Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad
Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad Media Policy and Globalization - Blogs Unpad
Table 3.4 (Continued ) Date Country Scandal TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY 81 February 2002 Ghana The government stops the sale of Ghana Telecommunication to Telecommunication Malaysia on the grounds that members of the former government had allegedly received free shares. June 2002 USA WorldCom Inc. admits that it inflated its earnings by US$3.8 billion. The figure is later amended to US$11 billion. The Securities and Exchange Commission immediately files fraud charges against the company and top officials. The following month WorldCom Inc. files for bankruptcy, a surprise move that eventually costs investors more than US$175 billion. Source: compiled by the authors from data available at: http://www.publicintegrity.org/ After two decades of telecommunications policy reform, the ITU in its most recent development communication initiative called Connect the World acknowledged the following about the very real limits of the dominant policy discourse: At present, the 942 million people living in the world’s developed economies enjoy five times better access to fixed and mobile phone services, nine times better access to Internet services, and own 13 times more PCs than the 85% of the world’s population living in low and lower-middle income countries. But while figures do show a clear improvement over the last ten years in bridging the gap between information ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, they nonetheless fail to paint a true picture for many rural dwellers, whose communities are still often unserved by any form of ICT. (ITU Connect the World, 16 June 2005 http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press releases/2005/07.html) The liberalization of telecommunications infrastructure and services has been integral in creating the ‘splintering urbanism’ that very visibly divides the world between the ‘wired’ and those left behind, criss-crossing nations and continents, linking high-tech neighbourhoods within cities and industrial regions together, bypassing socially and economically marginalized communities, especially rural communities, across the North and South. In other words, the earlier promise of reformers that societies would ‘leapfrog’ development, bypassing the industrial stage of
82 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION development altogether, has clearly had contradictory outcomes. We can see how similar arguments are made today about wireless, satellite and broadband technologies, with the promise of technological and marketdriven solutions to the global digital divide. Financing affordable telecommunications access and ICT competence for low-income communities has become a pressing area of concern for policy-makers in the field of global communication governance more broadly. In the next two chapters, we consider the policies that shaped traditional media on the one hand, with an emphasis on the audiovisual sectors, and the most current, futuristic expressions of communications, the ‘Information Society’, on the other. The relationship between the media and telecommunications sectors is quite visible in the light of technological convergence, which becomes the object of new regulatory reforms at an international level. As we will see, the development of technology has been systematically utilized to further the aims of neoliberalism with considerable success. The conflicting ideas about public interest, communication and cultural rights and that of emphasis on market-led normative framework for the shaping of communications are discussed as they are found in the development of broadcasting and the Information Society (IS). Notes 1. For current information about privatization of basic telecommunications see ITU figures: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/profiles/ MainFixedOps.asp 2. For current information about conglomeration, mergers and crossownership in the communication and media industries see the ‘Who Owns What’ URL of the Columbia Journalism Review website: http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/ 3. For current information about changes in ownership the US telecommunications industry, which has historically influenced changes in other parts of the world, see: http://www.openairwaves.org/ telecommunication/industry.aspx? act=phone 4. A ‘first wave of privatization’ took place in the 1930s, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, but most countries nationalized their telecommunications sectors in the 1950s and 1960s. See Hills 1998. 5. Feminist historical and ethnographic research has produced mounting evidence about the gendered history of labour movements throughout much of the world. The role of racial discrimination, as well as discrimination and exclusion based on caste and ethnicity,
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Table 3.4 (Continued )<br />
Date Country Sc<strong>and</strong>al<br />
TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY 81<br />
February 2002 Ghana The government stops the sale of Ghana<br />
Telecommunication to Telecommunication<br />
Malaysia on the grounds that members of<br />
the former government had allegedly<br />
received free shares.<br />
June 2002 USA WorldCom Inc. admits that it inflated its<br />
earnings by US$3.8 billion. The figure is<br />
later amended to US$11 billion. The<br />
Securities <strong>and</strong> Exchange Commission<br />
immediately files fraud charges against the<br />
company <strong>and</strong> top officials. The following<br />
month WorldCom Inc. files for bankruptcy,<br />
a surprise move that eventually costs<br />
investors more than US$175 billion.<br />
Source: compiled by the authors from data available at: http://www.publicintegrity.org/<br />
After two decades of telecommunications policy reform, the ITU in<br />
its most recent development communication initiative called Connect the<br />
World acknowledged the following about the very real limits of the dominant<br />
policy discourse:<br />
At present, the 942 million people living in the world’s developed<br />
economies enjoy five times better access to fixed <strong>and</strong> mobile phone<br />
services, nine times better access to Internet services, <strong>and</strong> own 13 times<br />
more PCs than the 85% of the world’s population living in low <strong>and</strong><br />
lower-middle income countries. But while figures do show a clear<br />
improvement over the last ten years in bridging the gap between information<br />
‘haves’ <strong>and</strong> ‘have-nots’, they nonetheless fail to paint a true<br />
picture for many rural dwellers, whose communities are still often<br />
unserved by any form of ICT. (ITU Connect the World, 16 June 2005<br />
http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press releases/2005/07.html)<br />
The liberalization of telecommunications infrastructure <strong>and</strong> services<br />
has been integral in creating the ‘splintering urbanism’ that very visibly<br />
divides the world between the ‘wired’ <strong>and</strong> those left behind, criss-crossing<br />
nations <strong>and</strong> continents, linking high-tech neighbourhoods within cities<br />
<strong>and</strong> industrial regions together, bypassing socially <strong>and</strong> economically<br />
marginalized communities, especially rural communities, across the<br />
North <strong>and</strong> South. In other words, the earlier promise of reformers that<br />
societies would ‘leapfrog’ development, bypassing the industrial stage of
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