various genres of programming and in its organization, administration and policy making. They demanded a greater and more pro-active role in British broadcasting. Young black Britons demanded that they be given the opportunity to represent themselves and to tell their own stories. They demanded a voice within the institutions of British film making, television, and publishing. Under the auspices of a coalition made up of the Arts Council, the Broadcasting Trade Unions, the British Film Institute, and the semi-independent television network Channel Four, the Workshop Agreement was initiated. Under this agreement, a number of film and video workshops were set up around the country. Each consisted of about five young people from the Afro-caribbean and Asian communities who had some background experience in film and video making and/or education. They were given union membership and each workshop was set up legally as a limited liability association. Grant funding was provided from a common budget set up by the Arts Council, the British Film Institute, and Channel Four, which provided the bulk of the funding. The money paid for office space, all the necessary equipment and a monthly salary for each member, all initially over a period of five years and renewable thereafter. Each year, the workshops submitted a work plan consisting of the television programmes and films they proposed making, and the education and training courses they proposed conducting for other members of their communities. Channel Four made an agreement to purchase the films and programmes and broadcast them on their network. In the early 1990's the Workshop Agreement finally succumbed to the onslaught of the right-wing economic ideologies and policies of the ruling Conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher. They demanded that the grant funding be stopped and that the workshops become more commercially oriented and survive in the 'free market'. The groups disbanded and the workshop movement came to an end. But in those ten years, the workshops had made important inroads into the broadcast and film media landscape of Great Britain and helped to effect important permanent changes in the way the mainstream institutions thought and practised. Some of the workshop members got influential production and management jobs within the British film and broadcasting sectors. Others moved into the academic and independent media arenas, while others continued on to become committed alternative film and videomakers. There are many economic and political reasons why the Workshop movement cannot be replicated in its entirety in Sri Lanka. But what could be tried is a modified version which retains the basic ethos of giving young people a practical research space within which they have the freedom to learn, to experiment, to analyze, to debate, and to make films and videos which will be seen by the public - all of this while having the financial security of a regular monthly income. Setting up such a scheme will call for imaginative and creative thinking and action from the State, the Private Commercial, and NGO sectors. Something along these lines will have to be worked out if the existing ideologies are to lose their grip on the Sri Lankan mass media. This is the edited version of an article in the publication "25 years of Television in Sri Lanka" to be launched shortly by the Catholic Media Institute. Concluded |
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are
hard to find in Sri Lanka. The print media has had a long tradition of
radical publications, mainly in the Sinhala and Tamil vernaculars which
have resisted the claims of globalization and nationalism and discussed
alternative ideas.
