Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
China and the US as specific case study examples. TVE has embraced the opportunities
afforded by digital technologies. It has its own YouTube Channel and has created
multimedia platforms, such as
Reframing Rio
, that have been specifically focused
on major global events like the Rio+20 summit. TVE's editorially independent films
have been broadcast across the world on global, regional and national TV such as
PBS in the US, including international channels such as Al Jazeera English, MTV
International, BBC World, Canal Futura in Brazil, ETV in India and over thirty-two
regional channels across Indonesia. 'Joined-up communications' to inspire and report
on change is TVE's basic aim. Porter and Sims (2003) argue that ending poverty,
improving living standards, and protecting the environment and human rights are
internationally agreed goals and the media has a duty to be objective but not
necessarily neutral.
In 1995, TVE helped co-ordinate a global network of women broadcasters,
producers and filmmakers in the long-running project Broadcasting for Change.
Snapshots for Change, 32 short films made in 31 countries, were made to support
the tenth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing.
Topics included women campaigning against sex trafficking in Nepal and HIV/AIDS
prejudice in China, Fiji and Kenya. Issues such as education, domestic violence,
trafficking and women's rights were addressed, and in 2005/6 a copyright arrangement
allowed each individual member's five-minute short to be available to the whole
network. For the price of making one short, broadcasters would have access to forty-
four others. TVE filmmakers have also collected a number of awards: Sandra Mbanefo
Obiago from Nigeria won Best Director Award for her documentary
Cash Madam
at the Biennial Africast conference in 2004 and Aarti Chataut won the Nepalese
2006 Women's Empowerment Journalism Award for her film
Shakti - Empowerment
.
The series
Earth Report
and
Life
forcefully explore broad thematic issues such as
health, global warming, the race to the bottom, development education, urban
violence, pollution, environmental destruction, indigenous land rights, sustainable
construction, fair trade, grass-roots activism, world trade and gender inequality. Two
Life
programmes,
Holding Our Ground
and
Balancing Acts
, have specifically given
women in the developing world an international voice to tell their important and
necessary stories.
Occasionally, TVE influences filmmakers through screenings at environmental or
human rights film festivals, or by screening films to delegates and decision-makers
at the UN, European Union or World Bank conferences. Significant resonance is
achieved when a major broadcaster is inspired by a TVE report to use a report as
a basis for a much larger and ambitious production. Deputy Director Jenny Richards
says:
What fascinates me about what we do is how our low budget regular pro-
gramming is being used by all these people out there, in many different ways;
and what you then find is some of these story lines reappearing in soaps or in
other people's programmes like, I shouldn't really claim this,
The West Wing
,
which tackled intellectual property rights after we had covered it in four
programmes. TVE has catalyzed other productions around the world. We know
we've done this with
Panorama
.
(Blewitt, 2007: 29-30)
