Hot Topic: TV and the developing world

Andy Glynne

• Increase image
• View all images

Andy Glynne tells TV execs to wise up to the developing world.

We often live in a vacuum about what the developing world means, believing it to be inherently depressing, worthy and, well, downright dull. But it doesn't have to be. Later tonight (12 June) Jon Snow will be wending his way by bike to host the One World Media Awards. This celebration - now in its 20th year - focuses on the most outstanding coverage of the developing world over the previous year and is attended by dozens of documentary film-makers who try to make stories from around the world jump off the page, inspire TV viewers and leave radio listeners captivated.

The nominations speak for themselves. The TV documentary category includes Please Vote for Me - part of last year's impressive Why Democracy? strand on BBC4, which charted the election of the class monitor in a Chinese school. At first all goes well, but soon the manipulation and dirty tricks start and we wonder whether democracy could ever exist without them. ITV Wales is shortlisted in the local media category for devoting a chunk of its news each night for a week to the uplifting story of how Fairtrade has transformed the lives of people in Ghana. The popular features category includes a report by Sunday Times food and TV critic AA Gill on a fundraising campaign to help Ghanaian adults and children who have been robbed of their sight.

The awards coincide with a new report out this week titled Screening the World about how UK television covers the developing world. Published by the International Broadcasting Trust, the educational charity devoted to promoting quality TV coverage of the developing world, the report says factual coverage of developing countries on UK digital and terrestrial channels has increased by 44% since 2003.

However, look a little closer and we can see that much of this coverage is on soft topics - wildlife or holiday programmes such as Holiday and A Place in the Sun. It raises the question of whether these programmes actually give viewers a real sense of what the developing world is like. Even harder subjects such as politics and development, environment and human rights (which, according to the report, account for only 7% of all UK television's international factual programming) may give us a distorted sense of how people live, leaving us with an impression of war-torn countries, where everyone is starving to death, all governments are corrupt, half the population has Aids and most children are either in full-time employment or have been recruited as soldiers by some armed resistance.

Take Africa. The main stories that appear on our screens about this region feature wars, corruption, famine and HIV/Aids. Oh and wildlife documentaries. And yet, this is not a place that Africans themselves would necessarily identify with. Africa is made up of more than 50 countries, many of which have rich traditions of storytelling but very few of these stories make it onto our screens.

The lack of broad coverage of the developing world may stem from the fact that the commissioners, producers and film-makers behind the programmes that do air are often from the UK and not from the countries they are filming in.

At the One World Media Awards our keynote speaker, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, will emphasise the international and UK media's responsibility to promote democracy, human rights and freedom of speech throughout the developing world. Special prominence will be given to countries such as Zimbabwe and Burma. One message will come out loud and clear - in today's globalised society, the urgency of reporting international affairs is greater than ever.
Andy Glynne is the director of the One World Broadcasting Trust