Information Society Watch

June 2005, Nalaka Gunawardene, TVE Asia Pacific

This editorial urges media tycoons and typhoons (those of a tech-savvy, liberal nature confronting the corporate media) to come together. The author reminds us that when the Asian Tsunami struck, the media quickly mobilized not only to report but to help those impacted. Such media coordination needs to continue in the struggle to end poverty, under-development and corruption. While the extensive tsunami media coverage spurred the largest volume of donations in response to a single calamity, he points out that every day some 14,000 children in the Asia Pacific die needlessly from preventable diseases--the equivalent of the Asian Tsunami’s cumulative death toll every three weeks. While Asia has more people living in poverty than all other developing regions combined, media coverage of this region instead highlights Asian prosperity and growth. In order to reach the MDG of halving poverty by 2015, the author suggests the radical, yet feasible, notion of eliminating copyrights on media content pertaining to poverty and development.

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