Monday, March 19, 2007

Passion in Poverty: Observations by Terry Clark

3-17-2007

What stands out here among all the people we’ve interviewed and met is their passion for their country, for their work. They take you into their meager, dusty offices and show you around with pride, much as we would with a new car, but unlike us, if we have someone in our home, we always make excuses—“we’re working on this, and we need to do this….”

Not them. Their attitude toward newspapers and radio and television is one that begins with the 1991 revolution—the all mention the dictatorship—they all mention that their biggest need is more trained journalists—but they’re all committed to the work.

The link between journalism, and improving agriculture and the economy and politics is apparent to everyone. It is journalism with a cause.

“Our weapon is the antenna” one radio owner told us, being the “voice of the voiceless.” Another woman in a dusty rural area where solar panels powered car batteries so the radio could stay on the air has a half hour program on women’s issues…almost all are volunteers. Asked about their training, they say they need more. “We try” they say. One man at the station can barely read and write, but there is a blackboard on the floor in the next room where he’s working on his literacy. At midmorning, under the tin roof, it is about 90 degrees at least. Law students and grads take jobs at radio and newspapers so they can have jobs.

We see no malnutrition. There is food
--some unbelievable produce by the sides of the roads. There is meat. There is however, very little water and very little money.

Radios are everywhere because of the illiteracy. I am keeping a daily journal and notes, and I’m up to 60 pages plus now, and I intended this to be a transcription, but it just starts pouring out. Running together. I know some of it is repetition because I can’t always remember what I wrote.

We met Monday with head of the one TV station, subsidized heavily by the government. The motto is La passion por service le public.

He works seven days a week, from early to late—“If you don’t have passion, all the technology won’t help you.”

Every office you go to you see empty boxes—for computers, printer toner, monitors, bottled water, VCR tapes, other equipment. They’re like us—get the material unloaded and stash the box someplace, you might need it.

Every place we go we ask questions about ethics and the answers are interesting. Almost all of these radio and newspapers and the TV have been in court in the past few months to years defending themselves against slander and libel. Different laws over here.

And the lessons on ethics are interesting too. The top TV guide says “If you expect people to respect your ethics, they first must know what they are, what your job is.”

American journalists, are you listening? We don’t explain ourselves to our audiences. Newspapers over here have declining circulations like we do, and part of that is because the journalists are not well trained. The editor and owner we met Monday however of the paper 26September (the date of the revolution) has been to US at Freedom Forum, to Baltimore, the Modesto Bee. He got his education in Cuba when the Russians were big in this country and there…but he is not a communist—he is Malian. “We want to make a paper for all people, not just the officials.”

All of these people in all media are crying out for more training for their journalists….including the university we visited that is thinking about starting a journalism program.

I’m out of steam for this session—the lesson is that these people are poor, and they’re hungry—not for food necessarily—but to improve.

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